


A Glow in the Dawn

by StreetSolo



Series: Signs and Smoke Signals [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Fluff, Drama, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Fingerfucking, Fluff, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghosts, Force Sensitivity, Force-Sensitive Reader, Happy Ending, Kissing, Kylo Ren Redemption, Made For Each Other, Making Out, Manipulation, Mind Games, Moral Ambiguity, POV Second Person, Play Fighting, Plot, Politics, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Reader-Insert, Romance, Smut, Sparring, The First Order, The Force, Trust Issues, Wordcount: Over 500.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-31 20:47:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 90
Words: 648,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6486928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StreetSolo/pseuds/StreetSolo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Determined to stay true to his word, Kylo Ren is set to make good on his promise to you by whatever means necessary, but will you try to find your way back to your friends on the Resistance base, or will you again try to make a home for yourself from within the First Order? Regardless, you may find yourself caught up in an even more perilous situation than before, especially as new information is brought to the light that shocks everyone on both sides, and as old enemies re-emerge from the shadows. Can you find the strength to trust in the light side of the Force, or will you be seduced by the same darkness that ensnared Kylo Ren? </p><p>Continuation of the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5815693/chapters/13402072">A Flare in the Dark</a> and <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6111699/chapters/14008584">A Candle in the Night</a> saga.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> “I choose fantasy to vent, to process complex political, sexual and social politics at the safe distance of fiction."  
> -Natalie Dormer
> 
> Hi there, my name is Krasava AKA Streetsolo, and this is part 3 of the Signs and Smoke Signals trilogy, A Glow in the Dawn, alternatively titled, "Something Something Ren" as dacianamusik23 appreciated the aesthetic of the last three words in this trilogy being, "Dark Knight Ren" and there's absolutely no way I can argue with that. 
> 
> This is a part 3 of the Signs and Smoke Signals trilogy. In our last installment, Kylo Ren has decided to try to make good on his promise of giving you the family you always wanted, but surely what he's saying is too good to be true. Can you truly trust the man that had abandoned you for years? The man that will forever be on the run from both the Republic and the Resistance? Will you try to fight your way back to your friends and family on the Resistance base, or will you decide to give Kylo Ren a second chance? You're about to find out. ;)

               _This isn’t what I wanted._

               That was the first thought that surfaced in your mind as you blinked, taking in the bright light that surrounded you. You stretched your neck from right to left, stretching out your stiff joints as you arched your back in an attempt to sit up. A jolt of pain suddenly struck you in the abdomen and radiated outward so suddenly that you winced, screwing your eyes shut as you let yourself slip back into the pillows behind you.

               “Don’t try to get up.” The voice is gentle, and kind, and familiar, and it’s all wrong.

               “You-“ Honestly, you don’t know what else you can really say to him. You open your eyes to see him sitting at the side of your bed, looking better than he had the last time you had seen him. He had obviously had a shower, and he had gotten more color back into his face. You glance down to see the lightsaber still attached to your belt, and Kylo follows your gaze.

               “We should talk,” Kylo says firmly as he puts a large hand on your arm, but you pull it away.

               “Talk?” you demand incredulously as you raise your eyebrows in surprise. “Yeah, you kidnapped me and my son from the Resistance just so we could _talk_.”

               “ _Our_ son,” Kylo corrects you. “And I took you out of that base because you don’t belong there.”

               “Oh yeah?” you ask as you sit up on your elbow. You can feel pain spreading through your abdomen again, but you try your best to ignore it. “And where do you think I belong? With you?” Kylo opens his mouth to speak, but he doesn’t say anything as you shake your head in disbelief. “Unbelievable. You are such a child, you know that? You can’t have everything you want.”

               “I want to make things right,” Kylo argues, but he gets up to let you slide your legs off the end of the bed. “I want to have a chance to fix things.”

               “A little late,” you snap tersely as you brace your hands on either side of the bed. You wince as you try to get up, and Kylo offers you his hand. You look up into his eyes, and they look so honest and sincere that you have to look away as you hit his hand away with the back of your closed fist. “Where’s Ani? We’re leaving.”

               “He-“ Kylo starts, but you’re in no mood to listen to him as you push yourself onto your feet.

               “We’re going back to the Resistance,” you say firmly. “And if you try to get in my way, I’ll kill you. Please know I mean that.”

               “You don’t,” Kylo says, just as firmly, and you look down and away from him. Okay, no, you didn’t want to kill him if you could help it, but right now, you didn’t know what you were capable of. You sit back down on the end of the bed and rub your forehead with the heel of one hand while you try to think it over, and watch as it comes back to your memory in fragments. You remembered walking in on Kylo and Phasma kidnapping Ani, fighting with Kylo, Phasma shooting you in the side, escaping to the hangar, and Poe…

               You can feel your heart skip a beat and for a moment you think you’re going to cry before you realize that Kylo is right there, watching you intently. “Why am I here?” you repeat quietly, your voice full of venom.

               “Because,” Kylo gets down on one knee beside you, but he’s still considerably tall as he takes one of your hands in both of his large ones. “I thought about what my grandfather said. You wanted us to leave the war behind and be a family, and I want that, as does Ani. I want to try this. I want to have a family.”

               “You want,” you scoff as you shake your head and look away. “Did you ever think about what I want? Did you think that I might have been happier on the Resistance base?”

               “I felt your doubts,” Kylo tells you. “You weren’t sure if you wanted to stay there either. You didn’t want Ani to feel indebted to the Resistance. You didn’t want him growing up on a military installation. You-“

               “Yeah, but that was before…” You let your voice trail off as you felt a wave of selfishness float over you. True, both you and Ani had wanted to stay on the base, but it wasn’t really until things had started to develop between you and Poe that you had pushed all of those other doubts behind you. Not that any of that really mattered now. Maybe you had been slightly selfish, but it was nothing compared to Kylo’s self-regard for his own wants. “I wanted a family with you before, not anymore.”

               “Yes, you do,” Kylo says quietly as he presses the backs of your knuckles to his lips. “We’re connected. I can still feel you. I can feel what you want, and you still want me.”

               You take a deep breath in and let it out. You want to construct a wall to keep him out, but honestly, right now you still feel far too weak. Instead, you decide to just tell the truth. “Yes,” you admit. “Yes, I do want you. I will always want you, against my better judgement. I can still want you and decide that I don’t want to be with you.”

               “Ani wants to give this a chance,” Kylo says quietly, appeasingly, but this just makes you angry more than anything else.

               “Ani is a child,” you tell him incredulously. “Seriously, are you honestly using our child as a bargaining chip in order to get me to be with you again?”

               “No,” Kylo snaps, and he seems insulted by the notion. “Anakin is _my_ son as well as yours. You got to spend time with him for years-“

               “You could have seen him,” you snap. “You could have come back at any time. You didn’t.”

               “I had reasons for that,” Kylo says through gritted teeth. You can see he’s getting angry, but right now, that doesn’t bother you in the slightest.

               “Well, as long as you had a good reason,” you snap sarcastically.  “Ani was happy on the Resistance base. Let’s just face what’s really bothering you. You couldn’t take it that Poe replaced you. You were jealous that he was there for me, and that he was actually starting to be a good father figure for Ani.”

               “ _I_ am his father,” Kylo says, and his voice is dangerously low.

               “You’ve never acted like it,” you tell him as you shake your head. “And the last time the three of us were in a room together, Ani made it clear that he was only there to deliver a message. He couldn’t have cared less about seeing you.”

               “We’ve talked,” Kylo tells you. “He’s changed his mind. _He_ is willing to give me a chance.”

               “Because he’s a child.” You feel like your heart is breaking in your chest, more for Ani than anything else. “Seriously, how can you do this to him? You are his real father, and of course no one will replace you. Of course he’s going to say yes if you give him a chance to spend time with you.”

               “And that’s all I’m asking for is a chance,” Kylo insists. “Snoke is gone now. He’s not in any danger.”

               “What?” you ask as you glance up at him, reading his expression carefully.

               “Snoke is gone,” Kylo repeats firmly. “My uncle, he-“ Kylo’s voice trails off as he looks away. “I could feel it; I could feel it when it happened. I believe it was the scavenger that dealt the fatal blow.”

               “Oh,” you say, and for a moment you’re not sure how to process that information. “Well, that’s good then,” you decide. “It just means Rey and Finn and Luke will be coming back, and that’s three more people that are going to come looking for me.”

               “They’re not going to find us,” Kylo says confidently, a self-assured smirk pulling at the corners of his lips.

               “Oh no?” you ask, raising your eyebrows. “Then where are we? Somewhere in the Unknown Regions?” Kylo just shrugs as he looks away. “Oh, right, go ahead, refuse to tell me where I am. That doesn’t make me feel like a prisoner at all.”

               “Go look outside,” Kylo says, and you pull your hand out of his grasp as you stand up and make your way around the bed, getting feeling back in your legs as you walk. You absolutely hated being shot by a stun blaster, especially at such close range, although you supposed you should have been thankful that it was only set to stun. As you look up, you immediately realize that the window isn’t a window at all, but a sliding glass door, and you slide it open as you step out onto a balcony.

               Rey would have loved it. There was a slight breeze blowing that brushed strands of hair across your vision, and you tucked them behind your ear and swept them back out of your face as you looked at the lush vegetation all around you. It was beautifully green, the grass growing thick and strong with clusters of rich trees in the distance. The sun was high overhead, and as Kylo stepped behind you and wrapped his arms around your waist, you decided not to pull away.

               “Where are we?” you ask quietly, as Kylo rests his chin against your shoulder.

               “We’re on Naboo,” Kylo whispers in your ear, and your eyebrows shoot up at the familiarity.

               “You’re even stupider than I thought then,” you say with a cocky sneer. “Because Poe has taken me to Naboo himself. He’s going to find us in no time at all.”

               “Except that he isn’t,” Kylo tells you. “The Resistance is currently chasing our ship around the Inner Rim, or rather, what they think is our ship. They think we’re trying to make it across the galaxy; they would never think to look for you so close.” You bite your lip as you think it over. That sounded like smart logic, and you could only hope that Poe wouldn’t be tricked by it.

               “But I know how to get back,” you tell him as you pull out of his grasp and turn around to face him. “And it won’t take me any time at all.”

               “Then go back then,” Kylo yells at you suddenly, and you flinch instinctively, holding up your hands as if you’re ready to fight, but Kylo just shakes his head as if he’s disgusted with you. “If you don’t want to be with me anymore, then fine, but Ani stays here.”

               “Like hell he does,” you scoff. “Ani-“              

               “You’re not keeping me from my son,” Kylo yells, and you suddenly feel a white-hot spark of rage shoot up through your spine, and for a moment you’re prepared to just run at Kylo and push him off the balcony. Instead, you step up close to him, letting him know that you were not about to be intimidated by him.

               “My son,” you say firmly. Kylo purses his lips together as he looks down his nose at you, but you don’t flinch. “Ani is my son. You gave up any rights to being a father when you chose the First Order over us.” Kylo starts to speak, but you don’t let him. “And I get what you’re trying to do, believe me, I do. Trying to be a father figure now so he’ll just forgive you for the years and years he spent waiting for you? You abandoned us, and I don’t know if you think that you can atone for your sins by making up for lost time, but if you’re looking for redemption, you’re not going to find any here, not from us.”

               Kylo closes his eyes and lets a deep breath out. “Give me a month.” You raise your eyebrows but you don’t step away. “You don’t have to stay, but just give me a month-“

               “Like hell I’m just leaving Ani with you,” you snap, crossing your arms over your chest. You think it over in your head, letting the sincerity in his eyes ebb away at your resolve. “I’ll give you a week.”

               “I gave you a week,” Kylo snaps. “And look where that got me.”

               “You knew-“

               “A month,” Kylo says loudly, and you bite your lip as you gaze up at him. Did you owe him that? He was Ani’s real father, but after everything he had done, should he even have the right to see Ani? Hell, he had murdered his own father. Shouldn’t he be concerned that Ani might go down the same route if he was in his presence?

               “A month,” you relent, and Kylo lets out a sigh of relief. “But _only_ if Ani agrees to it. The minute Ani wants to go back, we’re going back.”

               “Thank you,” Kylo puts his hands on your shoulders as he kisses you, gently, and you let the action occur without finding comfort in it. Kylo seems to sense your resolve and draws back.

               “But one more condition,” you say firmly. “And that is that _you_ are coming back with us. You still have to take responsibility for what you’ve done.”

               “Fine,” Kylo says lightly, and you know deep down that the only reason he’s agreeing to it so easily is because he’s probably going to find some way to get out of it, but as long as you and Ani managed to find your way back to the Resistance, then it shouldn’t matter.

               “Now take me to Ani,” you order, and Kylo just nods as you follow him out of the bedroom and into a long hallway with several doors on either side. The house that you were inside looked exceedingly nice, and you wondered whose house you were in as you made your way down a long white tiled staircase and into a foyer. You looked to your left to see a living room type area, with several couches set up in a giant _U_ , but you turn away from it as you hear the sound of Ani’s laughter off to your right. Your head immediately snaps in that direction, and you brush past Kylo as you make your way into a large kitchen.

               Phasma is standing behind a stove cooking. She’s wearing normal clothes, not her regular silver armor, and her blonde hair looks a little longer than the last time that you had seen her. There is a giant bar separating her from Ani, where he is sitting on a stool as he eats, and you can tell that they are in the middle of friendly conversation by the jovial look on Ani’s face when you walk into the room.

               “Hello there,” Phasma says pleasantly as you walk in. You make a face, and she points to your side where she shot you. “I am sorry about that, but we didn’t exactly have a lot of time.”   

               “You could have just left us,” you tell her. “Or better yet, just escaped and not come for us at all.”

               “Believe me, I tried,” she says as she waves you over, and you sit down next to Ani. “Do you think Ren would hear of leaving you two behind?”

               She loads up a plate of food and puts it in front of you, but you ignore it for a moment as you brush Ani’s hair back. “Are you doing okay there, Ani?”

               “Uh-huh,” Ani says through a mouthful of food. You can see he’s sitting with his staff across his lap, and you’re happy that that didn’t get left behind. “It’s really nice here. And the food is really good.” You laugh gently as you rub your hand along his back as you look up at Phasma.

               “How did you even know where to find him?” you ask suspiciously. “Sure you knew where the Resistance Base was, but how did you know Kylo was still being held there?”

               “Tracker in his garments,” Phasma answers simply, and suddenly it dawns on you why Kylo had never taken his clothes off.

               “How did you get through the Force lock?” you ask her, ignoring the food in front of you.

               “Eat,” Kylo says, standing to the side of the counter, but you ignore him as you focus your attention on Phasma, waiting for her answer.

               “A lock doesn’t do much good if there’s no longer a door,” Phasma says simply and you let out a breath through your nose as you reluctantly take a bite of food. “It’s good to see you again,” Phasma says at length, and you force yourself to remember that you had once considered her a friend. Although she had kidnapped Ani, she was only following Ren’s orders. She had always helped you when you needed it before, and maybe this time would be no different.

               “Leave us,” Ren orders suddenly, before you have time to reply. She rolls her eyes in his direction before she turns off the stove and then walks out of the room. Kylo moves to stand where she had stood, standing directly in front of you, but behind the bar.

               “Ani,” you say quickly, as you turn to face him. “Your dad and I have been talking and-“

               “He wants us to stay here with him,” Ani says as he keeps eating, and you bite your lip, not sure how to continue.

               “Yes,” you say. “But if you’d rather go back to base, we can always-“

               “I want to stay,” Ani says, looking up at you. “I like Phasma. She’s nice and she cooks really well.”

               “Yes, she does,” you say quickly, vaguely aware of your heart beating erratically in your chest. “But, you know, it’s okay if you want to go back to base. I mean, all of your friends are there, like Ladson, and BB-8 and Chewie and Finn and Rey and _Poe_.” You say this last name pointedly to get a reaction out of Kylo, but he doesn’t seem the least bit bothered by it as he takes a bite out of something in a pan in front of him.

               “Well, why can’t they visit us here?” Ani asks. “I like it here. I got my own room and everything. It’s really big and there’s a lot of space and Phasma told me she has a staff too and we could play together. And dad’s going to train me in the Force-“

               “That wasn’t part of the agreement,” you say tersely, looking up at him, and Kylo simply rolls his shoulders as you turn back to Ani. “ _Rey_ is going to teach you the Force when-“

               “But I want dad to teach me,” Ani says loudly, and you close your eyes as you purse your lips together.

               “It’s just-“ You sigh and take a deep breath out. You didn’t know what to say, you honestly, truly didn’t. “I thought you didn’t like your dad.” It seemed weird to say it so openly, but it was at least somewhat true.

               “He said he was sorry,” Ani says, looking up at you. “And they want me to spend more time with him too.”

               “They?” you ask as you raise your eyebrows in surprise. “You mean your spirit friends?” Ani bobs his head up and down as he takes another mouthful of food, and you shake your head. “No, no, that can’t be right, they warned me-“

               “They warned you?” Kylo asks, and you bite your lip as you try to remember.

               “Obi-Wan told me I was going to be tested,” you tell him, although you’re looking at Ani. “And then Anakin told me something was already happening and told me to listen, and that’s when I walked in on you.” Kylo looks troubled, but Ani doesn’t seem the least bit affected.

               “Maybe they were talking about something else,” Ani says cheerfully, and you frown at him.

               “Do you know something I don’t?” you ask, poking his arm with the tip of your finger.

               Ani just shakes his head. “But I want to give dad a chance.”

               “Because they want you to or because you want to?” you ask carefully, waiting to see his reaction.

               “Both,” Ani replies through a mouthful of food, but you’re still not satisfied.

               “Ani,” you say softly, running your fingertips up and down his small back. “Did your dad happen to say anything to you? Something about me, maybe? Saying something bad might happen if we left?” You have no idea how to delicately ask a child if Kylo threatened either you or him into getting him to say he wanted to stay, but this seemed like the safest way to go about it.

               Kylo looks insulted, but Ani just looks up at you in confusion as he shakes his head. “Bad?” he asks. “He wants us to be a family.”

               “And is that what you want?” you ask him, and Ani nods his head up and down.

               “Why don’t you come here and give me a hug?” Kylo asks in a voice you’ve never heard him use before, and Ani hops down off the stool and scampers around to Kylo, who scoops him into his arms. You stare at him incredulously, your jaw hanging open in shock as you watch Kylo gently brush the bangs out of Ani’s face. Seeing Kylo downright paternal, as the father you always wanted him to be, stirred memories of when you had first spent time with him when Ani was a baby. You feel an unwanted bubble of emotion rise in your chest, and you quickly scoot away from the bar as you race back up the stairs and into your room.   

               You stumble out onto the balcony and collapse to your knees, feeling heavy sobs rack through your body. You didn’t want to leave Ani down there alone with him, but at the same time, you didn’t know what you wanted. No, you knew what you wanted, or rather, who. You wanted Poe with you, here, right now, right this very second. You wanted him to be stroking your back and you try to picture it as your vision glazes over with hot, blurry tears. You try to picture him kneeling besides you, stroking your back as he tells you that you can do this, because you’re strong, because he’s never met a stronger person in the whole of the galaxy and just the knowledge that that would be _exactly_ what he would really tell you is so painful that you feel your heart shudder in your chest, as though it’s going to break apart.

               You sob loudly and openly into your hands as you cover your face, hating Kylo, absolutely hating him for putting you in this situation, especially now that you had finally moved on from him once and for all. If this had been weeks ago, maybe you could have accepted it, but now, now that things were going so well with Poe, you didn’t want them to change. You sit back and press your forehead into your knees as you try to quell a sob, but you can’t, and you grit your teeth as it racks through your body, making your shoulders shake. Your nose is running and your hair is in your face and you let out an almost inhuman whine of defeat as you wrap your arms around yourself and sob, running your nose back and forth against your pants as you try to comfort yourself. The pain running through you is unlike anything you’d ever felt before. You had felt this broken on a handful of occasions when you assumed Kylo wasn’t coming back for you, but this was so much worse. You finally found someone who was sweet and uncomplicated and saw the absolute best in you at all times, and of course Kylo had to selfishly rip you away from him out of his own bitter sense of jealousy.

               So what if Kylo wanted to be a father to Ani now? It didn’t matter to you. A part of it was probably brought upon by Snoke’s death; with him gone, the First Order would have surely all but disbanded, and the malevolent force that had been clinging to Kylo and urging him to the dark side was finally lifted, and he was free to pursue other things, like the family he always wanted. And that would have been good, that would have been perfect. Years ago, that would have been all that you had ever wanted, but now? Now you wanted to be back on the Resistance base with Poe and Ladson and Finn and Rey and all your friends. You could imagine how they would all comfort you now. You could imagine crying into Rey’s shoulder and she tried to comfort you by telling you to trust in the Force and helping you to control your thoughts. You could imagine how Finn would have just held you tightly to him as he pressed you into his stiff leather jacket that used to be Poe’s and told you that it was all going to be okay, that you could do this. You could imagine Poe holding you, pressing his lips to yours and trying to tell you a joke, trying to make you laugh, trying to make you smile to help you get through this, and while your mind flits through the numerous things that he would have said, it only makes it worse, and you feel a fresh bout of tears stream down your cheeks.

               Your cheeks hurt, they ache from the insides as if you had been gnawing on them, and your throat feels sore and scratchy and you feel as though someone had suddenly plugged the bridge of your nose and was holding your fingers there, but you don’t care how awful you feel or how ugly you must look right now, because you had finally given up what you wanted and found something, someone else, and maybe it wasn’t better, but it was just as good. You weren’t going to compare the two; what you had with Kylo had been so utterly different with what you had with Poe that you couldn’t even begin to try to compare the two if you tried.

               You loved Kylo in a way that was familiar, that was physical, all sensation and trust, as if deep down you had each become a part of each other that was impossible to separate. He understood you in a way that you didn’t think anyone else really could, knowing every flaw and every weakness. He had studied you for so long he knew exactly where to touch you to elicit the best responses, he knew exactly what you were thinking and what you wanted from him, and it was so predictable and familiar that it was comforting in a way that you couldn’t describe. Despite all the bad things he had done to those around him, that had never really had an impact on the bond that you shared with him. You had always wanted him, and you supposed a part of you always would, although whether it was the bond or just that you had grown so accustomed to his presence, you couldn’t say.

               And maybe that was why you gravitated towards Poe so much. He was completely unfamiliar with you. He had to ask what you needed, or counted on you to tell him. He didn’t touch you in all the perfect places, but he tried, and it was that awkward fumbling around each other that you had come to appreciate. He was sweet, and honest, and you never had to question if what you had with him was genuine even though you couldn’t get into his mind because he wore his heart on his sleeve and you could see the sincerity in his eyes. You weren’t sure if he knew all your flaws, or your weaknesses, or simply overlooked them, but you knew that you could always go to him with whatever was wrong, and that he would never judge you for it. He would be there for you, and for Ani, in whatever way you needed him, and that was probably the biggest difference between him and Kylo. Even if Kylo wanted to be there for you, he was a wanted criminal on the run now, and he would never be able to give you the same kind of life that Poe could.

               “I’m sorry.” You freeze instantly, the hairs on the back of your neck standing up as you feel Kylo’s sudden presence standing next to you. You don’t know how long he had been there for, and you quickly push the tears away from your face with both hands as you stare into your knees, silently waiting for your vision to clear. Kylo sits down next to you and wraps his arms around you, resting his head against your side. You press your forehead into your knees as you force yourself to steady your breathing, although it’s difficult to inhale any substantial breath through your clogged nose, and you find yourself choking on the air in your lungs as you try to breathe.

               You feel lightheaded, and you let yourself be embraced by him as he wraps his large arms around you. “I want to go back.” You know what else you want to say, but you can’t say it, not to Kylo’s face. You can tell him that you miss Poe, but you can’t even tell him that you love him because you’re not quite sure if you even do, but it’s there, the pain is there, and you know that he can feel it.

               “You can go back,” Kylo says softly. “Just give me one month to spend with Ani.”

               “I’m not leaving.” You can barely even understand your own voice through your tears, and you don’t mind wiping your snot on his shoulder in the slightest. “No, I’m not leaving you alone here with Ani, I’m just not.”

               “What do you want me to do?” Kylo asks quietly, and you can sense a note of tender vulnerability through the Force that you had never really felt from him before. He was hurting too, but he had brought this pain on himself. He deserved this sort of pain. You didn’t. You had only been trying to do your best with the circumstances that you had; that was all you had ever tried to do. You never asked for any of this mess.

               “I want you to leave me alone.” You stand up so suddenly you almost fall over, but you thankfully manage to stand upright as you make your way back into the room and into the bathroom. It’s a really nice bathroom, filled with brown tiles the color of caked mud that have a pleasant earthy tone to them, and you let this tiny, trivial bit of information distract you as you wash your face with the cool water from the sink, avoiding your gaze in the mirror. When you finally think you look at least somewhat okay, you emerge from the bathroom to see Kylo still sitting on the balcony, his back to you.

               You want to go over and say something, but you don’t know what to say, and you decide to be thankful that he’s giving you your space as you go back downstairs to your barely touched plate of food. Ani is still sitting there, talking to Phasma, and you hop on the stool next to him, avoiding both of their eyes while you quietly pick at your food.

               “Ani, why don’t you go on upstairs to your room and play with your staff, hm?” Phasma asks, and Ani looks between you and her as he silently nods his head and scurries off.

               “Heard all that, huh?” you ask quietly, poking the food around your plate with your fork.

               “The walls are thin,” Phasma says as she looks down at your plate. “Here, let me heat that up for you. It’s shit otherwise.”

               You’re about to protest but she jerks the plate away from you before you can even open your mouth. Only when the food is not in front of you do you suddenly realize how hungry you are, and you sit for a moment in awkward silence as Phasma reheats your food.

               It seems awkward to be seeing her again, especially since so much time had passed since your last meeting. The last time you had seen her was probably when you were sparring after one of your self-defense classes on the Starkiller Base, but so many years had passed that you could no longer say with absolute certainty that that had been your last meeting. In either case, you remembered that she had always been extremely kind to you, and you tried to preserve that notion to prevent you from trying to kill her for kidnapping you and your son.

               “Good for you,” she says at length as she puts a hot plate of food in front of you, and you look up at her cautiously, not understanding. “I mean,” she says, brushing her wispy blonde bangs out of her face. “Good for you, not waiting around for Ren.”

               “Oh,” is all you can say as you begin to pick at your food, but you’re not sure if she heard you.

               “Men,” she continues. “It’s as if they think the world revolves around them and what they want. No woman should ever put her life on hold just waiting around for them to get their shit together.” You cock your head to the side in consideration as you raise your eyebrows. In truth, though, wasn’t that exactly what you had done? “One woman to another, I told Ren not to keep you waiting, but he was adamant that you would be loyal to him.”

               “Oh,” you repeat, a bit more loudly the time. “You two talked about me?”

               “After you left?” she asks. “Ren wouldn’t talk of anything but.” She shakes her head, and you take a moment to process this new bit of information. “He was insufferable in those first few weeks, destroying everything left and right. It’s no secret that he has a temper, but Hux came this close to just throwing him off the base.” She holds her thumb and index finger an almost imperceptible distance apart.

               “He could have always come stay with me,” you mutter as you stuff a forkful of mood in your mouth, and now it’s Phasma’s turn to consider this.

                “He wanted to,” she tells you. “I don’t know the intricate details as to why he couldn’t, but apparently he sent you off base for your safety, something about your life being in danger. I couldn’t fathom why at the time, but all I know is I didn’t find out that you had his son until much later on.”

               “He’s told me why,” you say with a simple shrug. “I don’t know if I can really believe him though, after everything.”

               She considers this. “I’ve never known Ren to be dishonest,” she admits. “But I don’t know the specifics of your relationship aside from what Ren has told me.”

               “Did he talk to you a lot?” you ask curiously. “After I left, I mean?”

               “He wouldn’t shut _up_ ,” Phasma says crossly, and her tone makes you giggle. “That man would visit me at all hours of the day and night just ranting about you, saying all sorts of things. It was starting to drive me mad.”

               “Why you?” you ask as you look up at her. “I mean-“

               “No, I know what you mean,” Phasma says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “But I’m sure you know Ren never really had any _friends_ from within the First Order, and considering I was the only other person on this ship who really gave a damn about you, I guess he just felt as though I could understand.”

               “He was lonely,” you say, phrasing it as more of a statement than a question, and Phasma nods her head.

               “It seems he was,” Phasma says with a shrug. “I don’t know what transpired since, but I do know that I tried to talk him into leaving you and your son on the base. He absolutely would not hear of it.”

               “You could have left us,” you mutter petulantly. “You didn’t have to come get us. You could have just left.”

               “I had my orders,” Phasma says simply. “Hux told me that one of Snoke’s last transmissions was to help Ren escape the base by any means necessary, and although he didn’t deem it fit to carry out-“

               “Wait, what?” you ask, turning sharply to face her. “Hux was just going to leave him there?”

               Phasma just shrugs. “They never got along. At any rate, it worked out. The Resistance turned all of their focus to trying to track down both you and Ren that it bought Hux enough time to escape.”

               “Fantastic,” you mutter under your breath.

               “It seems that you are quite valuable,” Phasma says with a light chuckle.

               “No, that’s Ani,” you tell her. “I mean, the son of Kylo Ren? I’m sure it’s no secret what kind of power he probably possesses.”

               Phasma appraises you for a moment, as if she knows something she’s not telling. “Word is, you are quite something in your own right,” she says. “Tales of how you and your friends captured Ren might have been exaggerated, but I suppose there was some truth to it.”

               “All exaggerated,” you say with a shrug. “I mean, I was just a distraction. I hardly did anything.”

               “No?” Phasma asks, her eyes alight with amusement. “Then the girl with the glowing amber staff was just something they made up then?” You bite your lip as you look up at her. She doesn’t look impressed, or angry, just amused. “Good to see that your training did not go completely to waste after all.”

               “And you’re not mad that I attacked your troops?” you ask suspiciously.

               “That’s another matter,” she says with a tight smile. “But this is war, and I understand that you did what you had to do.”

               You tilt your head to the side. “Is it, though?” you ask as you look up at her. “I mean, with Snoke gone, isn’t the First Order kind of gone too?”

               “We’re lying low,” she admits. “Regrouping. We have several new strategies that we are looking into, none that you need to concern yourself with.”

               “Right,” you say as you blow out a puff of air that you had been holding in your cheeks. “I know this doesn’t concern me, but it concerns Ani, which means it does concern me. If they are looking for Kylo Ren here-“

               “No one is looking for Kylo Ren here,” she tells you.

               “You know what I mean,” you say crossly. “He’s involved with the First Order, and he’s here, so-“

               “Who says he’s still involved with the First Order?” Phasma asks, tilting her head to the side, and you feel your shoulders slump. She had always been direct with you, and you had appreciated that, but you were not going to be happy if you found out that she had suddenly taken on a predilection for mind games.

               “He’s Kylo Ren,” you tell her. “Of course he’s still involved.”

               “Things have changed in the past few years,” Phasma says with a sigh. “Hux and Ren saw, well, they didn’t see things eye to eye. Hux questioned Ren’s commitment to the First Order and Ren, well-“ She shrugs, and you mull this over.

               “He gave up?” you ask her slowly, and she just shrugs, as if it doesn’t really make a difference to her.

               “He still did the ground work,” she admits. “But overall he did seem less enthused with the way things were going. I thought it was just due to the nature of his disagreements with Hux, but there was talk that he had other reasons.”

               “Meaning me,” you say softly.

               “Meaning you,” Phasma says with a stern nod of her head. “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that the First Order views any sort of personal connections as weakness.”

               “I’m his weakness all right,” you mutter under your breath before you look up at her sharply. “You can have him back though. I don’t want him anymore, not after everything he’s done.”

               She just laughs as she shakes her head. “Ren told me about the pilot.”

               “His name is Poe,” you say pointedly, and Phasma laughs openly at that.

               “Poe Dameron, is that right?” she asks, and you nod your head. “Yes, that’s right. Poe Dameron, supposedly the best fighter pilot that the Resistance has to offer.”

               “He is the best,” you tell her. “He even taught me how to fly.” She raises her eyebrows, as if she’s impressed, and you quickly hunker down again. “I mean, not his X-Wing, although he did take me for a ride in that once. I can just pilot, you know, basic stuff.”

               “Once you figure out how to fly one thing, you can fly anything,” Phasma says indifferently. You would have staunchly disagreed with her on that, but perhaps she took to flying more naturally than you did. Honestly, you didn’t even know that she was a pilot, but you supposed it made sense. “And you fell in love with him?”

               “I wouldn’t say it got that far,” you admit sheepishly. “Yet. But I did see me potentially having a future there with him.” You look up at her. “One woman to another, you know that I can’t have any sort of future with Ren. You know he can’t be there for me, or Ani.”

               “He wants to be,” Phasma says with a shrug. “I’m not going to get involved. I have my orders and right now those orders are to guard Ren and you and your child.”

               “For a month,” you say firmly. “For a month and then Ani and I are going back to the Resistance.”

               Phasma laughs openly at this. “And you think he’s just going to let you?”

               “He said he would,” you say, still trying to sound confident although you suddenly realize how dumb that sounds with your own ears. “At any rate, are you going to let me? Or do you have orders to keep me here as well?”

               “I suppose we’ll see when the time comes,” Phasma says. “Up until that time, though, you are considered guests here and I promise to treat both you and your son with the utmost civility.”

               “And I thank you for it,” you say as you continue eating. The food she cooked really was a lot better than anything you had eaten at the Resistance base, although the company could have been greatly improved. You missed your dinner time conversations with Ladson and Finn and Rey and Poe. They had always been the highlights of your days, and now it seemed that those dinners had just become another fond memory to look back on, back at an old chapter of your life. You didn’t want it to be, but you could tell by Phasma’s tone that she didn’t really believe that you were going to go back there. Indeed, it seemed too simple, even to your own ears, but you could allow yourself to hope, right?

               You finish eating in silence and thank her quietly as you push the plate away from yourself. “No need to thank me, especially after I gave you that,” she says as she gestures to the wound in your side. “Please let me know if you need anything, anything at all.”

               “Thanks, I will,” you tell her before you turn around to head back upstairs. You check the balcony to see that Kylo’s not there, and instead head back out into the hallway. Across the hall from you is another bathroom, a smaller one than the one inside your own room, and down the hall there were two more doors across from each other, one that was shut tight and you assumed to be Phasma’s room, or maybe Kylo’s, and another room with a door slightly ajar.

               They had been planning this for quite a while, you observed, as you pushed open the door with your foot. Inside was a child sized bed with a large chest of toys in the corner, and you could see blocks and puzzles scattered all over the floor. Kylo was sitting with his back against the bed, floating blocks towards Ani with the Force while Ani swatted them away from him with his staff. He was giggling and laughing and seemed to be having a good old time of it, and even Kylo looked pleased with himself, the corner of his lips turned upwards in a tight-lipped smile. It looked so natural, as if had simply been lifted out of a dream of what you thought might have been, and the thought of it makes your heart sink.

               “Time to wash up, Ani,” you tell him as you appear in the doorway. Ani pouts as he looks up at you, but Kylo just looks away.

               “Please?” Ani asks. “Just a little longer?” You cross your arms over your chest, and Ani turns to Kylo instead. “Please? Please can we keep playing just a little longer?”

               “Listen to your mother,” Kylo says, but you find his blind agreement with you more frustrating than anything else.

               “A little longer is fine,” you tell Ani, and Kylo looks up at you in surprise as you head back into your own room. You walk into the bathroom and shut the door tightly behind you, making sure to lock it for emphasis that you wanted your own privacy. You take a shower, letting the hot water run over you, and it feels nice, but you can’t help but think back to where Poe was and what he was doing right now. At first you think he must be worried sick about you, but you’re at least comforted by the notion that he knew you could take care of yourself. He probably assumed that you had beat the shit out of your captors, grabbed Ani, and hopped on a freighter and headed back towards his waiting arms.

               Poe’s overwhelming confidence in your abilities makes you feel at least a little better as you step out of the shower and slip his present back around your neck. The stone no longer felt totally smooth; instead, it felt lightly smudged, and you quickly wipe it down with the wet corner of your towel gently, so as not to scratch it. You knew that you couldn’t connect with him through the Force to let him know that you were okay, but you pulled the stone into your hand and squeezed it anyway, silently hoping that maybe at least Rey could pick up on your ripples in the Force and relay the message, or even find some way to trace the Force signature back to your location. You knew it was a long shot, but it was worth a try.

               After you emerge from the bathroom, you put your clothes back on and head straight out the door to check on Ani. The door to his room is shut, but after a quick peek, you find him quietly asleep in his room. The corner of your lip pulls upwards in a small smile to see that he’s safe, at least for now, and you close the door gently and you step quietly back to your own room. You close the door quietly as you sigh and slump against it, rubbing your fingertips against your temples, trying to figure out what you were going to do. The answer, of course, was that you were going to wait, but you were not a patient person and you didn’t _want_ to wait an entire month to make it back to Poe. So much could change in that amount of time, and although you weren’t exactly worried about Poe moving on, you were worried that he might not fit into your life as well as he once did.

               You round the corner, heading for the bed, but jump when you see Kylo lying outstretched on a couch along the back wall of the room. He’s shirtless, wearing nothing but baggy black pants, and you cross your arms as you see him. “What are you doing here?” you ask flatly, although you are much too tired and drained to let any real venom creep into your voice.

               “I brought you some clothes.” You glance down at the bed covers to see something laid out for you, a black gossamer tunic that looked almost transparent in the dim light. It had a deep cut down the middle that was embroidered in gold lace, and you raise an eyebrow as you look down at it. “The rest is in the dresser.”

               You considered throwing it back at him, but he sounded too tired to argue with as well, and so you simply took it and headed into the bathroom, not bothering to close the door as you stripped down. You slid the thin material over your head, and you had to admit that it _was_ very pretty, with long flowing sleeves and a wide collar so it hung just off the ends of your shoulders. You shook your hand as you looked at yourself in the mirror, but decided it was better not to question this too much. It was just a shirt, just a piece of fabric.

               Even still, you bundle your dirty clothes to your chest as you slip back into the room, putting them on the floor beside you as you slip into the bed, disappearing under the covers before Kylo can really notice you. You put your head down on the pillow, but his presence in the room is, quite frankly, annoying, and you weren’t quite sure why he was there. Was he trying to intimidate you?

               “There are couches downstairs,” you tell him. “You don’t have to sleep in here.”

               “I want to,” Kylo says firmly, and you let out a breath as you shake your head and pull the blankets further up around yourself. “You don’t have to worry. I’m not going to touch you without your consent.”

               “I’m so grateful,” you reply sarcastically, and you can hear Kylo shift in the darkness to look over at you.

               “I thought you were just using him to make me jealous,” Kylo says at length, and you can’t help but laugh at that.

               “Like you really give a shit,” you scoff. “Let’s face it, you’re happy that I’m here with you and not with him.”

               Kylo just lets out a sigh. “I don’t like to see you in pain.”

               “Only because you can _feel_ my pain,” you snap. “Don’t pretend that you actually give a shit about me past your own self-interests.”

               “What would it take?” Kylo asks, and he sounds genuinely curious. “What would it take for me to show you that I’m serious about this?”

               “What would it take you to show me that you really do want a future with me and Ani?” you ask as you sit up. From out in the darkness, Kylo nods. “Drop dead.”

               You throw yourself back in the pillows and Kylo lets out an exasperated sigh, but makes no attempt to push you any further. To be honest, you feel bad that you said it, but you try not to dwell on it. Kylo Ren was a bad person who did bad things, who used people to get what he wanted without looking back. If he was nice to you at all while you were here, it was only because it would help him get what he wanted, and it had nothing at all to do with you or Ani. Maybe there was a small part of him that did genuinely want a family, but that wasn’t something that you had to concern yourself with. You wanted a future with Poe, and he had attempted to rob you of that for his own selfish desires. Whatever he would do, you had to keep that firmly in your memory.

               You’re not quite sure where along the line you fall asleep, but you’re awakened by a disconcerting sound, and you blink a few times as you try to remember where you are and how you had gotten there. You prop yourself up at one elbow, confused, before your eyes make their way to Kylo in the darkness. He had slipped down onto the pad of the couch with his long legs hanging over the arm rest in a position that could by no means be considered comfortable. He was whimpering and murmuring under his breath, shaking his head back and forth as if in some sort of nightmare.

               You pitied him for a moment before you shook your head and lay back down on the pillow, closing your eyes as you tried to get back to sleep. Kylo let out a high-pitched whine at the exact same time you closed your eyes and you opened them again, staring at the wall in front of you. Should you wake him up? No, you decided. Whatever nightmares he was having was in reparation for whatever sins he had committed, and he deserved them, each and every one of them. No matter how ephemeral his dreams were, you knew that while dreaming, some nightmares could seem like a lifetime, and you hoped that right now he was in a hellish landscape that he thought he would never wake up from.

               But as you tried to close your eyes again, Kylo released a slow whimper of pain and you rolled over onto your stomach and put your pillow over your head, trying to block out the sound. You knew Kylo was suffering, but you were by no means willing to suffer with him. You had already put yourself through that once before, and you were not going to let yourself fall back into the same habits that had gotten you into this mess to begin with…

               …if you could help it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus begins the third part of our Reader's tale. Kylo has finally returned, and the Reader is not too happy to find herself in this new predicament. Will she really return to the Resistance after thirty days? Will she eventually warm up to the idea of being with Kylo again? Will Poe find her before then? Stay tuned to find out, friends!! As a quick note, I have no idea how many chapters this story is going to have, but it will definitely be over thirty, like the last two installments. 
> 
> Additionally, I do want to take the time to say that unfortunately I am going to need to do away with the daily updates. I know, I know, but unfortunately these chapters are a lot longer and with projects and finals coming up, my editors can't really keep up and so I am going to drop back to a three-day posting schedule; Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturday (nights, probably), which might be Sunday, depending on your time zone. This is just a temporary measure to make sure I stay ahead of the curve (only the first two chapters have been edited right now) and I might go back to posting daily again once I develop more of a rhythm. I'm also moving again the last week of April, so I'm hoping this way I can continue to crank out solid content without leaving you guys in any sort of hiatus so you'll always have regularly scheduled updates to look forward too!!
> 
> Fortunately, though, I am releasing a NSFW Kylo Ren prompt tomorrow that anon requested on my Tumblr, so you can either look for it there or I will also be posting it to be Prompt Collection on ao3 that you can see by clicking [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6468130/chapters/14804356). So, see? I'm not leaving you guys totally alone after all!! xD 
> 
> Also, don't forget we still have the Spotify playlist for this trilogy that the awesome [dacianamusik23](http://dacianamusik23.tumblr.com/), put together!! You can click [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/dacianamuzik23/playlist/10bK34U5zo1n7c7DWo8bbT) to listen to it directly on Spotify, or you can click [here](http://dacianamusik23.tumblr.com/post/142178857561/signs-and-smoke-signals-a-playlist-by) to see the official Tumblr post she made with a direct link at the top, which also features a thank you for everyone's song suggestions. The playlist encompasses the whole trilogy, so if you happen to think of a song you'd like to see, you can just add it in the comments below or send it over to her directly on Tumblr. <3 It's never too late to check out good music!! 
> 
> Again, feel free to check me out on [Tumblr](http://streetsolo.tumblr.com/)/[Twitter](https://twitter.com/streetsolo)/[Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/streetsolo/) (and now [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/Streetsolo-100707330320784/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel)!) @ streetsolo (I always post all my new Star Wars merch on Instagram) and I'll see you all back here on Saturday. Cheers!!


	2. Chapter 2

               “Mom? Mom, wake up. Come on, mom, wake up. Mom, wake up. Mom!”

               You roll your neck dramatically to one side, wincing as you hear the bones pop in your neck as you press your ear into your left shoulder. You blink in the dim light, again momentarily forgetting where you are. For a moment you almost think you are late for flight lessons with Poe before the grim reality of your captivity dawns on you once again. “You okay, Ani?” you mutter groggily. You try to sit up but your arms are twisted at a strange angle under the sheets and it takes you a moment to figure out how to free yourself without kicking Ani off the bed.

               “We can’t go until you’re dressed,” Ani tells you, and you rub at your eyebrow with the back of your hand as you try to figure out what he’s talking about.

               “Are we going somewhere?” you ask, and Ani hits you hard against your side, his tiny hands balled into fists.

               “It’s a surprise,” he practically shouts at you, and you wince at his volume. A quick peek out the balcony showed that it was still dark, and you were in no mood for these games.  

               “Did Kylo tell you what’s going on?” you ask as you sit up. You can feel the chill of the early morning through an open window, and for once you took the constant temperature of the base for granted. The cool morning air felt nice against your skin, or it would have, if you had someone warm and comfortable to snuggle up with to alleviate that feeling.

               “Get dressed,” Ani tells you before he scampers out of the room, closing the door behind him. You groan inwardly as your eyes dart around the room, but Kylo seemed to have left early that morning. What sort of surprise was he planning? Maybe the surprise was that he had a change of heart and was taking you back to the Resistance base. Somehow you doubted it, but hey, there was always hope that he could change. Although, truth be told, hoping that he would change, in any way, was probably a dangerous thing, and you silently chided yourself against that line of thinking.

               There was something else laid out on the couch, though, and you walked over and bent down to pick up a shirt that was of a slightly thicker material than the one you had on now, although it still seemed very thin. You slipped off your gossamer nightgown and slid this new material over your head instead, immediately liking the way the material felt against your skin. It was warmer than it looked, and had the same wide cut at your shoulders and long flowing sleeves as it draped down to the middle of your thighs. You slid on the plain black pair of pants that had been lying underneath it and went back to your rumpled pile of clothes on the floor to retrieve the belt that Rey had given you, making sure that your lightsaber was safely secured at your side.

               Exhausted, you plop your butt back down on the bed and slump over so that your head is back against the pillow, and you slowly kick your legs back onto the bed so that you can lie there in a more comfortable position. Truth be told, you hadn’t gotten much rest with Kylo crying out in his sleep, and you could use at least another five, maybe ten, maybe fifteen minutes of sleep, or better yet an hour, maybe two hours, or three…

               You don’t realize you’ve fallen back into a deep sleep until you hear the soft chuckle above you as someone scoops you up in their arms. They’re warm, incredibly warm, and you immediately bury your face into the warmth of this person’s neck, until you realize through no particular means that you were snuggling up against Kylo. You groaned loudly to indicate your displeasure, but Kylo merely kissed you on the forehead as he carried you out somewhere. You kept your eyes closed and although you could hear Ani babbling as he walked along beside you, you were much too tired to see where you were going.

               And you were much too tired to care when he strapped you into a seat of some kind. You figured you weren’t going into space by how loose the restraints seemed, and you were content to twist yourself into a sideways position while still being strapped in so that you could sleep with your head against one arm. And sleep you did. It could have been chalked up to the fact that you hardly got any sleep the night prior, or even with the stress of the revelations you had learned the day before, but you slipped into a sound, uninterrupted sleep, until you eventually woke up.

               When you next stirred, you were aware of two things. First, there was the sound of water rushing around you, like the babbling of water in Rey’s Green Room, only amplified to a thousand. Second, you were aware of warmth that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. The breeze was warm against your skin, the sun was shining against your exposed cheek, and your other cheek was pressed firmly into Kylo’s chest as you slept against him. Kylo himself seemed to be not in the least bit affected by your hatred of him, as he casually ran a hand through your hair. The gesture was soothing, and you allowed yourself to pretend that you were asleep so that you could enjoy it for at least a few more minutes.

               “Really?” Kylo asks, and his dry laugh makes your head bounce uncomfortably on his chest. You freeze before you let out a soft exhale, screwing up your face. You should have known that he was going to be super aware of your thoughts, especially when you were just waking up and your shield was at its weakest point. “It’s not a crime to enjoy the way I touch you, in fact, you didn’t seem to mind it so much before.”

               “Things are different now,” you say quietly, forcing yourself not to call Poe’s name to mind. In truth, you had to be over Kylo simply because _you_ were over him, not because you found a replacement.

               “You’re not over me,” Kylo says, and you keep your eyes shut as you rest against his chest, trying to split off the quiet part of you that wanted to enjoy this.

               “I’m trying to be,” you say as firmly as you possibly can. “Can’t you just accept that?”

               “Can’t you give me a month to change your mind?” Kylo asks as he brushes a few wayward strands out of your face, and you just sigh and sit up. You didn’t owe him that much. You didn’t owe him anything. You had waited around for years for him, and while a month didn’t seem like much time at all, you weren’t even sure if he deserved that much.  

               Your eyes peek open as they struggle to adjust to the blinding sunlight all around you, but once they do, you sit straight up as you look around, your eyes darting in every possible direction. _“Holy shit.”_ You are in the middle of a gigantic meadow, filled with lush vegetation on all sides, but no actual trees that you can see. Healthy, green grass is growing in all around you with small patches of colorful flowers dotting certain patches in the distance, while white fluffy clouds dot the pale blue sky overhead. The most amazing thing, though, are the waterfalls that stretch along either side of you, their deafening roar not as loud as you would expect as they pour out into a giant, languid lake that diverges into a series of streams and rivers and channels. The water is so clear, and blue, and it’s sparkling with the rays of sunlight from overhead, and it almost makes the entire scene look like something out of a whimsical fantasy.

               “Am I dead?” you ask as you whirl around to face Kylo, and he laughs, but it’s not just any laugh. He throws his head back, his dark hair mixing with the green beneath him, and he looks so carefree and boyish that you’re almost not quite sure that this was the notorious Kylo Ren. The only hint of his previous transgressions was that scar that stretched across his face, a raised, pink jagged line against his otherwise unblemished pale skin. “I’m not kidding, Kylo, what is this place?”

               “This is Naboo’s lake country,” Kylo says with a shrug of his shoulders. “My grandmother was born here. She was a Senator, and Queen, at least for a time.”

               “Queen?” you ask as you spin around to face him.

               “Queen first, Senator later,” he explains. “On this planet, the Queen is simply an elected official.”

               “Interesting,” you murmur under your breath as you look at the splendor all around you. Naboo was such a beautiful planet, and you’re so busy taking in your surroundings that you don’t even notice that Kylo has slipped his hand around yours. You spin around to face him as you suddenly notice the contact, but you can’t push the sly smile off of your lips. “So, what? You thought you would just take me to one of the most beautifully scenic places in all the galaxy and I would just fall into your arms and kiss you?”

               Kylo just rolls his shoulders good-naturedly as he looks away. “If you feel so inclined to.”

               You huff indignantly as you pull your hand away, crossing your arms over your chest. “This isn’t one of those silly romantic stories that Sadie loves to read,” you snap. “I’m not just going to forgive you so easily.”

               “Then what will it take?” Kylo asks, immediately jumping on your choice of words. His eyes gleam with the sudden prospect of a challenge, and you immediately regretted saying anything at all.

               “Did I say so easily?” you muse aloud. “I meant _at all_. One month, and then we’re going back to the Resistance, end of story.”

               “Give me a chance,” Kylo pleads, and there’s something in his voice that tugs at your heart strings. His eyes seem bigger now, especially in this light, and for the second time you can’t help but think how earnest and sincere he looks. You just sigh and shake your head, trying to figure out what to do.

               “Where’s Ani?” you ask at length.

               “Around,” Kylo says with a shrug of his shoulders, and you jump to your feet.

               “Around?” you exclaim. “We’re off on some foreign planet, _no one_ knows where we are and you just let him run off in the middle of this giant field?”

               Suddenly you hear a shriek of childish laughter, and you see Ani tumbling down one of the rivers, his wet skin gleaming in the sun. “Ani!” You scold loudly. “Ani you get over here this instant.” He looks in your direction and waves but pretends he doesn’t hear you as he tries to swim upstream against the current.

               “Let him play,” Kylo says as he lies on his back, and you spin around to face him angrily.

               “Let him play?” you demand. “He’s a child, he needs to be watched over.”

               “When is the last time he’s played?” Kylo asks, and you drop your hands to your sides.

               “He plays,” you tell him. “He wanted to start a band with Chewie and BB-8 back on base; he had a lot of fun doing that.”

               “A BB-unit?” Kylo asks as he opens one eye and arches an eyebrow. “An orange and white spherical droid?”

               “Yes, Poe’s droid,” you tell him simply.

               Kylo just sighs and shakes his head. “That droid gave me quite a bit of trouble.”

               “Oh yes, I’ve heard that story,” you say testily. You turn back to Ani, who seemed to be having a grand old time splashing around in the water.

               “When is the last time that he’s gotten to play _outside?_ ” Kylo asks, and you bite your bottom lip as you think it over. Ani sometimes played outside your house with sticks and things when he was younger, but he never really got to play in a large body of water like this. Neither had you, not really, not that you were really intent on doing so right now. Instead, you just let out a sigh as you drop back to the ground beside Kylo.

               “If he drowns I’m going to kill you,” you tell him, but Kylo just chuckles good-naturedly, and it rubs you the wrong way. Against your better judgement, you decide to push things a little further. “So is this why you wanted to take Ani here? To let him play around in nature and act like a little kid? Are you trying to give him the childhood I’m guessing you never had?”

               You don’t have to turn around to know that Kylo is glaring at you, but it doesn’t faze you in the slightest. Maybe if you irritated Kylo enough, he would give up on trying to get you to fall back in love with him once and for all. “That’s not going to work,” Kylo says idly, his tone even, and you turn around to glare at him in return.

               “Get out of my head,” you snap. “It’s rude, it’s creepy, and it’s an invasion of-“

               “I’m not trying,” Kylo says simply, as he shuts his eyes and settles back in the grass. “You’re broadcasting.”

               “I’m not,” you say indignantly, but deep down you know you are. You remembered back when you had first arrived at the Starkiller Base and Rey had seemed to pick up on your every thought. It wasn’t that you were _trying_ to be loud, but sometimes you just felt like you didn’t know how to really control it.

               “You could relax,” Kylo says, and you let out an exasperated moan as you lay back down against his chest. He ran his fingers through your hair and you closed your eyes as you relished the sensation, trying to focus on getting your mental shields back up once and for all. “You know, you don’t have to close yourself off from me.”

               “Yes I do,” you tell him. You’re about to give him a multitude of reasons why before you realize that he’s not even worth the effort.

               “If it’s because you’re worried that I’m going to see how much you still care for me-“

               “Actually, I was trying to spare your feelings,” you snap. “So you didn’t see how much I wished I could be here with Poe instead of you.” Kylo’s fingers freeze in your hair and you flinch for a moment, wondering if that was perhaps a bit too harsh. But no, it wasn’t. Kylo had taken you here against your will. Nothing that you did or said to him would be too harsh. Kylo puts his hand down on his chest and you’re a bit disappointed that the stroking stopped, but you tried to tell yourself that you shouldn’t be. No good would come of taking comfort in Kylo’s touch.

               In fact, to prove your point, you slid off of Kylo completely, brushing your hair onto your shoulder as you laid down in the grass next to him. You can feel Kylo’s emotions radiating off of him, although they feel tempered, and you’re not sure whether it’s due to the strength of your shield or if he is trying to spare you his feelings. Either way, you can’t help but feel as though that was too much of a low blow, and although there was at least a small bit of truth to it, you were still sorry you said it. Kylo was Ani’s father, and if the situation had been reversed, you would have wanted to at least have a little bit of time with your son. In retrospect, in the grand scheme of Ani’s life, one month with his father would probably seem like no time at all.

               “I’m sorry,” you say at length as you roll over to face him. “That was a low blow, and I’m sorry.”

               “No you’re not,” Kylo says, not looking at you, and you sigh as you roll back over onto your back, gripping the grass beneath your palms in both hands. You close your eyes as you feel the dry earth beneath your fingers, and you resist the urge to rip the grass out at the roots and watch them scatter in the breeze. Eventually though, you do pluck one long blade out of the ground. It’s about as long as your hand and you float it in front of your field of vision before you tear it in half suddenly with your mind, your chest filled with the sickening pressure of malcontent. You continue to rip the blade of grass up with your mind until it’s nothing but small bits of green particles that scatter away into the breeze.

               You let a heavy sigh out of your chest and tap the ground on either side of you with both hands, trying to distract yourself from your isolation here. You close your eyes again and try to picture yourself here with all of your friends. You could imagine Finn tearing off his shirt and throwing himself head long into the water, only to start whooping and hollering when he discovered how cold it was. You could imagine Rey using her Force powers to literally walk across the water to a center island where she could meditate, until Finn pulled her in with him, of course. Honestly, you could imagine Poe doing the same thing to you, carrying you in his arms towards the edge while you kicked and shouted while he dunked you unceremoniously into the water before jumping in himself. Honestly, Ladson probably would have helped him if he had trouble, with Poe holding your arms and Ladson and Ani each grabbing you by one leg to make sure you couldn’t get away as they submerged you under the cool water before they hopped in themselves. Ladson would probably dare you to stand under the waterfall with him, to see who could withstand the weight of the water pressure the longest, and of course you all would take turns doing it, with either you or Rey being the obvious winner, using the Force flow to deflect most of the water and spraying it in their faces instead.

               The thought makes you snicker to yourself as you lay on your back with your face turned up towards the blue sky, a clear grin visible on your face to the point where your cheeks almost hurt from smiling. Honestly, you’re imagining it in such great detail that it almost seems like a happy memory of a time long ago instead of a pleasant daydream that you wished would happen. You let your mind travel down that rabbit hole, imagining that if this galaxy was so big, then it only stood to reason that there were other universes out there, and maybe in one of those universes you had travelled to this spot with all of your friends and had a grand old time of it. It was only your unfortunate luck that, in this universe, in this here and now, that you didn’t get to have fun with them. Instead, you were here, almost by yourself, as Ani played by himself in the water and Kylo lay in the grass at your side. Maybe, though, if such universes existed, that there was another universe where you were happy with him, where you loved him unconditionally and you were actually glad to just lie here in this picturesque place at his side while your son played nearby. If that was the case, then, it was only your bad luck that this was the universe you were stuck in.

               “You seem happy,” Kylo observes as he turns on his side to face you, and you open your eyes as you roll over to face him in return. You are so close to each other your faces are almost touching, and suddenly the pull between you seemed almost magnetic, as if there was an invisible force sealing the distance between your lips. You didn’t feel yourself getting any closer to him, and yet suddenly you felt your leg brush against his and you realized that you _were_ closer to him, as if you were two entities that were being pulled together by some force of attraction. You want to fight it, you really do, but at this point you’re sobered by your earlier thoughts, and you gently slide your fingertips over one of his cheeks as you press your lips together in a simple, gentle kiss. Maybe there was a universe where you were here with Poe and all of your friends. Maybe there was a universe where you were here by choice with Kylo Ren. That didn’t matter. This was the universe you were stuck in, and so you had to make the most of it.

               Or did you? This was no time to be romantic. You quickly pull away from him, lying down onto your back as you rake in a deep gasp of air. Kylo just lies on his side, his head propped up on one arm, watching you intently. “I shouldn’t have done that,” you confess as you shake your head from side to side. “I don’t know why I did that, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. It’s-“ You screw your eyes shut. “That was the Force bond, for a minute I just, you just felt too familiar. Sorry, it won’t happen again.”

               But you can taste him on your lips and you keep your eyes screwed up tight so you don’t have to look at him, afraid of how you’ll react to his expression. You can still _feel_ him against your lips, the warmth and pressure of his lips against yours, and suddenly you want to kiss him again so badly you would do almost anything to feel that sensation again. “Just for today,” Kylo says quietly, his breath hot and intoxicating against the side of your face. “Just let yourself go, just for today.” He leans in a little closer, his bottom lip brushing against your earlobe. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

               You know what he’s trying to do, but in all fairness, he did have a point. You were going to have to let yourself go eventually. You were still unfortunately attracted to him, and if you kept denying it, eventually he was going to achieve forbidden fruit status and you were actually going to start craving him. You could give into temptation for just one day, out here under the clear open sky, when no one was around to see you or judge you for it. You would judge yourself later, probably very harshly, but that seemed like a problem for the future as you rolled over onto him, straddling him with a leg on either side of him as you flipped your hair out of your face and bent down to kiss him. Kylo moans into your open mouth as he fists both hands in your hair, letting his fingertips trail down your neck and your back, and you groan against him as you fist one hand in his hair, the other cupping the side of his face.

               Kylo flips you around suddenly so that he’s on top, and you buck your hips up into his involuntarily as you wrap your legs around his waist and wrap your arms around his neck, pulling his warm body on top of yours. Kylo dips his head down to kiss your neck, and your eyelids flutter with the familiar sensation as he plants a string of kisses along your tender skin, jutting his tongue into the hollow where your neck met your jaw. You groaned as you dug the back of your head into the earth, taking in the sensation of Kylo kissing you while the warm sun shone down on you from overhead. The gentle breeze kept tussling his long hair over your fingers and you let yourself embrace this, as he said, only for today, knowing that you were probably never going to get to experience anything like this again.

               He skims his lips against your cheek and you can tell he’s smiling as he kisses you again before he pulls away so that only the tips of your noses are touching as he runs a finger down your cheek. You bite your lip as you look up at him, not quite sure what sort of emotions were clear on your face right now. He bends down to kiss you softly, gingerly, before he pulls away again, and it suddenly dawns on you that he’s acting almost a bit shy.

               “What is it?” you ask quietly as you run a hand through his hair.

               “I don’t want you to pull away,” Kylo confesses, and it truly sounds like a confession, as he screws his eyes up tight as he says it.

               You sigh as you roll your eyes and physically roll out from under him. He lets you go, and you can sense his disappointment as you turn back to face him. “Just for today,” you relent as you roll over to kiss him again, and you do, deeply, holding his face in both hands. He wraps his arms around you as he holds you tightly to him, and you have to admit that this wasn’t so bad. You weren’t sure if you were pretending to like him again or just letting old emotions bubble up to the surface, but either way, you liked the physical contact, the intimacy, the way he held you so tightly, as if he was afraid you would slip through his fingers at any moment. To be honest, you liked how you mattered to him, as if you were the only person besides Ani that he cared about in the entire galaxy. That last part was probably true, you noted a bit sadly, but he had only himself to blame for that. His life was the byproduct of his mistakes, and your life wouldn’t be any better if you decided to become bent on fixing them.

               Even still, you can’t help but kiss him with more passion as the minutes tick by, grinding yourself more fervently against him as your touches begin to move with purpose across his warm skin. Your kisses become more greedy and passionate, and you slowly start to unwind around him, slipping into that familiar thirst for sensation, when something small and wet lunges at you from the side, and you are thrown to the ground beside him painfully as Ani lays across your stomach. “Ani!” you shout, half annoyed, half angry, although you’re not sure whether you’re angrier at him or yourself. Kylo, however, is smiling as he plucks Ani off of you and hoists him onto his lap.

               “And why did you do that?” Kylo asks him as Ani climbs off his lap and throws himself down in the grass.

               “I wanted to play too,” Ani says as he rolls over onto his stomach. “I have no one to play with me.”

               The corner of Kylo’s lips twist into a sad smile, and you decide to be the bigger person and save your gloating for another time. Kylo wanted to spend some time with his son, and you were going to be the mature one and not fault him for that. “Why don’t we all play together then?” you ask Ani as you scooch closer to Kylo. He looks at you, his eyes wide with surprise, but slips an arm around you nonetheless as you rest your head against his shoulder. “What do you want to play?”

               “Hmm.” Ani rolls onto his back, and then onto his stomach again, and while he’s making up his mind, Kylo takes an opportunity to turn to the side and bury his nose in your hair. “Thank you,” he exhales so quietly you can barely be sure you heard him, and your hand tightens on the leg of his pants in response.

               “Will you go swimming with me?” Ani asks, and you bite your lip as you search his pleading face.

               “I can’t swim,” you confess. “But I’ll sit at the edge with you while you swim, if you want.” Ani’s face drops, and he looks pleadingly at Kylo.

               “Will you swim with me?” he asks him.

               “We’ll both swim with you,” Kylo tells him, and you scoot away from him slightly as you spin around to face him.

               “Did you not just hear me?” you ask him incredulously. “ _We_ won’t do anything. I-“ Kylo stands up so suddenly you almost fall over, and he picks you up, holding you tightly in his arms. “Kylo Ren,” you shriek loudly. “You will put me down _this instant._ ”

               “Okay,” Kylo says as he leads you to the water’s edge, and you can hear Ani bursting with laughter as Kylo unceremoniously drops you into the cool water. One moment you’re suspended in the air, staring up at the bright blue sky overhead, and the next you feel your body crash against the water’s surface as you feel yourself being dragged down by the weight of your clothes. You kick your legs frantically as your hair clouds in front of your vision, and you thrust your legs in one simultaneous motion in the direction you think is up as you feel a hand grab onto your arm and pull you up towards the surface.

               You rake in a deep gasping breath as Kylo’s laughter fills your ears, and you scowl as you throw your wet hair out of your face with both hands, wiping at your eyes frantically as you try to clear them. “You _ass_ ,” you yell as you place both hands on his chest and shove him backwards with all the force you can muster, and Kylo loses his footing as he falls back into the shallow water. He disappears for only a second but he soon remerges, brushing his wet hair back out of his face with one large hand. He’s since removed his shirt, and the wet hair combined with the water droplets glistening off his muscles is making you blush, and he catches you looking.

               “I’m not,” you tell him, quite stupidly, as he didn’t say anything, but he narrows his eyes as he comes toward you with sudden purpose, and suddenly you find yourself unable to resist him. He pulls you down onto his lap in the shallow water, and you wrap your legs around his waist as you kiss him, your hands fisting in his wet hair as you run your thumbs down his cheeks. You let your hands trail his body, your fingertips running down his neck before they skimmed over the large muscles in his upper arms, and you couldn’t help but release a breathy moan into his open mouth as his large hands slipped under your shirt, pulling you closer to him.

               Suddenly you felt a few short bursts of water hit the area to the side of your face, and you spluttered as you rolled off of Kylo, using one hand to shield yourself. “Ani, stop that.”

               “You want some attention too, kiddo?” Kylo grabs him and dunks him under the shallows, and you cross your arms over your chest.

               “Well at least you won’t have to question why I’ll never forgive you if you drown our son,” you snap testily, and Kylo just shakes his head dismissively as he lets Ani back up.

               “Again,” Ani pants as his tiny hands wipe the water out of his face. “Again, do it again. I want to see how long I can hold my breath.”

               You let out an exasperated sigh as Kylo dunks him again, and you shake your head as Kylo eventually lets him back up, picking Ani up and putting him around his shoulders. You relax back into the water, floating on your back, as Ani rubs at his face to find his new place on top of Kylo’s shoulders.

               “Wow,” Ani says, and he taps the top of Kylo’s shoulders with his small hands. “You’re really tall. Stand up.” Kylo obediently stands up, and your eyes can’t help but travel downwards to where you can see the hem of his pants sliding steadily downwards. A blush rises to your cheeks, and you quickly glance back upwards, but Kylo’s smirk tells you that he caught you looking. Again.

               “Wow,” Ani says again as he looks down at you. He waves and you grin as you wave back, the water flicking back into your face as you wiggle your fingers. “Mommy, look how high up I am.”

               “I can see that,” you reply, and for a moment you’re overwhelmed by how normal and happy this is. Out of all the futures you envisioned with Kylo when you were with him back on the Starkiller Base, you never imagined _this_. In fact, if someone told you that this particular day was ever in the stack of cards that compromised your future, you probably would have told them that they were playing with a faulty deck.

               “Can I jump?” Ani asks, and you can see Kylo grimace but say nothing as Ani grabs a fistful of his hair, struggling to stand up on his slippery shoulders. Eventually he just kicks off Kylo’s back, flopping into the water, and Kylo crinkles up his nose as he smooths down his hair.

               “Oh, poor you,” you say flatly as Kylo turns to glare at you. “Your hair is fine, don’t be such a baby about it.”

               “I’m going to dunk you next,” Kylo warns, and you screw up your face.

               “I’d like to see you try,” you tell him, and Kylo dives at you, suddenly, and you go splashing down into the water as Kylo jumps on top of you, and for a moment you’re overcome with the sensation of being half submerged in water as Kylo presses his lips to yours, as you kiss him and struggle to stay afloat at the same time. By the nature of your actions, you’re inadvertently pressing your body into his as well, and you can quickly feel your body tensing with need. Luckily you can’t do anything with Ani here, and you’re fortunate that that holds you back from taking him right here and now. Instead, you subtly use your position in the water to float around to other side of him, wrapping your legs around his waist as you drape your arms over his shoulders, crossing them in the middle of his large chest. You readjust your seated position as you reach forward and tug on his earlobe with your teeth, and Kylo lets you hang on as he floats back over towards Ani, who was lying on his back in the water.

               “Can we come here every day?” Ani asks, and you hug Kylo just a little bit tighter as he places his hands under your thighs to adjust your position.

               “That depends on your mom,” Kylo tells him, and you bite your lip in an attempt to conceal your frustration.

               “Maybe not _every_ day,” you tell him. “But we’ll come back here before we head back to the base, how about that?”

               “But I don’t want to go back,” Ani says as he fusses about in the water. “I like it here. They should just come and live here with us.” He stops flailing as he stops to look up at you. “I’ll even share my room with Ladson again if he promises to stop snoring so loud.” You laugh and shake your head, forgetting how terribly Ladson used to snore.

               “You and your mom are welcome to stay as long as you want,” Kylo says, and your heart sinks. You can feel the warmth of his neck and shoulders, but suddenly you can’t help but feel very cold surrounded by the cool water, as if it was leeching the warmth right out of your body. Kylo seems to sense your emotional twist as he quickly adds, “And you can come back and visit any time. You can even bring your friends too.”

               “Even Poe?” Ani asks, looking at you, and it’s at that point when you realized that although he was still a child, he was still able to pick up on things. You had gotten into the terrible habit of seeing him as a child who couldn’t understand things like love and romance and affection, but apparently he was growing up and anticipating things faster than you had expected. While you had expected him to be unfazed by your intimacy with Kylo today, you couldn’t help but think that a part of him was really internalizing it, and you had to stop, not just for your future with Poe, but for Ani’s sake as well. You couldn’t let him think that there was a sort of future where his parents would reconnect and the three of you would live happily ever after.

               “Yes, even Poe,” Kylo says, and it’s the first time you think you’ve ever heard Kylo say his name. He was trying, you could _feel_ it through the Force, that he was really making a conscious effort and that hurt you most of all. You were hurting Ani, and you were hurting him. Okay, he had said just for today, but what if today became tonight and tonight became tomorrow morning? Where would it end? You were giving him false hope, and as much as you still felt attracted to him, you had to stop. You had to remember who you were dealing with. Kylo was not just anyone. If you offered him a day, he would take a week, and it wouldn’t be long until he found a way of guilting you into more than you were comfortable with. No, you had to stop things now.

               “You two keep playing,” you say as you unwrap from legs from around Kylo’s waist. “I’m getting cold, but you two keep playing.”

               “But Mom-“ Ani whines, but Kylo shakes his head.

               “Let her go,” he says sternly, and Ani immediately backs down. Even still, Kylo catches your hand as you turn to get out and you whirl around in surprise, your heart catching in your throat as he locks his eyes on yours and raises the backs of your fingertips to his lips, never breaking eye contact. You quickly glance away and turn to get out, letting your body just collapse on the grass as you roll over onto your back and stare up at the sky. What did you want? Right now you wanted Kylo’s warm body on yours. You wanted to feel his lips on your neck, his fingertips bracing against your sides as he pushed into you, and for a moment you let yourself get lost in that daydream before you realized that Kylo could probably sense it. No, you couldn’t even allow yourself to fantasize around him.

               _I’m so sorry_ , you think as you close your eyes, but you’re not even sure who you’re apologizing to at this point. Were you apologizing to Poe for giving into temptation and allowing yourself to get lost in Kylo Ren again, at least for a short while? Were you apologizing to Kylo Ren, for giving him a small nugget of hope that you would rekindle your relationship when you weren’t sure that you ever really could forgive him? Were you apologizing to Ani, for giving him false hope that his parents would eventually reconcile and raise him as a family? Or were you apologizing to yourself? For one split second, you knew what you really wanted. You wanted this. You wanted to be a family with Kylo Ren and Ani, and for a moment you didn’t care how difficult it was or how many hardships you would face together, you would stay on the run with him and you would run and run as long as he was by your side. For a split second you wanted that, you wanted that with every fiber of your being, but you just couldn’t allow yourself to succumb to that fantasy.

               And for that you were sorry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know I'm the one writing this story and everything, but the ending to this chapter made even me want to punch myself in the face from all the feels. Ouch. Ouch all around. ='( 
> 
> On a much happier note, tomorrow is my mom's birthday!! Hooray!! I am not going to say how old she is (she says once you pass 65 you should stop counting) but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it, considering she has been watching Star Wars religiously since before I was born (she saw the premiere of Star Wars over 40 times in the first week, no joke, she still has all the tickets) and is the BIGGEST fan of Harrison Ford, like she has seen all of his movies multiple times and she watches a different one every night, she has huge framed Harrison posters hanging in every wall in every room...so yeah, if you ever think that I'm a big fan of Star Wars, I'm pretty sure it's cause I inherited some pretty strong fangirling genes. xD 
> 
> BUT I actually had a pretty cool idea that I wanted to ask for YOUR help with. She recently moved to a new town and she doesn't know anyone there (I can't travel up to visit her tomorrow since I have stuff going on down here, but I'll see her in two weeks anyway when I move back up north) and I hate the thought of her spending her birthday alone (she legit told me she has Harrison to keep her company and I stg I CANNOT) so all I'm asking if that you leave her a sweet birthday message below in the comments along with your favorite Harrison Ford movie or quote or memory or cool story about him or whatever, anything is fine, and I'm going to be making little cards to send to her from everyone (since she has no idea how to use the Internet, seriously, she still uses AOL and can't for the life of her figure out how to use Netflix even though I've showed her over a dozen times -.-'') BUT YEAH, I think that would really make her day to get a bunch of birthday cards from people all over the world who also love Star Wars/Harrison Ford too, so, if you want to wish her a happy birthday, I'd really appreciate it (and I know she would too!!) ^_^ 
> 
> PS: If you missed my smutty Kylo Ren one-shot yesterday, you can still read it [here](http://streetsolo.tumblr.com/post/142466975527/prompt-loved-reading-all-your-docs-on-ao3-if-you) on Tumblr or [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6468130/chapters/14866576) on ao3. Until Tuesday, cheers!! <3


	3. Chapter 3

               You fell asleep under the warm Naboo sky, but at least this time Kylo woke you up when it was time to head back instead of just carrying you into the shuttle. You weren’t sure if you should have been glad about that or not, but you were surprisingly tired, and you fell asleep on the ride home too, with Ani waking you up just as you got back so that you could walk into the house yourself. You were starting to wonder if your bouts of fatigue were simply due to the stress of being here, allowing your mind to simply check out for a brief duration so you wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that this would be your reality for the next thirty days or so. Kylo disappeared elsewhere as you gave Ani a bath and tucked him into bed, and you were happy at least that he seemed happy, albeit a little tired from the day’s excursions. He was happy though, hell, he was radiant and beaming, and although you tried to smile for his sake, you could tell he could detect your sober demeanor. There wasn’t much you could do about it, though, so you just told him the truth: you were as tired as he was, and you were looking forward to getting to sleep, even though you had slept away almost the entire day.

               Even still, you decided to take a quick shower before you headed to bed yourself, hoping the warm water would help cleanse you of whatever had stirred up inside of you while you were kissing Kylo Ren. For a brief moment, you wanted him to physically take you right there in that field, and you knew he could have, easily, and you wouldn’t have done a damn thing to try to stop him. The only problem was, of course, where would things go after that? He wouldn’t just want to stop at one time, and if you had managed to lose yourself in him and give up everything at the Resistance after only a week with him, you knew after a month you would be putty in his hands, and he would have been able to talk you into doing anything, anything he wanted. You could not let him have that level of control over you, not again, not ever. Not when you had Ani to think about. He may have wanted to spend time with his father, but you had to be the adult and decide what was best for him. There was no future with Kylo Ren that could lead to him having a healthy, productive life.

               Idly, you think back to what the spirits had said to Ani, that you would eventually slip over to the dark side. You didn’t see how that was possible, especially now that Snoke was gone, but you wondered if maybe they meant the physical temptation of Kylo Ren. Kylo sure made a good show of embracing the light, but what if that was just a ploy, a cheap gimmick, in order to lure you into a helpless, defenseless state? He had tried to manipulate you through your visions before, and while that had been under Snoke’s direction, and while you thought this time he was being honest with you, you had to keep firm to the possibility that while it was easy to discount Kylo’s motives as just being selfish and self-serving, it was also possible that he was simply disguising much darker, ulterior motives. You couldn’t imagine what those would be, aside from training Ani, but you couldn’t but try to figure out why he kept you around if that was the case. Maybe training Ani was his ultimate goal and fucking you would just be a happy consolation?

               You shook your head and rubbed your temples as you got out of the shower. You were too tired, and your brain felt like it was in a fog. You would have to think on this more later, much later, when you actually got a good night’s sleep and felt more like yourself again. Right now your thoughts were clouded and there was no way you were going to make a good decision when your thoughts were running away to the darkest corners of your mind, trying to pick apart every single thing Kylo ever said or did to squeeze it into a nice little column of virtues and misdeeds; mostly because, unfortunately, mostly everything he ever said or did could fall under both columns. Saving Sadie? A good deed, because he saved her life, but he had done it solely to please you, which was selfish and self-serving. So was it a good thing or a bad thing? Or was it neither? Trying to ascribe morality to anything Kylo Ren said or did was like trying to assign a personality to an inanimate object; it simply couldn’t be done, and even if you tried, you would have no way of knowing if you were right or wrong, so it was best to just not dwell on it at all.

               But as you emerged from the bathroom, Kylo Ren was sitting at the foot of your bed, and you knew he was waiting for you. You simply rubbed your forehead to show how tired you were as you moved past him, lying down on the bed as you snuggled into the blankets, but Kylo didn’t move. “We should talk,” Kylo says quietly, and as he holds up one hand, the door to the bedroom swings shut.

               “I’m really tired,” you say, and Kylo shoots you a shy smile.

               “Today’s not over yet, though,” he offers, and as you feel your heart slump in your chest, you make no effort to disguise your disappointment. “It’s not just that,” he says hastily, as he picks up on your wave of melancholy through the Force bond. He turns to face you, sitting cross-legged at the end of the bed, but making no effort to touch you. “Ani wants us to get back together again.”

               “Ani is a child,” you tell him simply. “It only makes sense he wants to see his parents back together, even if they’re terrible to each other. That’s just kid logic.”

               “We’re not terrible to each other,” Kylo says, although his voice is louder, like he doesn’t know where this is coming from. “I will admit that I have not always been the best to you, but you have always been loyal to me, you have always been there for me-“

               “Except when I haven’t been,” you say with a shrug, as if you really couldn’t care less.

               “Only because you put yourself and Ani first,” he says as he leans towards you, his voice getting softer again. “And I won’t hold that against you.” You just sigh and shake your head, and you must have misjudged how close Kylo was to you, as he suddenly takes your face in both hands, forcing you to look at him. “I want to be there for you,” he says softly, his lips getting closer to yours. “Please, let me be there for you, at least just for now, just for one month.”

               You just shake your head. “I don’t know what you want.”

               “Yes you do,” Kylo insists. “You want the same thing I want. I want to try to be a family. I want you to tell me about how you pass your days again. I want to hear you laugh, I want to hear you complain, I want you to-“ he shakes his head. “I want you to make fun of me, to tease me, to try to goad me on and try to anger me, just because you can, just because you know I won’t hold it against you.”

               You can’t remember a time when you had ever really been mean to him on purpose, and honestly, in your state of mind, you couldn’t even remember a time when you had teased him. Was there a time when you had trusted him implicitly and let your guard down around him completely? You supposed there was, but that felt like it had happened in a different timeline, to two totally different people. “That doesn’t make me sound like a very nice person to be with.”

               “But you are,” Kylo insists. “And I think you know by now that you’re the only person I could ever be with.” You just sigh as you close your eyes. He had a point, and it wasn’t just because of the scar on his face. He was Kylo freaking Ren, not only a fugitive, but one of the most feared men in the galaxy. You were sure that if he wanted physical attention he could take it, but to actually have a healthy relationship with another human being? If you weren’t even sure it was possible with _you,_ you who had known him and loved him before knowing all the terrible crimes he had committed, before he had destroyed an entire system of planets, then there was no way he would be able to be with anyone else.

               Suddenly it made sense why he was so desperate to be a family with you and Ani. His connection to his mother was limited by the Republic, he killed his father, his uncle despised him, and you and Ani were really the only family he had left. He had to make you fall back in love with him again, because if he couldn’t he would be alone the rest of his life, and you could tell that if there was something Kylo wanted more than anything else was to not be alone right now. Heck, that was probably why he had even slept on the couch in your room last night. He knew you weren’t comfortable sharing a bed, but he wanted to stay in the same room, stay close, at least hold onto the thought of being with you for at least a little while longer.

               His lips seal the distance and you’re kissing him back with one hand gently resting in his hair before you even realize it. It seemed so natural to kiss him, as if your physical connection to his lips was just another extension of yourself, and when you were kissing him you felt a small part of you simply give in. He wanted to be a family with you, you wanted to be a family with him, you already had a son who wanted you to get back together, so why did you have to make things complicated and fight it? You could have him right now, and you could be happy, if you stopped overthinking things and just let yourself _live_. Unfortunately, the only problem with that was that you _were_ you, and Kylo wouldn’t have loved you if you were anything but yourself. He had loved you because you had always tried to do the best you could for yourself and your friends, even considering the circumstances, and now was no different. You could roll over and be the docile, submissive wife, but eventually he would get bored of you in that role, and you’d have to watch your entire fantasy shatter around you as it came crashing down, as would Kylo. The only thing worse than denying yourself this night, or any future nights with Kylo, was the disappointment of trying and watching it all come crumbling down.

               You put both of your hands on his shoulders as you push him away and force yourself to meet his eyes. “I know what you want and I want it too,” you admit. “But please hear me when I tell you that I can’t be with you, Kylo, not for a day, not for a month. I need to go back to D’Qar and I’m going to take Ani with me; I’m sorry.”

               “Just let me-“ Kylo offers, but you just shake your head.

               “Nothing you say or do is going to make me change how I feel about this,” you tell him quietly. “I already led you on too much today, and I’m sorry for-“ You flinch instinctively as Kylo punches the bed next to where you’re sitting, and you can feel a bubble of pure, unadulterated emotion rise up in his chest as he turns and storms out of the room. You had been right before. He didn’t understand. He thought that the kisses and touches and your enthusiasm for him earlier had meant something, and they did, they had, but they weren’t enough to let your defenses simply slip and let him in completely, and he didn’t understand that. He thought he was gaining some sort of ground, but instead found himself right back where he started.

               You close your eyes as you roll over into your pillow. Poe never would have done that to you, or to anyone. He wouldn’t ever lead you on only to reject you again, he was far too good for that. Maybe it wasn’t anything Kylo even had to do in order to sway you over to the dark side; maybe just being around him was enough to corrupt you and tempt you into the worst version of yourself. You were an even mixture of both darkness and light, and maybe the tip of the balance was dependent on the company you kept. Poe and Rey and Finn were good enough to keep you pulled toward the light, whereas Kylo was dark, and staying with him would only tempt you further. You had to be strong enough to have a better grasp on yourself, but if you really, honestly couldn’t control it, then the best thing you could do would just to stay away from him for a month and hope that by the time you got back to the Resistance base that you hadn’t changed into someone Poe wouldn’t like anymore.

               Or someone that he wouldn’t even recognize.

               But as you fell asleep that night, you were awakened again by whimpering coming from the corner of the room, and you didn’t even have to look up to know that Kylo was back on the couch on the far side of the room. He was clearly distressed about something; you could feel his terror and his sense of panic from within his dream, but you closed your eyes and tried to picture yourself meditating back in Rey’s Green Room, tried to imagine the babbling of the water as it coursed between the stones under your feet. When you opened your eyes again, Kylo’s breathing had evened out, and you no longer felt the effects of his nightmare, either because you had closed yourself off to it, or because your focus had fed him through the Force bond and helped console him as well.

               You hoped it was the first, but knew it was the latter. It shouldn’t have even really mattered that much to you, as long as you could get back to sleep you should have hardly cared, but you knew that subconsciously, Kylo was aware of the effect you had to stabilize his emotions, and even if you didn’t kiss him or touch him or even talk to him, the Force bond would still be there, and he would still be dependent on you to help him control whatever outburst of depression or rage or negativity that he was experiencing. You didn’t want to make that your problem, and yet, you were bound to him with seemingly no way to break the connection aside from his death or Luke’s powers. Briefly, you considered asking Luke to siphon your powers when you got back to base instead, in order to break the connection once and for all, but there was no way you could do that, you just couldn’t. You had trained long and hard to be able to get to control the Force as much as you had now, and it was a part of you that you couldn’t shut off just to be free of Kylo Ren. You were in control of the Force flowing within you, and you had only ever used your Force powers responsibly; you had never maimed or killed anyone with it. There was no reason why you should have to be punished and lose your powers just because of Kylo Ren. No, after you left with Ani, Kylo Ren would probably flee with Phasma to a far corner of the galaxy, where the distance made the Force bond almost undetectable again, imperceptible enough for you to be able to control it, just like you had before. Besides, just being on base had been enough to shelter yourself from him, although you couldn’t tell if that was because of the Force lock or not. Either way, as soon as Kylo Ren was gone physically from your life, you doubted you would be influenced by him any more than you wanted to be. And you didn’t want to be. You didn’t even want to be near him anymore.

               Until you woke up that morning to find that Kylo Ren wasn’t asleep on the couch. You immediately headed straight for Ani’s room, and, after finding it empty, headed straight downstairs to find Phasma sitting on the kitchen stool, sipping something out of a mug. “Where’s Ani?” you ask, unable to conceal the concern in your voice.

               Phasma looks over at you and raises an eyebrow. It suddenly occurs to you that she’s in her pajamas, long pants and a simple shirt, and you don’t think you’ve ever seen her dressed so informally in your life. “Good morning to you too.”

               “Good morning,” you say, rushing through the pleasantries. “Now, do you know where they are?”

               “Ren woke him up early this morning,” Phasma tells you before taking another leisurely sip of her drink, keeping you hovering in anxious suspense. “I believe he took him to commence his Force training.”

               “Force training?” you repeat incredulously. Okay, sure, you didn’t want to be around Kylo, but if he was giving Ani Force training, you wanted to be there for _that_. You didn’t know what Kylo would teach him, but you doubted it was anything good. Rey and Leia seemed to have a knack for figuring out how much darkness and light you had inside of you, but that was apparently a skill that you seemed unable to have a firm grasp of, although maybe it was just because of your bias. It was easy to see where Rey stood, but Ani was your _son_. If he was full of the same darkness that consumed his father, would you admit to it, or would you deny it? “Do you know where they went?”

               “Not a clue,” Phasma replies as she gestures for you to come sit down beside her. “He said they were likely to be gone all day, so you have quite a wait.”

               “Fantastic,” you mutter as you sit down on the other side of her, leaving an empty stool between you. You prop your chin up on both hands, and Phasma sighs as she gets up to give you a cup of something hot. “You really don’t have to,” you murmur, but thank her as she hands a mug to you regardless.

               “You look like you could use some cheering up,” Phasma replies simply.

               “So do you,” you reply, and Phasma simply raises an eyebrow as she looks at you. “Sorry, I just mean, I don’t know, you look tired, although I can’t really say that I’ve been much better.”

               “Haven’t been able to sleep well,” Phasma admits reluctantly after a short pause. “What about you? Does Ren snore?”

               “Worse,” you confess. “He has nightmares-“ You pause and shake your head. Kylo would probably not be happy to hear you confessing this to her. “He sleeps on the couch on the far side of the room; he probably keeps me up on purpose.”

               “Does he now?” Phasma muses. “Explains why he was so irritable this morning.”

               “He was really irritable around Ani?” you ask, glancing over at her. Not that you were really surprised, but you had hoped that he would at least be able to control himself around your son.

               “I’ve known that man for years,” Phasma says with a shrug. “He can fool a child, but he can’t fool me.” You mull this over as she looks over at you. “So how did yesterday go then?”

               “It was all right,” you say indifferently. “I mean, Naboo is very pretty, but I don’t know why he expected to woo me with a lake and a few waterfalls.” Phasma laughs openly at this, and you smile good-naturedly.

               “He brought you there at my suggestion,” Phasma informs you, and your eyes widen. “I’m sorry, I thought that you would like it there.”

               “I did,” you say quickly, although you’re thoroughly perplexed. “Although I thought that Kylo brought me there because it reminded him of his grandmother. She was once the Queen and Senator of Naboo.”

               “She was,” Phasma tells you. “But other people live on this planet too.” She takes another sip of her drink, and it takes a few seconds before you put the pieces together.

               “You?” you ask incredulously. “You lived here on Naboo?”

               “Born here,” Phasma says as she glances around the kitchen. “I was born in this very house.” Your jaw literally drops open, and Phasma chuckles at your expression. “Oh come now, where did you think I was from?”

               You just blink and shake your head, as you had never really thought about it before. It had never really mattered much to you where people were from; the planet someone was born on really did not seem to make much of a difference to you, aside from the skills that they happened to pick up on said planets. You had learned many languages growing up on your home planet, Ladson had learned about droids, and Rey had learned a lot about scavenging and mechanical parts back on Jakku.

               “I thought my armor gave it away,” Phasma admits. “It’s coated in chromium that I salvaged from a Naboo yacht that once belonged to Emperor Palpatine.” Your jaw drops in shock, and you remembered Poe had also told you that the Emperor was from Naboo. “In Naboo culture, a ship plated with chromium signified royal authority,” Phasma explains. “But it’s not just for looks, its finish can also help reflect radiation, and you never know when that’s going to come in handy.”

               “Interesting,” you mutter, because it was. It wasn’t something you had ever pieced together before, although now that she said it, you felt like it should have been obvious to you.

               “I can see why you wouldn’t know of it,” Phasma continues. “Over the years, Naboo had only a few exports, like blossom wine and fine art and architectural influence, nothing that anyone would take real notice of, until, well, you know.”

               “Tell me,” you say, because you’re not sure that you do know.

               “Well,” Phasma says, tilting her head to the side as she talks. “That was, of course, in the past. Now Naboo’s main export is the plasma that flows beneath the surface of this planet. The plasma trade on Naboo began during the reign of King Veruna, and was cornered by the Trade Federation that eventually lead to the Blockade of Naboo.”

               “I don’t know much about history,” you admit. “Or politics. I was always interested in other cultures, but mostly from a social perspective, not from an economic or political one.”

               “Strange,” Phasma muses. “As politics and economics are the two chief factors that drive a culture.”

               “True, but they don’t necessarily tend to have an overall bearing on the language of said culture,” you say with a shrug. “Which was what I was most interested in.”

               “Fair,” Phasma admits. “Well, where do I begin?” she sighs to herself. “Well, Emperor Palpatine had drafted standing orders that, in the event of his death, a few planets were to be selected for systematic destruction, Naboo being one of them, orders that later came to be known as Operation Cinder. When Palpatine was killed in the destruction of the second Death Star over Endor, Imperial High Command executed Operation Cinder to show that the destruction of the Dearth Star and the loss of the Emperor were of little significance when they could still send in a Star Destroyer Battle Group and systematically destroy the planet by surface assaults, sustained orbital bombardment, and terrifying planet-wide hurricanes.”

               “He really wanted to try to destroy his own home planet?” you ask, your eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

               “He tried,” Phasma says with a shrug. “The Alliance managed to intervene before the Empire could accomplish much, taking advantage of the planet’s extensive fleet of N-1 starfighters to eliminate its screening cruisers and temporarily cripple the Star Destroyer to give them time to drive the Imperial ground forces off Naboo.”

               You just shake your head. “Well, the area we went to was really pretty,” you tell her. “I mean, it didn’t look like it had been ravaged by war or anything.”

               “Some parts were more affected than others,” Phasma explains. “We are located on the outskirts of what is considered to be a somewhat populated area, which was mostly unaffected by the Empire’s limited orbital bombardment. The Empire mostly targeted the Gungan-controlled regions of the planet, since they posed the bigger threat to troops on the ground. The Empire didn’t really account for the mothballed starfighters.”

               “Oh,” you say quietly. You were silent for a few moments, thinking it over. “So how did you come to enlist with the First Order? If the Empire was destroying your planet, wouldn’t the people of Naboo technically see the Imperial forces as the bad guys?”

               “Some would,” Phasma says as she tilts her head to the side. “Remember, the Empire attacked mostly the Gungan-controlled areas of the planet, leaving most people’s homes untouched. The Empire returned several times to try and finish the job, and the Alliance fought them off every time, but caused a lot of destruction themselves. They intentionally situated themselves in more populated areas, inviting a great deal of collateral damage that affected people’s homes and businesses, interfering in our matters in the name of taking down the Empire. In a way, the Alliance caused more destruction to our way of life here on Naboo than the Empire ever did.”

               “And that’s why you joined up with the Empire?” you ask her. “Or, I mean, the First Order?”

               “Due to the plasma stores on this planet, everyone knows how to use a blaster,” Phasma says coolly. “I was exceptionally skilled with one, trained often, and I knew with my size and stature that I was best suited for a life in the military. I wanted to go where I could do the most good.”

               “And considering the Alliance did the most damage to your home planet, it wasn’t with them,” you say slowly, and Phasma nods her head. You want to ask more, ask about Phasma’s family, about what happened to her parents or if she had any brothers or sisters, but you decide it might be rude to ask her that directly. “So you grew up here then?”

               “Until I enlisted with the First Order,” Phasma says. “And then I left and never looked back. Until now, of course.”

               You can’t help but frown at this. “Not too long ago, when Poe was teaching me how to fly, Resistance scanners picked up some sort of First Order scout ship jumping into hyperspace from Naboo’s territory.”

               “Oh?” Phasma asks, and she raises her eyebrows as she looks at you. “Interesting. Because of the planet’s plasma stores, we come here often to get more materials to make our own blasters.”

               “But the Resistance still saw you,” you say quietly. “Don’t you think that they’d come looking for us here?”     

               “I doubt it,” Phasma says with a shrug, and you’re almost surprised by her confidence. “People on Naboo aren’t the nosey sort. After what’s happened, they don’t want to get overly involved in the conflicts of the galaxy, and due to our history, they don’t exactly view the Resistance quite favorably.” She takes another sip. “Besides, while I said we lived _close_ to the populated areas, we really aren’t all that close. No one is going to find us here, so I wouldn’t trouble myself with that train of thought, if I were you.”

               You can’t help but frown as you swirl your drink around in your mug. “Oh for heaven’s sake,” Phasma says. “You’re still thinking about that pilot, aren’t you?”

               “Maybe,” you say dismissively, and Phasma just shakes her head. “Hey, I know how you feel about the Resistance, but they’re Ani’s best shot of having a normal life.”

               “By taking him to live on a military base?” Phasma asks. “You’re better off taking him back to whatever planet you came from and raising him there.”

               “No,” you say firmly, surprised by how steady your voice sounds. “I don’t want to just shield him away in the corner of the galaxy. He’s already seen too much, and if he’s anything like me, or Kylo, he’s going to want to get involved.”

               “So you’re making him choose the Resistance, then?” Phasma asks.

               “Well, right now there isn’t really much of a First Order,” you tell her as bluntly as possible. “Back on the Resistance base they taught me close combat, and how to use a blaster, and I learned how to use the Force and I learned how to pilot a ship. There’s options for him there. If we go back, he’ll have the option to pursue whatever he wants.”

               “And what if he doesn’t want those options?” Phasma asks. “You are strong and independent, and you know how much I respect that, but what if he doesn’t want those kinds of options, what then?”

               “Then-“ you shrug. “I don’t know, but what I do know is that right now he’s just a child so I have to make those kinds of choices for him, so when he’s old enough he has the skills and abilities that will enable him to choose what he wants.”

               “He’s not that young,” she tells you. “He’s getting to be that age where he can figure out what he wants for himself.”

               “He wants a relationship with his father,” you say testily. “And I’m giving him that much, for a short time anyway, that’s why I’m still here.”

               “Oh, that’s right,” Phasma says, as if she’s forgotten. “You were only planning on staying a month. And what happens if he doesn’t want to leave after a month?”

               “He will,” you tell her. “Because he has friends back on the base, just like I do.” You know she’s going to counter you, and so you just keep talking. “And besides, Kylo knows what’s best for him. He knows that Ani is better off on the Resistance base than he is with him, for his own safety. He’ll do what’s best for Ani, no question.”

               “You really believe Ren to be that selfless?” Phasma asks, raising her eyebrows. She chuckles to herself and shakes her head. “Has it really been that long?”

               “I believe it’s possible,” you admit. “Ani is his son, and somewhere deep down he knows that Ani would have a better life without him in the picture.”

               “You have no way of knowing that,” Phasma says, but she looks away as she does, as if she doesn’t really want to have an argument about it.

               “You can have your opinions,” you say with finality. _But he is my son, not yours, and maybe if you ever have children of your own someday, you’ll understand._

“Come with me,” Phasma says suddenly as she stands up, and you hesitate for a moment, almost wondering if she heard you. Regardless, you stand up and follow her, internally cringing as she opens up a door that leads you into a basement. As she starts down the narrow steps you consider turning around and running, but curiosity gets the better of you and you follow her down the stairs as you follow her to what could potentially be your death.

               “What the hell is this place?” you demand as you turn the corner to find yourself standing in the middle of a giant room. The ceiling was lower than you would have expected it to be, but the room itself was quite wide, and looked like a small training room. The left part of the room closest to you was covered in black mats that looked like the same ones from the training center room that you used for sparring, and in the far back corner of the room was a small blasting range, with a series of tables holding a messy assortment of blasters pushed up against the opposing wall.

               “I’ve never seen the equipment you’ve used at the Resistance base,” Phasma tells you. “But I’m quite proud of what I’ve created here.”

               “You turned your basement into a training room?” you ask incredulously, your eyes sweeping the expanse of the room. “Why?”

               “Why?” Phasma shakes her head as if she doesn’t understand the question, and you tilt your head to the side as you consider her point.

               “Want to take a few shots?” you ask, pointing to the range, and Phasma simply inclines her head forward as you walk over to the table of blasters. You look at one in particular that looks to be the similar make and model of one that you had used on the Resistance base, and you pull it confidently into your hands as you turn it over. Phasma looks you over, silently noting your choice, before she selects her own weapon as you both approach a wall with a series of targets pinned to the back.

               “By all means,” Phasma says, gesturing for you to go first, and you quickly get in position, just the way Finn had taught you, firing a few shots over and over again. Each one hits the target perfectly on center, and you raise your eyebrows as you turn to her, trying to look as cool and unfazed by your own success as possible. “Who taught you how to shoot?”

               “The Resistance,” you say coolly, but it’s clear she’s not going to accept this as an answer. “A guy named Finn. He used to be one of yours, uh, about my height, dark skin, pretty muscular, short cropped hair, likes to joke around a lot-“

               “FN-2187?” Phasma asks. “The deserter?” You just shrug. It didn’t make a bit of difference to you what Finn’s old number had been. “He was exceptionally skilled with a blaster; you mimic his form.”

               “Then I learned from the best,” you say simply, and Phasma just grins as she shakes her head good-naturedly.

               “No,” she says as she turns to look at you. “I am the best.” Staring you down, she simply raises her arm straight out and fires four shots in quick succession. You stare at her for another moment before your eyes sneak a peek at the target to see that she had hit them all perfectly, dead center, without even looking, and you’d be lying if you said you weren’t salivating at least a little.

               “Holy crap,” you murmur. “How the hell did you do that?”

               “Practice,” Phasma says simply, and you narrow your eyes, silently wondering if that was purely skill, or if she had some Force-based luck to go along with that. Everyone had a connection to the Force to some degree, and you were beginning to wonder if the Force simply presented itself in different ways. Maybe some people couldn’t physically harness the Force in a physical way like you and Rey and Kylo could, but maybe the Force was the reason Phasma was so good with a blaster, the same way Poe was such a good pilot. Then again, maybe you were giving the Force too much credit and them not nearly enough.

               You take turns firing shots, just to give yourself something to do, and you watched as Phasma occasionally switched up her style, firing with her right hand and then with her left, sometimes twice in her right, three times in her left, and then once more with her right, switching up the rhythm. It was clear that she was very well-trained, but then again, after what she had just told you, it seemed that she had trained her entire life for this.

               “How old were you when you first learned to use a blaster?” you ask her.

               “A child,” she replies firmly, sending another target at the center mark. “I was only a young child when I watched the destruction of my home planet-“

               “-but old enough to understand what was going on,” you say, nodding as you catch her drift. She just shrugs at this, sending off another blaster bolt. “Why did you sign up with the First Order, though?” you continue. “I mean, I know you didn’t like the rebels for good reason, but why not sign up with the Republic?”

               “Because the New Republic thought they were too good for me,” Phasma says, her upper lip curling into a snarl. “Growing up on Naboo with all these pretty young girls running around, they look at me and-“ She shakes her head. “The First Order did not care about looks, or gender. They cared only about two things, power and skill, of which I have both. They accepted me for who I was, saw that they could mold me into something better.” She looks at you. “The same goes for all of my troops. I don’t care what they look like, where they come from. I judge them by their skills, help them to become something better.”

               “Is that why everyone wears the helmets?” you ask her. “So that it doesn’t matter what people look like? So they’re judged by ability alone?”

               “Something like that,” Phasma says as she fires off another bullet. “That is why the First Order _will_ prevail, eventually. I have faith in that. The New Republic may be selective, but there is a certain weakness in that.”

               “I don’t really know shit about the Republic,” you tell her. “I don’t know shit about politics or the military or anything like that, but I do know that you are an incredible fighter, and you’re a kind person, and the First Order is lucky to have you.”

               Phasma just laughs as she shakes her head. “You’re an odd little thing, aren’t you?”

               You tilt your head to the side as you look up at her. “What do you mean?”

               “Well, you really do mean that,” she says as she goes over to the table to pick up another blaster. “I kidnapped you and your son, and yet here you are, complimenting me in my home while we talk history and practice your aim.”

               “My aim is just fine,” you say coolly as you take another shot, just barely missing the center target.

               “You’re too focused on form,” Phasma tells you. “You have to let the blaster become a natural extension of your arm; don’t think, just shoot.”

               You casually raise your arm while you look at her, mimicking what she had done earlier, and fire a shot at the target. You turn your head to look and see that you had missed horribly. You can’t help but laugh as you shake your head. “Apparently the Force only accounts for so much.”

               “Don’t fret,” Phasma says gently. “Ren is horrible with a blaster too, even with perfect form.”

               “Really?” you say, turning to her excitedly. She catches your expression and you just shrug. “I mean, to be fair, I’ve never seen him use one, but I figured he had other reasons why he never used one, like his lightsaber, for example.”

               “He’s a horrible shot,” Phasma confirms, and you just laugh as you shake your head.

               “I’m going to remember that,” you tell her. “Thank you; hopefully that will come in handy someday.”

               Phasma just shakes her head. “Don’t make me regret telling you where I keep my weapon stores.”

               “I’m not going to steal from you,” you say firmly. “Not a chance. You know, maybe it didn’t seem like much to you, but I always remembered what you did for me back on the Starkiller Base, giving me medicine and training me and giving me my staff. You may have had your own reasons for doing it, but I appreciated it, and I never forgot it.”

               Phasma just laughs and shakes her head. “I can only imagine how you fit in at the Resistance. You talk about me as if I’m a saint.”

               You just shrug. “In my book, you’re not evil, but then again, in my book, no one is totally evil.”

               “I suppose you’d have to feel that way to be involved with Ren,” Phasma says idly, and you bite your lip but say nothing. “You know, if we’re being honest with each other, I was always sort of disappointed that you left.” You look up at her, but her attention is focused on the target ahead. “I just felt you were starting to show potential, that’s all.” She shrugs absent-mindedly. “Hux would probably never have allowed it, but I felt that you were getting along quite well on base. With a little bit of a nudge in the right direction, you had the potential to be of great assistance to us.”

               “Huh,” you say, because you didn’t know what else you could really say to that. Snoke had wanted to use your Force abilities for some nefarious purpose, and now you were learning that Phasma had apparently wanted you to join the echelons of the First Order. No wonder Ren had sent you away, especially if he knew how much you didn’t want to get involved. Then again, if your memory served you right, you were _starting_ to go down that path, starting to get a taste for power, starting to get a taste for what it might be like to actually serve the First Order on the Starkiller Base. If things had been different, maybe your life would have ended back on that planet when Poe blew it up. He would never have known you, you never would have questioned Kylo, or spent years waiting for him, and all of this unnecessary drama could have been avoided.

               “Did you get along well at the Resistance?” Phasma asks, snapping you out of your reverie, and you can tell by her tone that you know what she’s really asking.

               “I didn’t really get involved with a lot of military stuff there either,” you tell her. “They trained me to have the skills I needed to help capture Kylo, but then again, I went more to see Kylo again than I did to help out the Resistance.”

               “I figured as much,” Phasma says simply. “Again, I don’t know all the details of why he sent you away, besides your son, but I think he did you a disservice by keeping you away from the First Order. Your son would have received much better training with us than he ever could from the Resistance.”

               “Is that a fact?” you muse openly, entertained by her bias. “Who would have been training him, then?”

               “I would,” she replies, and she can’t conceal the surprise in her voice, as if she had expected you to have known this. You bite your lip as you think it over, and the more you think about it, the more you realize that it should have been obvious. Ani was Kylo Ren’s kid, of course Captain Phasma herself would train him how to fight and use a blaster. You had never known how to fight before you met her, and thanks to her training and your almost incessant, constant practice, you had become something fearsome in your own right.

               “I guess you could train him now,” you say with a light shrug of your shoulders. “I mean, while he’s here, if you want.”

               “That’s up to Ren,” she says simply, and you can’t help but let this rub you the wrong way.

               “Just following orders, huh?” you ask, unable to contain the note of bitterness in your voice, and Phasma just nods. To be honest, that was one of the reasons why you never would have fit in at the First Order. If Hux gave you an order that you disagreed with, there was no way in hell you were going to follow it, and then what would he do? Convict you of treason and lock you in a cell? Kylo had enough power to do whatever he wanted, and you knew that having the same power _and_ being an accessory of Ren would infuriate Hux to no end. At least with the Resistance you felt that they would be more understanding if they gave you an order that you didn’t want to follow, but then again, you couldn’t be totally sure of how they would have acted. Maybe they would give you a pass, but would it have simply been because you were uncomfortable, or would it have been because of how involved you probably would have been with Commander Dameron at that point? You sighed to yourself as you focused on the target at hand.

               To be fair, this is why you never wanted to get involved with the military in the first place. You wanted to be the one in charge of your own life. You didn’t want to follow orders; you _gave_ orders, and although those orders may have affected you and only you, you still knew that you had to be cognizant that the decisions you made influenced other people’s lives as well. The point was that you liked being in charge of yourself, and sure, there were probably some people that felt it was easier to simply follow orders and wait for the next up in the chain of command to tell them what to do, but you were restless, and impatient, and you wanted to make your own decisions…

               …which is why you were so angry that you were here. This had not been your choice. This had not been your decision, and while you were trying your damnedest to make the most of it, you couldn’t help but feel like Kylo was still defying you at every turn, now taking Ani Force training without even inviting you along. Was it payback for defying him last night? Was he going to try to guilt you into giving up this one month with Ani under the intimation of father-son bonding? The more you thought it over, the more you saw the worst in him. Sure, it was _possible_ that Kylo knew how much you hated being here and resolved to give you as much space as possible, but that line of thought almost made you feel guilty, and you refused to give into that.

               A blaster in each hand, you pointed them at the target, cycling through your shots, starting with your right, and then moving to your left, shooting the target with alternating shots from each blaster.

               _I am not weak._

The bolt hit dead center.

_I make my own decisions._

Dead center.

_I will not let him control me._

Just a little to the right.

_I will not let anyone control me._

Dead center.

_I will make my own decisions._

Dead center.

_And I will make it back to the Resistance base, with Ani, all on my own._

The blaster jammed. You raised your other hand. That one jammed too.

               Phasma looked over at you and raised her eyebrows. “Both of them? That’s some bad luck.”

               “Yeah,” you echo as you look down at your hands. “Bad luck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cue to the collective screaming* So, okay, not a ridiculously heavy Kylo chapter, but I've missed Phasma a lot, okay? Her friendship with the Reader has always been one of my favorite things, and it was important for me to try to see if they can be friends again after so many years, after all that's happened, and I really like how they seem to still have this mutual respect and support of one another even if they may not wholly agree with the other's choices, like, gah, they're both just absolutely perfect, I can't. (I am full of can'ts today, because _someone_ has me thinking about how hot Adam Driver looks in Midnight Special, and now I'm not going to get anything done all day. xD 
> 
> PS: Thanks for all the birthday wishes to my mom, you guys!! It seriously means a lot to her, and you guys are the best!! ^_^ All the love and positive karma your way!! <3 In another bit of life news, a friend of mine had a baby, which means that I've gotten to the unfortunate stage in adulthood where people are going to start getting married and popping out babies left and right, which personally freaks me out to no end, but hey, if that's your thing, go do it. The reason I mention it? He's a huge Star Wars nut and he named his kid Johann...or Han for short. Personally, I think that's a really bad life move. Sure, Han is going to grow up and marry a princess...but then his son is going to grow up to be kind of a dick and stab him in the chest with a glowing red sword...but what are you going to do? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> And, oh gosh, it just occurred to me that we're going to be living in an era of Star Wars themed baby names...Han and Luke and Kylo or Ren or Ben and Poe and Finn and Rey and Leia and I am so not ready for this. xD Anyway, tune in Thursday to see how our Reader reacts when Kylo and Ani return from Force training. Is she going to be happy? I don't think it's quite a spoiler to say I doubt it. ;) Until then, cheers!!


	4. Chapter 4

               “Mommy!”

               You and Phasma are sitting at the counter, making idle small talk around a dinner that you actually helped prepare, as Kylo and Ani came in that night. Ani came running right up to you immediately, and you couldn’t help but smirk as you eased him up onto your lap, letting him start eating the meal that you weren’t really all that hungry for anyway.

               “There you are,” you say as you stroke his hair. “Where have you been all day? What have you been doing?”

               “Force training,” Ani says through a mouthful of food, and you can hear Kylo step foot into the kitchen but you don’t turn to even glance in his direction.  

               “Oh yeah?” you ask, pretending to sound way more excited than you feel. “Well, why don’t you tell me all about it?”

               Ani’s demeanor suddenly changes as he glances at Kylo out of the corner of his eye, barely angling his head towards him. “Can’t,” he says after a moment. “It’s a secret.”

               “A secret, huh?” You try to keep your voice light, but as your eyes link with Phasma’s, you can see by the look on her face that she knows that _Ren_ is in big, big trouble. Kylo himself seems to sense your anger and heads upstairs while you and Phasma continue to eat, making trivial small talk with Ani about other things that you felt he might be more comfortable talking about.

               To be honest, you weren’t just angry at Kylo, you were livid. First he had taken you here against your will, and then he had taken Ani, and you couldn’t quite be sure that he wasn’t trying to turn him against you. Was that his plan? Tell you that he agreed to only staying for a month but then brainwashed your son so that he could run off with him and leave you in the dust? That wasn’t going to work, and if that was what he was planning, he was going to be sorely mistaken. You had good reason not to trust Kylo before today, and he wasn’t exactly helping his cause by encouraging his son to keep secrets from you. There was only one possible direction that could go in, and it wasn’t a positive one.

               After dinner, you carried Ani upstairs and gave him a bath, making sure to be as friendly and silly with him as you possibly could. You didn’t want him to get dragged into the middle of this conflict with Kylo or make him think that it was possibly his fault in some way if he could, in fact, sense your anger. You had no idea if Kylo told him things about _you_ that he didn’t want Ani to repeat, and while you didn’t know what lies Kylo could have told him, you were sure they were probably lies nonetheless. Kylo didn’t know you anymore. He had only seen you a handful of times while Ani was alive, and he didn’t know anything about your life with him. He could assume, but he didn’t really know anything about Ani or you. If he wanted to make new memories with the both of you, that was one thing, but you weren’t going to allow him to take advantage of Ani’s memories and try to rewrite the past. He hadn’t been there, he simply hadn’t been, and you weren’t about to pretend otherwise.

               After you put Ani to bed, you stormed into your bedroom prepared for a fight, but Kylo wasn’t sleeping on the couch like you had expected him to be. You checked the balcony but found it empty and briefly considered letting the whole thing go, but you couldn’t, you just couldn’t. You had worked up a quality rage now that was quietly fuming inside of you, and you were prepared to take this on once and for all. You would not compromise. Either Kylo would let you in on Ani’s Force training, or you and Ani would be headed back to the Resistance first thing tomm- no, tonight. You would be headed back immediately, or you would sneak out and find some Resistance sympathizer to transmit your location back to Poe. The trouble with that, of course, was that you couldn’t exactly be sure you would run into someone who was friendly with the Resistance. There was always the chance that you could run into someone sympathetic to the First Order, and then you’d probably have far worse problems. No, you weren’t the type to go running off asking strangers for help, and you weren’t about to do that now. Whatever happened, you would figure this out for yourself.

               You stormed downstairs to find Kylo lying on the couch in the living room, an empty plate on the table in front of him, lying with his legs outstretched over the edge. “Sleeping down here now?” you ask as you lean in the doorway, arms crossed over your chest. You didn’t know where Phasma was, but right now, you really didn’t care that much one way or the other.

               “Well,” Kylo says crossly, and you can’t help but roll your eyes at his tone. “You made your feelings quite clear last night. I thought you would have an easier time avoiding me for the month if I slept down here.”

               “And that’s fine, if that’s what you really want to do,” you tell him. “But none of this keeping secrets with Ani bullshit, because that’s exactly what it is, it’s bullshit. If you’re going to train Ani in the Force, I want to be part of it.”

               “No,” Kylo says firmly, like this isn’t a discussion, and you take a few steps into the room, refusing to back down.

               “Why?” you ask. You’re considering hearing him out, considering on debating his point, but after a few moments he says nothing and that only leads you to conclude that he doesn’t actually have a point. He doesn’t actually have anything to say for himself. He was using Ani to get back at you in some way, or taking advantage of the situation to manipulate one or both of you. If that was the case, you were not going to let that happen. “Fine,” you say simply. “I’m just going to take Ani and head off then. See you never.”

               You turn to go, but Kylo’s quiet voice stops you. “No you won’t.” He doesn’t sound cocky, or arrogant, he sounds _sad,_ and something in his voice makes you turn back to face him.

               “Oh no?” you ask, raising an eyebrow in an attempt to keep your composure. “And why not?”

               “Because you’re a better person than I am,” Kylo says quietly, and you can’t help but laugh as you shake your head.

               “Sometimes I wonder about that,” you murmur quietly to yourself. You can feel Kylo’s perplexed energy radiating out from behind you, but you just shrug it off as you head back upstairs. For some reason, you don’t feel angry anymore. Kylo’s dejected sense of sadness has crept into you now, and you weren’t quite sure how to feel about it. You had honestly expected Kylo to yell, to fight back, but you hadn’t really expected his languid, defeated energy. Was this a fight you had won? Was he going to back down from training Ani now? Would he invite you along with them? You weren’t sure what to make of it. All you knew was that in the middle of the night you woke up to Kylo having another nightmare on the couch on the far end of the room, and for some reason, you wanted to comfort him. You had already slipped your legs out from under the blankets before you changed your mind and quickly snuggled back into them and rolled over, letting yourself be momentarily comforted by the coolness of the pillow. Nevertheless, you tried to reach out with your mind, tried to soothe him, so you could both get some sleep.

               The next morning, you woke up to see Kylo lying on the couch, still asleep, and for some reason you awoke with a plan already fully formed in your mind. You felt set with a sudden purpose, and you figured that you must have had some extraordinary dream or vision that night, even if you couldn’t recall what it was. Either way, you just felt that you had a goal, an assignment, and you knew what you had to do. You slipped out of bed as quietly as possible and slipped into Ani’s room. “Hey, kiddo, good morning,” you said as quietly as you could as Ani mumbled a sleepy reply. “Ready to go out training today?”

               “You’re coming with us?” Ani asks. He seems surprised, but not at all perplexed, and that alleviates at least some of your concerns.

               “Of course I am,” you reply. “Your dad is still asleep, but he said that you can catch me up on what you learned yesterday.” Ani just shrugs as he sits up, and you figure that small questions would probably work better. “For example, did he happen to talk about me at all?”

               “A little bit,” Ani shrugs. He seems completely indifferent, but you care, suddenly, you care a whole lot.

               “What did he say about me?” You sound like a teenager with a bad crush, and it’s all you can do to keep your voice as level and unaffected as possible.

               “Just stuff,” Ani shrugs. “He said he taught you the Force too. He had me try to pick up my staff using my head. He said he trained you to do the same thing.”

               “He did,” you say. Somehow, you had forgotten about that, and you let the memory stir something inside of you. “I’m surprised he remembered that.”

               Ani pokes his finger out as he rubs the bridge of your nose. “He says it crinkles right here when I concentrate really hard,” he continues. “He said it reminds him of you when you focus. You do the same thing.”

               “Do I?” you ask, crinkling up your nose dramatically, and Ani laughs. “What else did he try to teach you, besides the staff?” Ani just shrugs, but you catch an almost guilty expression, like he’s not supposed to talk about it. “Did he mention the light side, or the dark side, maybe?”

               “The dark side,” Ani says at length, but he’s shifting uncomfortably, and you can tell you’re getting closer to something.

               “Yes, what about it?” you ask quietly. “What did he tell you about the dark side, Ani?”

               “It’s like _stones_ ,” Ani says, emphasizing the last word. “The dark side is like a stone, like if you throw it in water and it sinks, and then you can’t get back up.” You raise your eyebrows in surprise. You hadn’t really expected such an apt metaphor, or anything of this nature, from Kylo.

               “What about the light side?” you ask cautiously. “Did he tell you anything about that?”

               “Balance,” Ani says decisively. “You got to keep a balance. No one can be all good, all the time.” He looks up at you. “Except you.”

               “Me?” you ask, raising your eyebrows. “You know I’m not _good_ , especially not all the time.”

               “He thinks you are,” Ani says, and you’re about to argue when Ani continues. “He says I should try to be more like you. You’re brave, and strong, and uncomp, uncomp, uncomp-“

               “Uncompromising?” Your eyes go wide as you spin around to see Kylo standing in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. You look down and away, biting your lip, and you can’t help the feeling that you got caught.

               “Why don’t you get ready, Ani?” you say quickly, and you brush your hair behind your ears as you make your way out of his room and back into the bedroom. Kylo follows after you as you make your way out onto the balcony, but you’re not quite sure what you want to say to him.

               “So am I still in trouble?” he asks, and you know he’s picking up on your tangled web of emotions right now, if he thinks he has the right to mock you.

               “Maybe,” you say, but you’re distracted, and he knows it. He runs his fingertips down the length of your arms and you shiver slightly, pretending it’s from the morning breeze as you clutch your arms close to your body. “I forgot about that,” you admit suddenly. “I forgot that you trained me to use the Force. I don’t know, somewhere along the line I felt like it was something I had always been able to do, something I had just taught myself-“

               “You did teach yourself,” Kylo tells you. “I just helped teach you control, that’s all.”

               You turn around to face him. “And what about the thing I do with my face when I focus?” you ask, although it sounds more like an accusation. “What about that? Why did you tell Ani about that?”

               “Because he does it too,” he says simply. “Like mother, like son. I see quite a lot of you in him.”

               You find that strange, as you had always thought you saw more of Kylo in him, but you saw no reason to argue. “Well, maybe if you were around more he could have picked up on some of your positive qualities.”

               “Oh?” Kylo asks, raising an eyebrow. “And what might those be?”

               “You’re persistent,” you offer, and Kylo just laughs as he shakes his head and averts your gaze. He looks thoughtful, and pensive, as he looks off at the horizon, but not altogether evil. For a minute you felt your defenses weakening. You felt like this wasn’t just Kylo Ren, but Kylo, your Kylo, finally with you again. It was probably stupid to let your guard down, stupid to think he had any bit of goodness in him, but you couldn’t help but suddenly feel a sense of kinship blossom in your chest once again, a sense of trust, although you weren’t sure if it was from the Force or from your own blind optimism that Kylo had finally abandoned his dark path to start a life with you.

               Kylo can feel it too, you know he can, and suddenly you can feel your fingers twitch and brush against his. He feels it too, and suddenly you’re standing in the crisp morning air, not looking at each other, letting your fingers intertwine as you both looked your separate ways. First it was just your fingers, wrapped around each other, but before you knew it his palm was pressed tightly against yours, and you weren’t sure if he was squeezing your hand or you were squeezing his. Either way, you wanted him, in that moment, you wanted what you wanted. You turn to him suddenly as he brushes your hair behind your ear, and you tilt your chin up as you kiss him. You weren’t sure why you were kissing him when yesterday you felt such hatred for him, you just couldn’t be sure. It was like you logically told yourself to hate him, to despise him for all he was putting you through, but your emotions would not follow through, constantly subjecting yourself to the weakness that was Kylo Ren.

               He pressed his lips against yours softly, gently, barely enough to be called a kiss, but it still sparked something within you regardless. You wanted to kiss him, to really kiss him, to let yourself believe that this was real and never look back, but you couldn’t allow yourself to do that, and so you squeezed his hand and let it remind you, let the sweat and the heat of his palm against yours remind you that this wasn’t a dream, that this was real, that this was the world that you lived in. He could have killed you with his bare hands, and it was probably only by the mercy of the Force that he hadn’t. “You are so determined to think less of me,” Kylo says quietly as he pulls away, and you shrug your shoulders uncomfortably.

               “You brought it on yourself,” you say scathingly as you look away, mostly from your own guilt at being caught with your shield down once again. For some reason, you couldn’t be sure why you kept letting it slip. One moment it would be there, and the next it was down, gone, dissolved into a sopping puddle at your feet along with the rest of your defenses. You had no idea how Kylo got under your skin so well, but he did, continuing to manipulate you when you least expected it.

               You can feel a certain sense of sadness emanating from him as he kisses your forehead, gently, before he pulls away and for some reason you don’t want him to go as he heads back inside. “You should get dressed,” he says, the resignation palpable in his voice. “If you’re coming with us, you should-“

               “Wait.” The air is heavy in your chest, but you have to do this, and you have to do it now, before this tender moment slips away from you. You stride into the room set with purpose and you put your hands on either side of Kylo’s face as you kiss him. He breathes into you, clearly not expecting it, his thumbs brushing against your cheeks as he kisses you in turn. Without even trying to be subtle, you lift your fingers up to his temple and focus. Immediately, you get a flash of images, of words, of Ani sitting in front of him, laughing, and you can feel a bubble of elation in Kylo’s chest, a muted sense of happiness mixed with a vivid sense of relief that you weren’t quite sure you had ever felt from him before.

               Kylo steps away, his face set, as he grabs you by the wrists and lowers your hands. He wasn’t happy that you saw that, felt that, although you couldn’t be sure why. You sensed no maliciousness from him, no deceit. He was _happy_. That was a memory with Ani that he treasured, that he valued, and you couldn’t understand why he didn’t want you to see it, unless, of course, he was still afraid. He had said that you were his pull to the light, but maybe it wasn’t just you. Maybe it was Ani too, and he still felt guilty about indulging it. Did he not even want you, of all people, to see that he could still feel happiness? Or was he afraid that seeing his happiness at being with Ani again would guilt you into staying? Was he really trying that hard to be selfless?

               “Have a good time today,” you say quietly, taking a step back from him as you look away, but out of the corner of your eye you can see Kylo tilt his head in confusion.

               “You’re not coming?” he asks, and you just shake your head from side to side.

               “No, it’s okay,” you say after a few moments. “You should have some alone time with him. It’s okay.”

               Kylo steps forward to kiss you so suddenly, so immediately, that you don’t even have time to respond. You just let him kiss you, trying to pick just one emotion out of the sea that’s coursing through you, before he pulls away as quickly as he had kissed you. “Sorry.”

               “Don’t be.” You’re not sure why you said it, because Kylo is looking at you now, really looking, and you don’t know what he’s seeing when you don’t even know what you’re feeling. He leaves you to your thoughts, shutting the door behind him as he goes to get Ani to commence their training for the day, and you sit down on the bed and put your hands on your knees, closing your eyes and pretending you were back in Rey’s Green Room, trying to focus. You tried to hear the babble of the water, tried to feel the thick, humid air on your face, which wasn’t all that hard to do considering you had done it for months and months.

               “I wish I could talk to you right now,” you say quietly, and in your mind you allow yourself to try to recreate the Green Room as best as possible, recreating every stone, every leaf, every speck of green in your field of vision before you imagined Rey sitting in front of you, her brown hair pulled back out of her face in her three signature buns as she sat facing you, eyes closed, her posture reflecting your own.

               _Are you real?_ you ask her quietly, reaching out to her with your mind, and she slowly opens her eyes as she smiles at you.

               “That depends,” she says, tilting her head to the side. “I’m as real as you need me to be.”

               “I think I just need someone to talk to,” you admit. “I think I’m just, I don’t know, lonely? And kind of scared.”

               Rey tilts her head to the side. “What are you afraid of?”

               “Myself,” you admit, without the slightest bit of hesitation. You pause and shake your head. You were about to say _Kylo_ or something along those lines, but no, apparently the truth had slipped out without your conscious recognition of it. “I’m afraid I’m still in love with him, but I don’t think I want to. I don’t think I want to be.”

               “You can’t help how you feel,” Rey tells you, and you can’t help but let out a sigh. Rey wasn’t here, of course she wasn’t, and it wasn’t like this subconscious version of Rey was going to give you any of the answers you needed. “What’s the worst that can happen if you gave in to it?”

               “Well,” you say, shrugging your shoulders. You couldn’t believe you were going to entertain your own subconscious, but it wasn’t like you had anything better to do today. “I don’t know. I think I hate him, but I think a part of me is afraid to give into that. If I hate him, then I’ll just be pulled over to the dark side, won’t I?”

               “That’s up to you,” Rey tells you. “You have to find the balance within yourself.”

               “But I don’t know if I can,” you admit. “You and Finn and Poe were always there to keep me grounded, to give me a _reason_ to stay towards the light side. I just, I don’t know, it sounds horrible to say, but I just feel like I don’t have any incentive to stay towards the light without you there.”

               Rey’s forehead creases, and you’re almost sure she looks a little troubled. “What about Ani?”

               You just shake your head and your voice trails off. “Ani doesn’t need me, I guess. Apparently Kylo’s training him about the dark side and the light side and finding balance and all of that. I don’t honestly think I’d know how to train Ani in the Force if I tried. I’d probably just end up screwing something up.”

               Rey starts to say something, but stops when you feel tears, hot, stinging tears burning in your eyes. “I screwed it up,” you mutter to yourself. “I’m a failure. I should have fought harder. I should have been stronger. I should have saved Ani and taken them both out, instead of letting them get the better of me.” You look up at her suddenly. “I think part of me wanted it. I think part of me was too afraid to fight him, too afraid to let go, and I let him take me. I think part of me gave up right then and I don’t know how to forgive myself for that.”

               Rey looks at you, pitifully, and waits for you to pull yourself together, but you can’t, you just can’t. “How is Poe supposed to forgive me? I mean, he’s probably playing it over and over in his mind trying to figure out how to save me, and do you think he knows that I didn’t really want to be saved? Do you think he’s wondering what he did wrong, or do you think he’s given up on me? I mean, it’s only been a few days, but he’s so close by, he should have been able to find me by now.”

               “What planet are you on?” Rey asks quietly, tilting her head to the side. “Where are you?”

               “I’m-“ you start to say, but you stop yourself, unsure what brought on this sudden batch of trepidation.

               “See?” Rey asks as her face relaxes into a soft smile. “I’m not even real and you’re still afraid to say where you are, afraid that he really will be able to come find you.”

               “But I do want him to find me,” you argue. “I want him to find me. I want to go back.”

               “But you want to stay with Ren too,” she tells you, and you have to look away. “This is what a part of you has wanted, has always wanted, for years. You had been waiting and waiting for him to finally come back for you and tell you that he wanted to be a family again, and now he has.”

               “But it’s too late,” you argue.

               “How?” she asks. “How is it too late if it’s something you still want?”

               “Because now it feels _wrong_ ,” you whisper quietly. “Because now I want him and I feel like I’m letting Poe down in the process.”

               “If Poe showed up on your doorstep right this minute,” Rey offers. “And says he is going to take you and Ani back to the Resistance, and Ren asks you to stay, what would you do?”

               “It’s not that simple,” you argue. “If we went back, Kylo-“

               “Pretend it is that simple,” she counters. “Pretend it’s just him and Poe. Two different roads leading in opposite directions. Which one would you take?”

               You pause for a moment, thinking it over. “They’re going in opposite directions now, but what if they ever come back around and intersect one day?” you ask. “Somewhere down the line?”

               Rey just shrugs. “You have no way of knowing that.”

               You close your eyes and let the thoughts float over you. Poe was nice and he was sweet and there was a lot that you could gain by being with him, by being with the Resistance, but you had waited for Kylo for such a long time, you had so much invested in him, and now when you were finally about to be rewarded for your years and years of patience, it felt like you were turning your back on him. He was trying, you felt that he really was trying, that he really was making an effort, and you kept raising his hopes and dashing them to the ground over and over again.

               “I’m not a good person,” you tell her. “Do you think I’m a good person?”

               Rey just shrugs. “It doesn’t matter if you’re good or not,” she tells you. “Good people can still do bad things. Bad people can still do good deeds. It’s not like there’s actually anyone out there, watching the balance and weighing the scales.”

               What she says reminds you of something you had once thought long, long ago, back on the Starkiller Base, back when you had decided that Kylo wasn’t a completely evil person. True, you hadn’t known about all the things he had done then, but Ladson was also right when he told you that they didn’t really affect you as much as you felt it should have. He had hurt your friends, but that still felt like it existed only in the past, and didn’t really feel _real_ to you anymore. The only time Kylo had ever come close to hurting you personally was under Snoke’s direct influence, and even then, you had been inside his head, and you had come out assured that he couldn’t have gone through with hurting you, which meant the only harm he had ever really done to you was abandoning you back on your home planet. Although, all things considered, he had only done that to protect you, to keep you safe from Snoke and the dark influences of the First Order, and he was really and truly making an effort to try to make up for that now.

               You tried to imagine what Finn would say, or Ladson, or hell, even Poe himself, but you couldn’t reconstruct them as firmly in your mind as you could Rey, for some reason. Maybe you had kept your shields down around her so long and had been so tapped into that mental flow that you really had connected with her in the same way that you connected with Kylo, easily and readily, like two twin flames that had caught each other burning in the dark.

               You had never been sure if you loved Poe. You had never truly asked yourself that question until now, mostly because you preferred not to think about it. Did Kylo love you? Was it just the Force bond? Those were questions that had plagued you for years and you had never received any answers, so you had decided to dwell on them as little as possible, but you were not connected to Poe through any sort of Force bond. So did you love him? Did he love you? And did that matter? Poe was not here now. Poe was not going to save you. Maybe Poe was only what you wanted him to be, a distraction from Kylo Ren, and although you didn’t want it to be true, maybe it was. You wanted someone to show you the kind of selfless love that Kylo Ren had previously withheld from you, the kind of love that only Poe was capable of giving. Rey and Finn could provide you with friendship and support, but Poe had provided you physical assurance that you were worthy and capable of both giving and receiving love in return.

               But now that Kylo was back, did you still need Poe? Did you still want him? Did you still care for him? You felt a wet, languid tear drip down your cheek as you clutched the stone around your neck. You did, fuck everything, you did. He wasn’t a replacement for Kylo Ren; he was a person in his own right and you cared for him and you wanted to be with him, fuck it, you wanted to be with them both. You wanted Poe to come and rescue you and bring you back to the Resistance so you could resume your life, going to the blasting range with Finn and training with Rey and joking around with Ani and Ladson and flying with Poe, but you also wanted Kylo there too. He was the one piece of the puzzle that just didn’t seem to fit into your fantasy, like squeezing a square peg into a round hole. He didn’t belong at the Resistance. He wouldn’t go back with you, not that he really could, anyway, with all he had done. And Poe, and the others, well, what were they supposed to do? Give up the Resistance and all move into Phasma’s house on Naboo? That could be fun, for a while. You could go hiking and have picnics and play in the meadow, but you couldn’t help but picture Kylo sitting inside the room in a sulk. He was the one piece that didn’t fit into your life no matter how many times you tried to push it to make it fit. If you wanted a life with Kylo in it, then you were going to have to choose him and give up everything else, and that wasn’t fair to you.

               Kylo himself was the best example of that. Kylo had been manipulated by Snoke since he was a child, and even though you weren’t responsible for that, weren’t responsible for taking care of him or redeeming him of the terrible things he had done, part of you wanted to help. You knew that he wanted to be a good father to Ani, and you knew he wanted to repair things with you, and you wanted to at least let him try; the only problem was, of course, were you strong enough to still hold onto yourself and what you wanted if you gave yourself up to him completely, or would he swallow you whole? You had felt so lost without him in your life, what if the same thing happened again? What if he suddenly left you and Ani on your own again, what would you do then? How would you be able to turn and creep back to the Resistance and explain that you had chosen Kylo over them just to be disappointed by him, again?

               Maybe this wasn’t all about Kylo at all. Maybe this was about you and your fear of being abandoned and betrayed all over again. B had betrayed you, and then Kylo had abandoned you, both treating you as foolish and expendable. At least with Poe you never had to take that risk. There was a certain sense of security being at the Resistance base. You felt needed there, although you couldn’t help but think that there were probably some there that sent you on that mission to Kylo’s Star Destroyer with the expectation that you wouldn’t make it back alive. They didn’t care that you had a young child back at home; this was a war effort, and everyone, everyone was expendable. Poe cared about your life, but there was only so much that he could do to protect you, and if your life was expendable, what about Ani’s? What about when they started to train him? If Poe taught him how to fly an X-Wing, would they suddenly expect Ani to partake in aerial combat as well?

               Maybe life was better with Kylo after all. It would be a life on the run, but you had never trusted the Republic or the military, never wanted to get involved, especially when you didn’t know all the details. You didn’t know the stakes, and you weren’t the one calling the shots. You were the lowest of the low, you were just a grunt, doing the basic dirty work while the upper echelons congratulated themselves on your accomplishments as they wiped their gloves clean of the blood you spilled. At least the First Order was better than them in that regard. Captain Phasma fought with her troops, Kylo himself had done ground work, and you knew, _knew_ , that Hux had killed and done his fair share to get to the top. And meanwhile, Poe was content to just lick boots and trade verbal barbs with the people above him that he didn’t like. You remembered how defenseless and defeated he had sounded when he explained how he had quit the Republic to work for the Resistance, simply because they refused to acknowledge the danger the First Order clearly posed, danger that Poe had been exposed to firsthand. Now that the Republic was getting chummy with the Resistance again, how long would it be until the two merged? Would Poe be promoted? Demoted? Would he become another upper echelon stooge?

               It was a game that Poe obviously knew how to play, but then again, it was a world that he had grown up in. That was not a world you knew. That was not a world you were familiar with. He had spent his teenage years on ships learning how to fly through space while you had been on a cargo transport helping secure back alley trades of human cargo. You remembered how Hux had taken Sadie as his prisoner, as his _pet_ , but he wasn’t alone. You were no stranger to the state of the galaxy. You knew that the highest people in the Republic may not have had blood on their hands, per se, but their gloves were probably stained with a slave’s tears or a whore’s cum nonetheless. The thought sickened you, and as you replayed that night in your mind, their celebration of _your_ accomplishments, it just made you angrier and angrier. You had never really had time to process the situation outright, but you did now. They had been about to send you off to your possible death, and they had celebrated that fact, and Poe had treated it simply as a convention that had to be tolerated.

               And that was the problem. You didn’t want to tolerate it. Poe had to play the game and abide by the rules and follow their guidebook, and so would you, if you went back to him. It would be a safer life, maybe, but you had no way of knowing that. Now that the war was more or less over, you could take a guess, but you didn’t know for sure. At least while you were out here, you were free. If you stayed, Kylo wouldn’t tell you what to do or try to order you around, and in time, you didn’t think there was anything he would really deny you, especially if you agreed to stay outright. You remembered how he had talked to Phasma about not only letting you go back to your self-defense classes on the Starkiller Base, but teaching them, giving you control over one small aspect of your life and making you answerable to no one. Phasma had been there to check up on you, sure, but she was never your boss. There were no rules or guidelines that you had to follow, no one’s boot you had to lick to get to the top. As Phasma herself had said, the First Order respected power and skill, of which you had both.

               You opened your eyes, feeling eerily calm. You couldn’t really sense Rey anymore, if you ever had to begin with. She hadn’t really been there, you knew that, but you couldn’t help but feel like the conversation had the opposite effect than you had intended. You had expected Rey to tell you that Kylo was evil, that you should stay as far away from him as possible, and yet you couldn’t help but feel the opposite. Putting your love life aside, you wanted the power and skill you had accumulated to count for something. At the Resistance it never would, not with the Republic taking credit for everything you had done, but maybe you could build something here. You didn’t want to get involved with the First Order, not that there really was much of a First Order now anyway, but you could start small.

               You could teach Ani to be self-reliant, to not have to worry about the First Order or the Resistance. He wasn’t devoid of resources here. Kylo could teach him how to use the Force, Phasma could teach him how to shoot, and you could teach him how to fight with a staff. The only difference here was that the Republic wouldn’t take credit for his accomplishments like they had yours, wouldn’t throw him into a training exhibition just to congratulate each other and clap themselves on the back, something that you knew implicitly that they would do. He was Kylo Ren’s son. They would probably even take credit for converting him to the light side of the Force, and all he would hear about for the rest of his life was how they were so proud of him for _overcoming_ the natural affliction his father suffered from, when they didn’t know a fucking thing about Kylo or how he had suffered from Snoke’s brainwashing and manipulations.

               No, if you could be sure that Kylo was genuine, that Kylo really wanted to be true to his word and just be a family, then you could live with that. If you could be sure that it would be you, and him, and Ani, and maybe Phasma, living a life free of First Order and other military intervention, then that wouldn’t be so bad. You would miss hanging out with Finn. You would miss training with Rey. You would miss your talks with Ladson. You would miss out on whatever possible future you could have had with Poe, but maybe you were thinking too much about your own future. Maybe your job was done. Maybe you had done your duty, had your adventures, and it was your time to take care of Ani’s future now, which left only one question to be answered: Would Ani have a better future with the Resistance and the Republic, or would he be better off living here, being trained by you and Kylo?

               You thought about it for a moment, you thought about it long and hard, before you realized the answer was staring you in the face. It wasn’t your future. It wasn’t your decision to make. You were much older than Ani, and you had seen more of the world than he had, but Ani had also been speaking to the spirits in the Force for quite some time, and they were much older and wiser than you were. _They_ would not steer him wrong, if you could trust in any one thing, you could trust in that. Satisfied, you went back out onto the balcony and sat down cross-legged on the ground, letting the wind blow through your hair. You felt alone, but it was important for you to realize that you were not truly alone. You had Ani with you, and while he was still young, he was your son, and he was gifted with the simplistic wisdom that children still had. It was possible that Ani knew deep down what he really wanted, and while you had a good guess, you couldn’t really know for sure when you had never asked.

               This wasn’t about you and Poe anymore. This wasn’t even about you and Kylo. This was about Ani. You had been constantly putting yourself first by claiming that you could only take care of Ani if you knew what you wanted, but that wasn’t quite true. It was Ani’s life, and you had to trust in the Force and his spirit guides that they would lead both him and you in the right direction. In a way, you didn’t want to give up control. You wanted to stay in charge of your own destiny, and your son’s, but maybe the only way you could take it back was to give it up in the first place. You couldn’t let the Force guide you when you could choose not to follow. You had to embrace the Force and let it become you, for yourself, and for Ani.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're thinking that the Reader is saying that she's going to let Ani make the decision as to whether to stay or not because she can't make up her mind herself, then you're not wrong. ;) She clearly still feels incredibly guilty about her feelings towards Kylo, but if she can say she's staying and doing it for her son, because it's what Ani wants, then that somehow gives her a sense of moral high ground to stand on; it's not succumbing to weakness if she's doing a good for someone else. The Reader's thought process throughout all of this is endlessly fascinating to me, but she's going to have to make a decision one way or the other eventually. What will Ani decide when she talks to him about it? Will it influence the Reader's decision in any way? Check back Saturday to find out!! Until then, cheers!!


	5. Chapter 5

               Over the course of the day you had wandered around the house, finding it empty. You had no idea where Phasma went, and you were honestly a little bit surprised that they just left you there, totally unguarded, capable of running out and escaping at a moment’s notice. The only problem with that, of course, was that Kylo had Ani, and so you supposed that they knew you weren’t really in much danger of escaping without him. Comforted by the notion that you weren’t at least locked in your room and being brought your meals like you had been back on the Starkiller Base, you went down into the kitchen and made your own food for once, in an attempt to feel like a responsible adult. You didn’t really know how to cook, but you knew you had to put a pan on a stove and you had to put food in the pan in order to cook it, and so you went along and figured things out from there.

               By the time Kylo got back that night, you had gone back to meditating on the bed, and you could sense the low, steady rhythm of his energy compared to the bubble of excitement that was Ani’s. You focused on it for a moment, focused on that and nothing else. It was oddly comforting in a way, strong, and steady, like his heartbeat. That seemed strange to you, but it only took a moment to figure out why. Kylo’s energy had always been shifting and volatile, not at all unlike the cracked Kyber crystal in his lightsaber. Right now, though, it just seemed almost quiet, reserved, and you found yourself trusting it. You had no idea how long Snoke had been defeated for, but you had sensed Kylo’s resignation long before that point. The more you thought about it, the more you couldn’t help but think his intentions were genuine after all, that while he may not have turned completely from the dark side, he still wanted to make up for lost time and be a family with you and Ani. You had your own thoughts on that, but it wasn’t worth trying to go through again.

               “Hey there, I’m glad you’re back,” you say as Kylo walks into the room. You open your eyes to see him watching you, cautiously, trying to figure out why exactly you expressed elation at seeing him again. Things hadn’t exactly been tense this morning, well, they had been tense, but they hadn’t been as charged as they had been in the days prior. “I was wondering if I could talk to Ani,” you tell him, and his eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “It’s not really about you, but I just felt like you-“

               “Of course.” His voice is too soft, too gentle, and it should be wrong, but you just tuck a strand of hair behind your ear as you nod and make your way past him into the hallway, heading down to Ani’s room. He’s getting ready for bed, all tucked in, although he still has his staff in his hands, twirling it around and around.

               “Hey kiddo,” you say in a hushed, excited tone. “How was training today? Did you have fun with your dad?”

               “Yeah,” Ani says. “I think I moved my staff today. I think I moved it.” He hesitates for a moment before he narrows his eyes suspiciously as he looks at you. “I think dad might have moved it for me.”

               “Your dad has a bad habit of doing that,” you say as you sit down at the edge of the bed and muss his hair. “Hey, Ani, I wanted to talk to you about something important. Do you think that now would be a good time to talk?”

               “Yeah,” Ani says quietly, looking up at you and tilting his head to the side.

               “Now that you’re training, you understand that you have the Force inside you now, right?” you ask, and Ani nods his head. “It’s in you, it’s in me, it’s in your dad, it’s in everyone, really, but you can control it, and you can control it to a level that other people can’t, so you can do things that other people can’t, like feel their emotions, or move your staff, or see your spirit friends.” He nods his head. “Do you still see them? Do they still talk to you?”

               “Sometimes,” Ani admits, but he looks down and away, like he doesn’t know whether he should be talking to you about it.

               “And that’s okay,” you say gently. “Because the Force is there to guide you, to steer you in the right direction. You should listen to it.” You pause and look towards the empty doorway before you look back at your son. “Ani, I want you to be really honest with me, and you won’t get in trouble for telling me the truth. The Force will tell me if you’re lying to me or not telling me the whole truth, okay?”

               “Okay,” Ani says, nodding his head obediently up and down.

               “Do you like training with your dad?” you ask him, and Ani nods his head up and down excitedly. “Do you like it here?”

               “Yes,” Ani says. “I like Phasma. She’s really nice and I really like spending time with dad now. He was kind of scary at first but he’s not as mean as everyone said he is. He tells jokes and makes me laugh.”

               “That’s good,” you say gently, trying to suppress your bewilderment as to what jokes Kylo could be telling him. Most of Kylo’s humor came from dry sarcasm, and while you weren’t sure if Ani was at an age to understand that, maybe he could. Maybe Phasma had been right when she said that Ani was getting to be the age where he was starting to grow up and think for himself. Still, this was Kylo _Ren_ you were talking about, and while there was always the possibility that Kylo could snap at him, you felt certain that he could control himself enough not to hurt Ani. “And what about the Resistance base? Do you miss it there?”

               “Sometimes,” Ani replies, but he sounds a little more uncertain about it.

               “It’s okay,” you say gently. “You can tell me, whatever it is, I won’t get mad, I promise.”

               “I miss my friends,” Ani tells you. “But it never felt like home there.”

               “And it feels like home here?” you ask, and Ani shrugs. He seems to wrestle with himself for a few minutes, and he avoids your eyes when he speaks next.

               “I want to stay with _dad_.” The words come out of him in a rush, like he almost feels guilty for it, and you can’t help but feel a pain in your chest as you watch him struggle.

               “And that’s okay,” you say, trying your best to assure him. “It’s okay that you want to stay with your dad.”

               “But you want to go,” Ani pouts. “You want to go back and leave dad here.”

               “I-“ You hesitate, and you were glad that you were finally getting this conversation out sooner rather than later. You could spend an entire month going back and forth, but in the end, that wouldn’t really change anything. Ani wanted what he wanted, and that wasn’t going to change. “I want what you want,” you tell him. “I want to take care of you.”

               “You miss Poe,” Ani says quietly, and you blush uncomfortably. Of course Ani had picked up on that. He had watched you get closer and closer to Poe, and although you didn’t really think he really understood exactly what that meant, maybe he could at least understand the situation or the feelings behind it.

               “And everyone else,” you tell him gently. “Did your dad talk to you about him? About Poe?”

               “No,” Ani shakes his head. “He says you have to decide what to do, that he can’t make decisions for you.”

               “And that’s right,” you say quietly as you run a hand over the top of his head. “Because we’re a team, you know, and we need to figure out what works best for us.”

               Ani looks away before he looks back up at you. “You’ll know if I’m lying, right?”

               “Yes,” you say slowly, studying his face closely, trying to figure out what he means.

               “I-“ Ani seems to wrestle with himself for another moment before he looks at you again and drops his voice to a whisper. “Dad said I shouldn’t say this to you, but…”

               “But what, Ani?” you ask quietly, feeling the small hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. If there was something Ani told Kylo that he didn’t think you should know, then that meant you _definitely_ needed to know what it was.

               “But I don’t think you want to go back,” Ani says quietly as he looks away. “You miss Poe but I think you like dad.” He squirms, holding onto his staff with both hands as he twists it back and forth. “Dad doesn’t want me to talk about it with you but I think you only want to leave because of me.”

               “What?” you ask blankly. You honestly couldn’t believe what you were hearing. Ani had been your main argument for staying, and yet he thought that you only wanted to leave because of him?

               “Well,” Ani splutters, like he doesn’t know what to say. “I don’t know. I just feel things, sometimes. I think you want to stay with dad but you think you can’t because you want me to stay on base and learn stuff like you did.” He looks up at you. “But dad can teach me stuff too. And you can. And Phasma can help too. She looks really strong and she said she taught you how to fight and you’re really good so maybe she can train me to be as good as you are.” He looks up at you, hopefully, earnestly, like he was asking for your permission.

               “I know I said we can stay for a month,” you say quietly. “But if you want to stay longer, we can stay longer. We don’t have to go back to the base if you don’t want to.” Ani nods his head up and down eagerly, and you force a smile to your lips as you feel a weight sink in your chest. You close your eyes and mentally squeeze Poe’s hand for a final time, feeling the warmth of his calloused palm before you let it go, let him slip away. “Then we’ll stay,” you say simply. “For however long you want.”

               “What about dad though?” Ani asks as he looks up at you, and you remember what Kylo told you about how Ani wanted you to get back together with him.

               “We’ll see how things go,” you tell him quietly. “The relationship between your dad and me is, well, it’s complicated-“

               “Because of me?” Ani asks softly, and you shake your head back and forth so fast it hurts your neck.

               “No,” you tell him, quickly and firmly. “No, that’s not why. It has nothing to do with you. We both love you, separately, but-“ You take a deep breath in and let it out. “The Force dictates a lot of things, but it doesn’t control love, Ani. Who you love and who you fall in love with has been, and will always be, a choice that you will make independently of the Force, even if you become bonded to someone and you think there’s no way out, you can choose to be stronger than that pull. That’s your choice, and it will always be there for you to make.”

               “Did you make it?” Ani asks you. “Your choice?”

               “I’m not sure,” you admit as you brush his hair back out of his face. “And sometimes being unsure? Sometimes that’s okay too. It can be hard just being patient and giving things time to figure themselves out, but sometimes we just got to learn to let some things go and take other things as they come, right?” Ani nods his head and you reach forward as you kiss his forehead. “Get some sleep now, okay? I love you.”

               “Love you,” Ani echoes as he settles down into bed, his staff by his side, and you look down at him and force a smile to your lips as you step out into the hallway, closing the door behind him. You close your eyes as you lean up against the opposing wall and slump down, not daring to go back inside your bedroom with Kylo probably still in there. You screw your face up tight and place a hand over your mouth, willing yourself not to cry. You didn’t feel like you were going to, and yet you couldn’t deny that painful ache in your chest at the thought of never seeing Poe again. Or Ladson. Or any of them. Maybe when Ani got old enough, maybe then it would be possible to go back. Maybe they would find you, but that thought did little to comfort you right now.

               You had decided to take the focus off of yourself and put it on Ani, and that’s what you were going to do. If Ani wanted to stay, then you were going to stay and try to make the most of it. You wanted the best of both worlds, but you couldn’t have it, knew you couldn’t have it, and so you just had to rely on yourself to make the best of your situation. If the Force didn’t want you to be here, if the Force wanted you to go back, then you would inevitably go back. It sounded too much like the destiny stuff that Rey believed in, but right now, you felt like you had to give in to it. You remembered what Ladson had told you back at the Resistance base, how he had said that you didn’t know where you’d be in a year from now. At that point, you didn’t know you’d ever see Kylo again. You didn’t know you’d fall so hard for Poe. You didn’t know there was a chance of never seeing him again.

               You want to tell him that you miss him, you want to so badly that you want to whisper it into this empty hallway, but you purse your lips together to keep the words from escaping. You know if you say them that someone could potentially hear them, know if you say them that they may make you cry. Instead, you quickly get to your feet and walk into the bedroom, determinedly not looking at Kylo as you quickly get yourself into bed and pull the blankets up over you, trying to make each motion feel natural and smooth, instead of clunky and forced. It feels almost as though you can feel the stretch and give of each muscle as you pull the blankets up around yourself, like you’re simply a puppet with its strings being pulled.

               “Are you all right?” Kylo asks softly, and you realize that as hard as you were trying to keep him out, that some of your pain must have been inevitably slipped through.

               “I’m fine,” you say quietly as you lay your head back on the pillow. You turn your head to the side, pulling the blanket up over your shoulders, while your thumb gently massages the back of the stone that Poe had given you. “Are you, uh, are you good?”

               “Fine,” Kylo says, just as quietly, and you nod to yourself as you take the stone in your fist, squeezing it for all its worth. For all you knew, maybe this was a magic stone. It just felt like a regular old stone to you, but nothing in this universe was ever simple, nothing was ever just what it appeared to be. Even if Poe himself couldn’t be here, maybe the stone served as a simple reminder that he cared, that he always had the utmost confidence in you no matter what happened, and always would. The thought is enough to bring tears to your eyes as you bite down on your lip to keep from crying out. You can hear Kylo stir behind you, and for a moment you fear that he’s going to get up to come look at you, to come try to comfort you, but no, he doesn’t stir again, and you’re not sure why you’re almost a little bit disappointed by that. You wanted someone to comfort you, but you weren’t quite sure that turning to the person who put you in this position to begin with was the best way to go about it.

               Eventually, you slip off to sleep, but are unsurprisingly reawakened by the sound of Kylo in the throes of another nightmare. This couldn’t keep going on. You were never going to get any sleep this way, especially if you really were going to stay for as long as Ani wanted. Quietly, you throw the blankets off of you and make your way quietly across the room as you tiptoe over to the couch that he’s lying on. His head has slipped down beneath the arm rest, and you gently kneel down beside him and press your lips against his forehead. Beads of sweat have accumulated there, and you can taste the salt against your lips as you sit down on the floor beside him and find one of his hands, pulling it into both of yours as you use your thumbs to massage the back of his hands in long, slow circles to try to relax him. He quiets down a little bit, but still continues to whimper and whine from somewhere deep in his throat, as if he’s running towards or away from something. You’re not sure, but you continue to stroke his hand with one of yours as you use your other arm as a prop to rest your head against. It was cold, and part of you wanted to just slip back underneath the blankets, but you didn’t want to move now and risk waking him. He seemed to have quieted down, and so you just sat there, slowly massaging his hand, letting the warmth of his body against your arm try to warm you as you slowly slipped back into a dreamless sleep.

               The next sensation that you’re aware of is Kylo trying to pull his hand out of your grip, but for some reason, you hold firm, and mutter sleepily as he tries to pull it away. As your eyes blink open, you can see that the room is a bit lighter now, lit by a gentle lilac glow that signaled the slow approach of dawn. You groan sleepily as you grab hold of his arm, wrapping both arms around it as you push your forehead into his warm skin, desperate to leech any bit of warmth out of his body. “What are you doing here?” he asks quietly, and you don’t answer as he smooths the hair back from your forehead. He feels the cool skin of your cheek with the backs of his fingers as he strokes you gently. “Were you here all night?”

               “Not all night,” you mumble as you keep your eyes shut. The words feel like they were all mumbled together, but you’re too tired to care. “You were having another nightmare. It seemed like you wanted me to stay.”

               You hear Kylo make a small sound as he gently picks you up and pulls you onto the couch with him. “Let’s get you back to-“

               “No,” you mutter under your breath. You are tired, and cold, and Kylo is warm, very warm, and you still can’t help the fact that you want to feel someone there. Kylo leans back and although there’s not a lot of room on the couch, he moves his arm to cradle you as you intertwine your legs together and snuggle your forehead into his chest.

               “Is this okay?” Kylo asks as he runs a hand through your hair, and you just nod and make a contented, sleepy sigh as you relax into him. He wraps both arms around you, tightly, as he presses a quick kiss to your forehead and you allow yourself to smile as you listen to the steady drum of his heartbeat. You expect it to slow down as he slipped back into sleep, but instead the rhythm seemed to increase as he tightened his grip on you, just a little bit, holding you closer. Was he afraid of going back to sleep and having another nightmare? Was he afraid of you and how you’d react when you properly woke up in the morning? You weren’t sure, but he was comfortably warm, and soothing, and he felt like exactly what you wanted right now as you allowed yourself to drift off to sleep again.

               “I’m sorry.” Just as you were on the cusp of sleeping and waking, you heard it, Kylo’s lips moving against your earlobe as he spoke. You weren’t sure what he was sorry for. You knew there were many, many things that he could apologize for, this whole predicament that you were in being one of them, but it would take more than just a few words uttered when he thought you were asleep to fix things between you. Trust had to be rebuilt, and that was no small task. You knew he cared about you, and you cared for him in turn, but without trust, you weren’t quite sure if you could ever really be vulnerable and happy with him again. A part of you told yourself that it wasn’t worth it, that he wasn’t worth it, that he had messed up too badly to ever redeem himself in your eyes. Part of you, though, part of you wanted to give him a chance. He was working to redeem himself to Ani, working to be a father to him, and that would be something he would have to do without your involvement, but if he could? If he could prove to you that he was serious about being with you again, would you let him in?

               You weren’t sure. You had told Ani that it was okay to not be sure, but it wasn’t, at least, not for you. You wanted answers, and the level of control that came with predicting and planning your own future. As much as you wanted to just go with the Force and let it guide you, you were nowhere near that patient. You could try to be, but trying would only get you so far. In the end, you couldn’t just sit back and let ambivalence dictate your future. Your decisions had to be black and white, a yes or a no, especially when it came to Kylo Ren. Did you want to be with him? It wasn’t enough to say maybe. You had to make a decision, right here, right now, did you want to be with him?

               You weren’t sure. You hated that you weren’t sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gahhhh, usually I hate kids, but Ani's such a little cutie. So he wants to stay, the Reader and Kylo are starting to get all cuddly again....is this a sign that things are starting to head in the right direction? Or are you worried that I'm going to throw you a fast ball? ;) Guess you'll just have to check back on Tuesday to find out!! Until then, cheers!!


	6. Chapter 6

               When you awoke the next morning you were back in your bed, and you looked across the room to see that Kylo wasn’t there. You gathered the fabric of the blanket in your hand, squeezing it between your fingers, trying to figure out why you felt as disappointed as you did. Snuggling up to him last night shouldn’t have changed anything, and yet, you couldn’t help but feel as though it had. That day, you sat out on your balcony and played with your lightsaber, dimming the blades and just spinning it around and around like you used to do before with your staff, trying to get back into the hang of using it again if you ever had to fight for your life… _again_. In fact, it would probably be a good idea to train every day to keep your own skills sharp and your senses alert. You had fallen into a comfortable rhythm at the Resistance base, constantly training and improving yourself, but you knew all it would take was even just a few weeks of lethargy to completely throw you off your natural rhythm and allow yourself to become weak. In this galaxy, you could not afford to be weak. You never knew what dangers you would face on any particular day, and so you had to train constantly to keep your body and your mind at the ready.

               And so you trained. You didn’t see Phasma again that day and didn’t feel comfortable using her blasters without her permission, but blasters were only one small part of your training. Besides practicing strikes with your staff, you also stayed in your room and did calisthenics. You considered running up and down the stairs to get your heart rate going, but you were nervous that in your speed you might trip, and you really didn’t need to hurt yourself right now and be even more dependent on Kylo than you already seemed to be. So, instead, you stuck with what you were good at, and when you were done, you hopped in the shower, cooled off, and then sat back on the bed and meditated, trying to help open up your connection with the Force. It took a while, but you were finally able to meditate again, and not just meditate, but also lift yourself off the bed as you did so. You weren’t quite sure if Kylo was able to levitate himself. You had never seen him do it, you supposed he could, but then again, it seemed like something that required a great deal of control and focus and concentration, and although Kylo didn’t seem as erratic as he did years ago when you had first met him, you assumed he still lacked the discipline.

               Thinking back to the Kylo you knew years ago, it honestly didn’t seem all that strange that he had inevitably been lured by Snoke over to the dark side. His parents were both incredibly bright, social people, who appeared to do a lot to change the world around them for the better. They both had incredibly fulfilling lives, and you could only imagine that Kylo must have felt an immense amount of pressure in order to be like them, to live up to what they had accomplished. Considering how you never really knew your parents, your own expectations were only set where you wanted them to be, but Kylo, how had his childhood really been? Considering what little you knew, part of you almost assumed that Kylo was disappointed in himself for lacking the gifts that came so easily to his parents. Maybe he was shy and awkward, not as good as a pilot as his father or lacked the social graces of his mother. Maybe his own Force abilities, when he was younger, weren’t as sharp as he would have liked them to be. You had never really met Luke, but you could only imagine him chiding Kylo for his lack of discipline, which would make Kylo frustrated, and with Snoke’s influence, it would only serve to make him more angry and volatile than he already was. It was a guess, a topic that you didn’t think Kylo would entertain you with even if you asked, and so you decided to put it behind you. Whatever had made Kylo act the way he did in the first place, he seemed, at least temporarily, to be in a better place right now, although whether it was due to his time spent locked in that cell as a prisoner or being here, you weren’t quite sure. Whatever the case, you had to put it behind you. If you spent too much time fixated on his past, you were going to be blindsided by the person that he was turning into, and that was a mistake you had made once already.

               For some reason, you didn’t think about how you could apply this to yourself.

               You feel his and Ani’s familiar energy when he comes home that night, and you stay on the bed, levitating, waiting to impress him. You keep your eyes closed, hands on your knees, trying to focus on the nervous, happy energy that was sparking through your veins. Even still, as you heard Kylo enter the room, you were momentarily distracted by an overwhelming wave of discomfort. He was uncomfortable, specifically, with you, and you open your eyes nervously to see him standing in front of you.

               You felt diminished under his gaze and, only having been levitating a few inches off the bed, let yourself back down with an uncomfortable plop as the bed creaked beneath you. “Ani told me what you said last night.”

               Your blood freezes in your veins as you try to think back to that conversation. If anything, that conversation seemed to steer in Kylo’s favor, the way he wanted things to go. If that was the case, why did you suddenly feel guilty? “What, specifically?” you ask nervously.

               “You told him you’d stay here with him,” he says firmly, his dark eyes flashing. “Indefinitely.”

               “Well, maybe not indefinitely,” you say as you shrug uncomfortably. “Just no thirty day limit, that’s all.”

               Kylo stiffens and stands up a little straighter as he studies you. “What changed?”

               “Nothing changed,” you say softly as you scratch away an inch in your upper arm. “I mean, nothing really. Ani just wanted to stay with you, so I guess we’re staying.”

               Kylo crosses his arms over his chest, like he doesn’t quite believe you. “Just like that?”

               You can’t help but feel insulted by his tone. You were trying, you were trying your damned best. Why did he have to make things more complicated? “No, not _just like that_ ,” you tell him crossly. “But Ani wants to stay, and I want him to be happy, so if he’s staying, I’m staying with him. I’m not just going to leave him here and go back to the Resistance base myself.”

               Kylo watches you in silence for a few more minutes, and you don’t meet his gaze, looking everywhere in the room but at him. “If you’re really staying,” he says, and this time, his voice is softer. “You’re not obligated to be with me, just because we’re both here.”

               “I know that,” you snap at him, instantly regretting it. You shut your eyes and rub at your temples with your fingertips. “But thank you, I guess, for saying it.”

               “If it’s easier for you, I can sleep downstairs,” Kylo offers. “Since I apparently kept you awake all last night.”

               “No,” you say quickly. “No, I want you to stay. I can, I can keep a better eye on you this way.”

               Kylo goes to the couch in awkward silence, and you get up to go check on Ani, finding him already asleep in bed. You head back down the hallway and hesitate in the doorway, not wanting to face Kylo again, but at the same time, not sure who else to talk to. You hadn’t exactly felt lonely, not yet, that added pressure had not yet descended upon you, but you wanted to take advantage of as much human interaction as you could before they went training again in the morning. Quietly, you slip back into the room and into bed.

               “Are you going to, uh, take Ani Force training every day?” you ask him quietly. “He seems kind of, I don’t know, tuckered out.”

               “That’s up to him,” Kylo replies levelly. He has his arms crossed over his chest, slumped down on the couch, his eyes shut. He doesn’t exactly look comfortable, and yet you really weren’t sure if you were comfortable with the notion of offering to share the bed, at least not just yet.

               “I was thinking,” you begin softly, anxiously adjusting the covers on your lap. “Maybe we could spend at least one or two days a week, together. Maybe I can come watch him train? Or maybe we can go back to the place with all the lakes and the waterfalls? I think Ani would like to go back.” When you look back up, Kylo has his eyes open and is watching you now, intently. You look back down at your pillow, and throw yourself down, suddenly put off by your own anxious apprehension. “Just a thought.”

               Kylo doesn’t answer, and for a moment you regret even saying anything at all. Maybe Kylo had only said what he said earlier to spare your feelings. Maybe he had really decided that he didn’t want to be with you anymore, but now felt stuck since you had said you decided to stay. Maybe that was why he told you that you weren’t obligated to be with him anymore, because, in truth, he didn’t want to be with you. And that was fine with you. Really. It was. Sort of. Logically, you knew that getting involved with Kylo Ren again was probably a bad idea, but secretly you had liked the way he had held you last night, the way he touched you. Part of you wanted that back, although you weren’t entirely sure if it was just because you wanted to be held, or if you truly wanted to be held by him, specifically.

               But as yet another nightmare awakes you from your dreams, you find yourself walking quietly across the floor. You kneel down beside him and gently stroke his bangs out of his face, but his heart is racing, his eyes are dashing back and forth behind his eyelids, and he seems to be in some sort of a panic when he wakes up, inhaling a gasp of air as his eyes fly open. Your eyebrows shoot up in surprise but you just sit there and continue stroking his bangs back as gently as possible while his eyes dart around his surroundings before they finally settle on your face.

               “What are you doing here?” Kylo demands, grabbing your hand, and you let out a small noise of annoyed surprise.

               “Me?” you ask. “Uh, in case it escaped your recollection, _you_ are the one that brought me here.”

               He pulls away from you as he sits up, grinding the heels of both hands into his forehead, and you watch him quietly, waiting for him to recollect himself. “You shouldn’t be around me.”

               “Was I, was I in your dream?” you ask nervously. You were beginning to suspect that that was why he liked sleeping on the couch on the other side of the room instead of on the longer one downstairs, so that he could wake up and make sure that you were still there, still safe.

               “I dreamed that I hurt you,” Kylo says, and while your forehead creases, you can’t exactly say you’re surprised. Troubled, yes, but not surprised in the least. “This is a mistake,” he declares finally. “I should never have brought you here.” He takes a deep breath as he slides one long hand down his face and shakes his head as if to clear it. “You should get as far away from me as possible.”

               “I’m not worried about you hurting me,” you tell him, because, quite honestly, you’re not. “But if you want me to go, I’ll leave, understand that I’m going to take Ani with me.” Kylo sighs and shakes his head, rubbing his temple with one hand. “Kylo, tell me about the dream.”

               “No,” Kylo says firmly.

               “Tell me about the dream,” you repeat, making it clear you weren’t going to ask again.

               “I hurt you,” he says at length, and you wait for him to continue. “I don’t know how. I just see, I don’t know, flashes. That you got hurt. And it was my fault, that I did something, that I couldn’t protect you-“

               “Not protecting me is not the same as hurting me,” you say clearly. “Is this a nightmare you have often? Is this like a Force vision that you’re having, of something you think might happen? Or just something you’re afraid of happening?”

               “I don’t know,” Kylo admits. “They, they change.” He gets a haunted look on his face, and you decide that that’s enough questions for the night. Honestly, Kylo had never really been one to be in control of his emotions, but maybe his silent maturity during the day and his waking terrors at night fit together more than you once thought.

               “Scoot over,” you whisper quietly, but Kylo doesn’t budge. Instead you move his arm and push him back a little ways as you sit next to him on the couch, curling up to him like you did the night before. He’s a bit sweaty from his dream, but other than that, he’s every bit as warm and comfortable as he was the night before.

               “Really?” Kylo asks as you wrap your arms around him, and he seems to register your flicker of confusion through the Force bond. “After everything I’ve put you through, how can you stand to be around me?”

               “Believe me, when I find an answer to that question, I’ll let you know,” you murmur quietly against his chest. No talk of the Force bond. No declaration of love. Just the petulant sarcasm of being around someone you were familiar and comfortable with.

               “You’re too good for me,” Kylo murmurs as he kisses your temple, but you can’t accept that. You weren’t that good of a person. You were just trying to do the best with what you had. If anyone was too good of a person, it was Poe, and you had resigned yourself to the fact that you were probably never going to see him again. Honestly, that was probably for the best. Poe genuinely cared about other people. He was morally superior to you in every way, and besides, being Commander of the Starfighter Corps, there was nowhere for him to go but up, meaning that you would find yourself on his arm at an increasing plethora of Resistance and Republic events if you decided to stay with him. You had freaked yourself out so badly you hadn’t even gotten through one, although you still couldn’t be sure if you had heard someone else’s voice in your head that night. Idly, you wondered if it was one of the Force ghosts that had encouraged you to end your relationship with Poe, knowing where things were headed, and while you couldn’t be all that bothered to believe that Force ghosts would be interested in your relationships, they were interested in Ani, and maybe that’s what they wanted. Maybe they wanted you to be here, with Kylo, raising Ani. It may not have been what _you_ wanted, but apparently the Force didn’t really care about what you wanted. Maybe that was just the unhappy consequence of being a mom? You weren’t quite sure.

               You expected Kylo to be gone that morning, but he wasn’t. Instead he was holding you in his arms the same way you had held Ani when he was younger, his arms wrapped firmly around you while you slept with your face pressed into his neck. You stirred, your lips grazing his soft skin, and you couldn’t help but sense Kylo’s disappointment that you were stirring, that you were waking, that he was going to have to let you go. You didn’t want to get up either, though, at least, not yet, and you cuddled further into him, resting your hands against his chest. Kylo seems to sense what you’re trying to do and manages only a dry chuckle as he holds you a bit closer.

               “How can I forgive myself for disappointing you?” You were not expecting this sort of question, especially not this early in the morning, and you puzzle over how to respond for a few moments.

               “I don’t know how you can forgive yourself,” you tell him. “That you’re going to figure out on your own, but you can fix the mistakes you’ve made. You can’t take them back, but you can own up to them, try to keep yourself accountable, try to atone for what you’ve done.” You take a deep breath in and let it out. “I know you’re trying,” you whisper quietly as you run your fingertips over his chest. He stiffens at the contact, but doesn’t pull away. “I know you’re trying; I can see it.”

               Kylo just shakes his head, as if this isn’t good enough. “Then how do I forgive myself for disappointing myself?” he asks. “I wanted, I want, to be a good father to Ani, better than my father ever was to me, and yet I abandoned him. I abandoned the both of you, I just left you there-“

               “For the right reasons,” you say, trying to console him even though you don’t have the slightest clue why. “To keep him, to keep us, safe. To protect us, to-“

               Kylo shakes his head again, as if he doesn’t want to hear it. “I can keep telling myself that all I want but that doesn’t make it true. I could have come back to you sooner. I could have left the First Order, but I didn’t.” He pauses for a moment. “I wanted to. There were times I really did consider it, just leaving it all behind me, but I couldn’t. I was…I was weak. I was scared.”

               You puzzle over this for a moment, letting his words sink in. “And now?”

               “I’m still scared,” Kylo admits, and you can honestly say that you didn’t expect his candor. You didn’t expect Kylo to admit weakness, to admit fear, of all things. “I don’t know what there is to be afraid of, now with Snoke gone; maybe I’m afraid he’s not really gone. Maybe I’m afraid that something will happen and take this all away. I don’t know how to be who my grandfather expected me to be.”

               “Then don’t be,” you tell him quietly. “Your grandfather may still be alive in the Force somewhere, but he has never met you. You don’t have to keep chasing his legacy. Be the father Ani deserves to have. Be the person-“ You pause, snuggling a little further into his chest. “Be the person I expect you to be. Be the kind of person you would want me to be with.”

               “I’m trying,” Kylo says quietly as he shuts his eyes and leans back. “Will you let me try?”

               “Yes.”

               His lips are on yours before you know it, and you quickly straddle him as one of your hands fists in his dark locks. You smile, you can’t help it, you smile as you kiss him, pressing your lips together as you gently push your hips against his. Kylo groans slightly from underneath you and pulls your hair back and to the side to kiss your exposed neck, and you can’t help but shiver as he runs the edge of his tongue against your collarbone, his teeth nipping at the tender skin just where it met the shoulder. You let out a groan and fisted your fingers in his hair, pulling his head back so that you could lean forward and kiss him again, pushing your lips together with a hungry growl as you felt his body stir underneath you. Kylo’s hand reaches up underneath your shirt, his large hand gliding over the cool skin of your back, and you whimper as you push your hips against his again, desperate and greedy for contact.

               Kylo smiles as he pulls away slightly, nipping at your lower lip before massaging it with his tongue, and you press your forehead into his as you plant your hands on both sides of his head. You want this, right now, you want this, but you’re holding back. You both are. He’s restraining himself, you can feel it too. If this was going to happen, you would have been on the floor by now, or on the bed, devouring each other with hungry, fervent kisses and caresses that left bruises on your skin for weeks. Part of you wanted that, in fact, right now, you could wager that _all_ of you wanted it. There was only one problem with that. “The timing’s not right,” you say quietly.

               “I know,” Kylo whispers back, and he doesn’t seem as bothered by it as you expect him to be, running the tip of his nose against yours.

               “I want you though,” you tell him, trying to reassure him, but it seems to have the opposite effect as he wraps his arms around you and buries his face in your neck. You hold him to you, trying to make your thoughts and emotions as open and transparent as possible. You wanted to hate him, for all intents and purposes, you should have hated him, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to. This had been what you wanted, for years. For five fucking years, you had waited for him to come back, for him to embrace you, for him to tell you that he wanted to be a family with you and Ani again.

               Had too much happened between then and now though? Even if you opened yourself up to being physically intimate with him, could you actually have a fully functioning, healthy relationship with him? Could you both be two happy, productive parents to raise Ani and give him the right kind of attention and care that he needed? You didn’t know, and you hated that you didn’t know, but you wanted to at least try, not just for Ani, but for yourself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "If you spent too much time fixated on his past, you were going to be blindsided by the person that he was turning into..."   
> Am I allowed to have a favorite quote out of something that I wrote? Haha I wrote this what feels like a long while ago, back when I was still releasing Candle, and yet lately I've talked to a lot of people that have been trying to look back into Kylo's past, to try to explain his motives, and while it helps to know where a person came from in order to know where they're going, canon-wise I am much more interested in seeing where Kylo Ren is going, especially after his completed training...(and the future of the Knights of Ren? Please please please? PLEASE!!) 
> 
> Also, fun fact, the movers are coming in, legit, like, one week. My bed broke yesterday so I spent the night sleeping on a table that's 28 inches wide and I have really long legs so sitting cross-legged my knees are hanging off the edge (fun times!) but I just want to assure you that provided hotel Internet doesn't crap out on me, I should have seriously no problem keeping up with the Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday updates, otherwise if a chapter's going to be late or delayed or whatever I'll just post about it on my Tumblr or ask one of my editors to upload it for me, no big! 
> 
> See you all on Thursday!! Be sure to bring a mop, because things are about to get WET!! ;) I'm subtle, I'm subtle. Until then, cheers!!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW content ahead

               One day turned into two, two became a week, and before you knew it, almost two full weeks had gone by since you had given in and kissed Kylo Ren. That was once sentence you still couldn’t wrap your head around. Back on the Starkiller Base, kisses had been abundant and playful, sincere and encouraging. After he left, those kisses became very few and far between, most if not all of them hungry and desperate. And then they had stopped altogether, for years, and at one point you thought you would have done anything, absolutely anything for just one more night with him. And then Poe came and swept you away, almost quite literally, pulling you away from Kylo Ren both physically and emotionally as you fell for him, slowly, in a completely different way than you had ever been used to. But now Poe was gone and Kylo had returned, and you were slowly trying to rebuild what you had lost in his absence.

               At first you had decided to kiss him only when it felt natural, but for some reason, it _always_ felt natural. You would be sitting in the grass with Ani while he tried to float his staff into the air with the Force, and you would catch Kylo looking at you out of the corner of his eye, watching you with the corners of his lips tugged into a happy smile. You wanted to crawl across the grass and kiss him right then, and it was only because of Ani that you didn’t. Kylo could still sense your want though, and he returned it. For some reason, you had thought that Kylo would have been set to pursue you the minute you showed interest in starting things again, but instead he seemed cautiously reserved, always waiting for you to make the first move. You supposed he knew that he had done enough damage, he already had brought you here against your will, and he wasn’t particularly inclined to push you into anything he wasn’t completely sure you wanted.

               The problem was that you still didn’t know what you wanted. You still missed Poe and the others back on base at the most inopportune times, like when you were eating dinner with Kylo, Ani and Phasma, when no one really seemed to know what to say. It made you miss the dinner conversations you used to have back at the Resistance base, and idly you wondered if they still had those now that you were gone. Did they talk about you? A little? At all? You had been missing for weeks. Did they assume you were dead? No, if Kylo hadn’t killed you back on his Star Destroyer, then there wasn’t a chance he had killed you now. No, they could probably assume that you were still alive, held hostage somewhere, probably at a First Order stronghold. No one would ever journey here and expect to find you sleeping soundly on Naboo.

               And it wasn’t like you had a ship to just fly back and tell them where you were. Besides, Ani wanted to stay, and so you tried to make the best of your situation. Naboo, in itself, wasn’t an entirely dreadful place. It was beautiful, and picturesque, and you could honestly say that you liked walking around outside and feeling the lush grass under your bare feet and the warm sun on your face after you had spent so much time inside, cooped up on the base. You wondered if that was at least part of the reason for Kylo Ren’s volatile temperament. He had been either on military bases or in Star Destroyers for as long as you had known him, never once stepping outside or simply relaxing in natural sunlight; maybe just being on a planet, breathing the fresh air and taking in the galaxy all around him, was helping in ways you couldn’t imagine.

               Naboo did have its downsides, though. The problem with living on a base so long was that you had gotten used to the regular set temperature that was neither too hot nor too cold, just comfortable for you to walk around in your usual attire. Days on Naboo were fair, but you couldn’t help but notice that the weather was getting cooler, the breeze just a bit chillier, as you walked around outside in the light, gossamer clothes that Phasma had gotten for you. The fabric was more thin and sheer than your usual tastes, but it also meant that it was lighter, and flowed easier, and thus you didn’t really mind it all that much.

               Except at night, when the temperature dropped from chilly to actually cold, and the two blankets you had weren’t enough. There had always been a decorative blanket folded up at the end of the bed that you had simply left to become squished and wrinkled from daily activity, but even now you unfolded that one in a vain attempt to keep yourself warm. No matter what you tried, though, it wasn’t helping. You sat up and looked at Kylo, who was sleeping on the couch, same as always. The night terrors had stopped, and although you considered that maybe you had simply grown more accustomed to their sound and slept through them, you preferred to think it was the former. It wasn’t really surprising to think that if he was having nightmares about you, that they would stop after you had finally worked through at least some of the tribulations of your relationship. Not that you still didn’t have a long way to go, but at least the tense, uncomfortable silences were replaced by shy, lingering glances that made your heart beat a little bit faster than you supposed it should have.

               “Hey, Kylo?” you ask softly, calling out into the darkness.

               “Hm?” Kylo stirs slightly, as if he was just on the verge of falling asleep.

               “Um, I’m cold,” you say quietly, your voice sounding too loud in the steady hum of the night that surrounded you. You can hear Kylo shuffle as he sits up, stretching out his legs before he stands and looks around the room.

               “I’ll find you another blanket,” he murmurs, almost to himself, as he starts to make his way past the bed, but you reach out and grab his hand.

               “Wait,” you say quickly as you release your grip and let it drop to his side, seemingly almost embarrassed by your own outburst. “You can, um, come to bed, with me. If you want.”

               Kylo stands there for a moment, his back to you, and you can’t pick up any impression of what he’s feeling through the Force. Eventually he goes and stands by the balcony, looking out into the darkness of the night, but it still doesn’t help much. You still can’t read his expression with his back to you. You want to call out to him, tell him it’s fine that he doesn’t want to, it was just a stupid gesture to show him that he didn’t have to sleep on that stupid couch anymore, that you were comfortable enough with him to allow him back into your bed.

               In all honesty, you were really cold, though. The goosebumps on your arms gave away that much.

               Finally, he comes over to the beside, his expression yet again concealed as he pulls off his shirt and slips into bed beside you. He holds out his arm and you immediately curl into him as you run your hands over his warm skin, pressing your nose into his side in an attempt to warm your features. “You are cold,” Kylo says appreciatively as he takes one of your hands in his, and you let out a snort as you look up at him.

               “Did you think I was kidding?” you ask as you roll on top of him. You hadn’t really meant anything by the action, but it was purely instinctual. You were straddling him now, your chest against his, your face hovering over his, and as Kylo sweeps your hair back you can’t help but think that he knew this was going to play out this way, even if you hadn’t intentionally been meaning it to. You just wanted to feel him again, feel his warm skin underneath your hands, feel his-

               And just like that, his lips were on yours and it was that hungry, desperate bid that you had felt weeks earlier. His fingertips rake across your back as he holds the back of your head to his, keeping you steady so that you couldn’t pull away. You couldn’t have even if you wanted to. It suddenly felt as though this magnetic pull had developed between you, and you couldn’t fight it or pull away. No, the only thing you could do was give in to it, which was exactly what you wanted to do. You wanted Kylo, and you didn’t want to have to be embarrassed or ashamed of it anymore, covering up your feelings for him with hostility and hatred. You had wanted this, somewhere in your being, you had never really let go of the part of you that really wanted to be a family, and the time had finally come for you to get what you wanted.

               “Are you sure?” Kylo asks quietly as he runs his fingertips down your cheek.

               “I want this,” you tell him, leaning forward to kiss him again, but he stops you as he cups his hand around your cheek, using his thumb to tilt your chin upright.

               “I know,” he says quietly, his dark eyes gleaming in the dim light of the room. “Now you want this, but what about later, when you decide to hate me again for taking you away from D’Qar?”

               You just let out a heavy breath. “I’ve already-“

               “You haven’t,” Kylo says firmly. “I can still feel you. You still miss _that place_.” You do miss the Resistance base, and all your friends there, but you don’t have to ask if he means Poe. You don’t have to ask if that hurts him. Right now, you can sense how badly Kylo wants you, more than anything, and you don’t have to ask how much it hurts him that he let you go and you moved on with someone else. The only problem was that you hadn’t moved on, not really. You still had wanted Kylo, even when you were with Poe; although you had tried to distract yourself and stuff it down into the background, that ache for him was always there.

               You take his hand and guide it tauntingly up your chest before it finally stops at your temple. “If you’re really not sure, then look for yourself,” you tell him. “I know you can sense how I feel, but if you really have any doubts as to how much I want to be with you, then look. I’m not going to keep anything from you.”

               Kylo smirks but doesn’t push, using his hand to stroke back your hair instead. “You’re too good for me,” he says, as if he can’t believe that you’re coming around to him yourself. “I will do anything for you, I mean that, I can assure you of that.” The way he deliberately sidestepped that hated word _promise_ made your heart glow for a minute. This was Kylo, your Kylo, and for a minute there was nothing in the world that existed but you and him in that bed at that exact moment.

               “I just want you,” you tell him, and while that was hardly a lie, you couldn’t help who else and what else you wanted. But that didn’t mean you were going to get it, and so you pushed it out of your mind as you focused on the way Kylo kissed you, forcefully and gently all at the same time, running his hands over your upper arms before he grabbed the hem of your shirt and pulled it off of you in one fluid motion. You moaned lightly, tauntingly, your voice filled with need, as you trailed your fingertips down his bare chest before he sat up and pressed your chest against his, cradling your neck and chin with one hand again as he ran his thumb over your bottom lip and grabbed your breast with his other hand, kneading it roughly. You moaned and thrust your hips against his as he slipped his thumb just past your lips, into your mouth, and you closed your eyes and obediently sucked as Kylo grunted a low murmur of appreciation. He pulled his thumb out, slowly, wiping the stray saliva against your cheek as he kissed you again, putting one large hand on the nape of your neck as he pulled you in close.

               His fingers squeeze your nipple roughly, toying with it, and you moan into his mouth, before you let your kisses trail down the side of his face, past his jawline, where you begin to suck and nip at his neck, gently at first, but as Kylo pushes down on the back of your head, urging you on, you eagerly bite down, listening to him hiss through gritted teeth. You bite the fleshy bit of skin just beneath his collarbone at the start of his chest and tease it with your teeth, savoring that salty, metallic taste that coats your lower lip as you realize that you’ve drawn blood. You’re nervous, but only for a quick second as you hear Kylo’s tight whine become a contented moan, and you drag your tongue along the mark before you make your way back to Kylo’s mouth again, controlling the kiss as you place your hands on either side of his head.

               Suddenly you can’t take it anymore as you sit up and ease off of him, fighting to get out of your pants while Kylo does the same. You yank them off quickly, freeing your legs as you sit back down on his lap, rubbing the base of his erect staff against your sensitive clit. You moan louder now as you trace your fingertips down his upper arms, wanting him, wanting all of him, but Kylo just pushes you back and hoists your legs over his shoulders, greedily pressing his lips to your entrance as he starts to tease you viciously.

               “Oh, _fuck_ , Kylo.” You bunch up the blankets beneath you in both hands as you thrust your hips forward, urging him on. Kylo is considerably sloppier than usual, using less teeth and more tongue, but as he comes around and nips gently at your clit before applying a rapid burst of suction, you can barely take it. Your vision blackens for a moment and you slam your head back into the pillow as you cry out between gritted teeth, screwing your eyes together as Kylo jams two fingers inside of you. It’s not enough, it’s definitely not enough, and you squirm and kick your legs free of his shoulders as he releases his grip on you.

               You can see surprise flicker across his face, as if he thought you wanted to stop, and you can’t help but laugh as you launch yourself at him, putting one hand on his shoulder and one hand on his dick as you guide it into your soaking entrance. You slam yourself down onto him, suddenly, sinking your teeth into his shoulder and scratching down his back with as much force as you can muster as you do so, and you can hear Kylo’s heavy grunt in your ear as he braces himself through the myriad of sensations. He grabs you by the back of the hair, quite roughly, as he pulls your face away from his shoulder as he tilts your head up, reaching forward to the front of your neck. He licks the hollow in the front of your neck delicately for a moment, making you shiver, before he juts forward and applies a burst of suction that makes you thrust your hips forward as you entangle a hand in the back of his hair.

               “Did you miss this?” he asks as he tenderly runs his fingertips down the side of your neck while planting a vertical line of soft, gently kisses in the other direction, working his way up to your jaw.

               “Mmhmm,” you murmur weakly as he kisses your jawline, jutting his tongue into the hollow where your jawline meets your neck. It’s that sweet spot that you love him touching so fucking much, and suddenly you can’t take it anymore. Abandoning your slow rhythm, you grab him roughly and push him backwards, bracing your hands on his chest as you move up and down along his length. Kylo smirks as he reaches up and grabs a breast in each hand while you move yourself against him, fucking yourself with his cock. It’d been a while since you were on top, and you knew that the fact that he was letting you do it was his subtle way of surrendering at least a little bit of the control that you wanted.

               But you want to kiss him, and that’s impossible at this angle, and Kylo seems to sense how much you want to feel him against you as he sits back up, wrapping his arms around you as you kiss him again, firmly but slowly, as you continue your constant, rapid rhythm. You let out a languid moan as you rest your cheek against his shoulder, wrapping your arms around him as you kiss and suck gently at the bruised skin on the base of his neck, and you can hear Kylo let out a small whimper as he finds his release. His muscles stiffen as he holds you tighter to him, and you close your eyes as you will yourself to find your own release and let go. It takes you more than a few seconds until you find it, struggling to surrender yourself to him, but once you do you collapse onto his chest in a dizzy, sweaty mess. You roll yourself off of him as he murmurs something, but you don’t catch what he says.

               Instead, you roll over onto the pillow and sweep your hair back so that you’re facing him, his face just inches from your own. You’re aware that you’re suddenly not touching and as you reach forward to intertwine your leg with his, you feel a burst of sensation where your skin suddenly makes contact. It feels like a burst of electricity shot through you, and both you and Kylo chuckle awkwardly as your eyes meet each other’s in the dark. You reach forward slowly and trail a fingertip down his face, just admiring him, running the tip of your finger from the bridge of his nose, down along his profile, running it over his bottom lip and ending it just at his chin. He seems to like it, and so you continue, only this time you run your finger in a diagonal down and across, tracing the length of his scar. His forehead creases, just for a moment, as he realizes what you’re doing and avoids your gaze.

               “It’s okay,” you tell him gently. “I love you.” It felt like a simple reminder more than a declaration, and Kylo knows it. His eyes meet yours again as he trails his fingertips down the side of your cheek.

               “I love you,” he says firmly, his dark eyes burning into yours so you know he means it. You know he means it; you don’t question that. He loved you selfishly and obsessively, but there was almost a sort of comfort in that. He would do anything for you, for Ani, and in the end, wasn’t that exactly what you wanted? You had wanted him to be your family, you had wanted him to finally abandon the First Order and put you first, and he was finally doing exactly that. The timing may not have been perfect, but was late really better than never? In your book it was, and as you snuggled up beside him, you were warm, and comfortable, and above all, you were happy. You honestly couldn’t have asked for anything more if you wanted to. Kylo was here, and you were in his arms. At long last, you were finally home.

* * *

 

               Things started to fall into a sort of rhythm after that. Kylo was more openly affectionate with you, even in front of Phasma, and even in front of Ani. You didn’t say anything to him, didn’t feel you needed to say anything. Ani understood by the way you would sit in Kylo’s lap while he would meditate, or the way Kylo would brush your hair back and kiss your neck when he thought Ani wasn’t looking that your relationship had vastly improved. You didn’t want to say that you had gotten back together with him, because you didn’t really know what that word meant. You were here with him, and you were together. He loved you and you loved him, physically and emotionally, and that was the only label that you needed to put on things.

               Although maybe the only reason for that was because there was no one you had to explain your relationship to. Were you just hooking up with Poe? Dating him? Other people would ask, and you’d have to figure out how to answer. Here, you were free to just _be_. You didn’t need to explain anything to Phasma; she knew full well what was going on and you knew she would never really bring herself to pry into your relationship, and Ani was just happy to see you two content and comfortable around each other. In truth, you were still taken in by the newness of Naboo, and how pretty it all was. It felt relaxed here, almost like a dream, and you could imagine you and Kylo and Ani just spending the rest of your lives here, far away from the complexities of the First Order and the Resistance and the Republic and everyone else. Here you could just live out your lives, together, exactly as you wanted. Here, you could be sure that Kylo would never leave you.

               Until one day when you were outside, playing with Ani. He had finally levitated his staff now and you were playing a three-way mental game of catch, teaching Ani how to mentally pass off objects and how to stop objects that were moving towards him in the air. He seemed to be good at _throwing_ objects, which was at least a start, and not really a surprise considering Kylo Ren was his father. For you, it was actually easier to take an object already in motion and stop it rather than lift one and apply the Force to it, but that was just you. You had no idea if that was further symbolic of your light side or dark side traits, but if you were balanced, and Kylo was _trying_ to be balanced, then it only made sense that Ani would also feel an even pull between the light and the dark as well. Ani’s mood swings and tantrums had all but disappeared, and while you were silently thankful for that, you still secretly resented that Kylo hadn’t been there for the worst of it, hadn’t been there when Ani had really needed constant looking after every day and night; he simply hadn’t been there to help you. Others had, Ladson and Sadie had, but that wasn’t their responsibility, and it wasn’t the same. Still, the past was the past, and you appreciated how gentle Kylo was being with you, trying to make up for lost time, trying to prove to you that he would never abandon you again.

               “Ren,” Phasma called as she stepped outside the back door. “I need to confer with you on an urgent matter.”

               “Can’t it wait?” Kylo asks as he turns to look at her. You quickly steal the staff from Ani’s control and thrust it towards his head, stopping it just in time as he turns around. The tip of the staff brushes against Kylo’s nose, and while Ani sits and giggles, Kylo just narrows his eyes at you before he shakes his head. “On second thought.”

               “I was kidding,” you yell after him, playfully, and Kylo turns to shoot a quick smirk in your direction as he heads back inside. “You’re really getting the hang of this, Ani,” you say as you watch your son spin the staff in the air and then move it around in a circle. “Really, you’re doing very well.”

               “Does this mean you’re going to let me play with a blaster again?” Ani asks, and you can’t help but narrow your eyes. The fact that he said _play_ and not _train_ was alarming to your ears. You had let him train with Phasma only once, and Ani had treated it more like a game, firing off shots right and left without any real regard for the target. Phasma, at least, tempered her annoyance, to her credit, but you couldn’t help but be disappointed in Ani; you had expected better, although at least you could be assured that his flip attitude was not something he had learned from Kylo. It didn’t strike you as one of your own traits, either, and so you figured that this was something Ani was growing into entirely on his own.

               “We’ll see,” you say under your breath. If Phasma wanted to train Ani with a blaster again, then that was up to her. You weren’t in any particular hurry to teach Ani how to shoot with one, especially when you couldn’t really imagine a time when he would ever need it here.

Even still, while you were happy here, you could only imagine that there would eventually come a time when you could no longer stay on Naboo, for whatever reason. If the Resistance did show up on your doorstep, Kylo would want to run, but you, what would you do? Would you stay with him or would you go back? Honestly, you couldn’t even be sure, but you figured most of that would depend on Ani. The Resistance base was firmly situated on D’Qar, and you figured that wasn’t going anywhere fast. Kylo, however, could disappear into the galaxy and you’d have no way of knowing where he went off to. At least you had a chance of going back to the Resistance if you ever wanted to, but once Kylo disappeared, you didn’t know how long it would be until you saw him again. Maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe something would happen and you would never see him again. Honestly, a part of you was almost surprised by how much that thought hurt, like a solid ache in your chest that spread from the inside out.

               “It’s almost thirty days,” Ani reminds you, and part of you couldn’t honestly believe that it only took less than a month for you to warm back up to Kylo Ren. Whether it was your suppressed Force bond or your repressed emotions towards him or a combination of the two, you couldn’t be sure, but you were surprised by how quickly you had apparently come around to him nonetheless. “We’re not still going back, are we?”

               “Not unless you want to,” you remind him, and he shakes his head. “We’ll only go back when you want to go back, okay?”

               “I don’t want to go back,” Ani tells you, and you just smile at him. “I don’t think you want to go back either.”

               “Maybe not,” you say with a shrug. “Naboo is pretty, Phasma’s nice, and your dad is-“ You let your voice trail off as you see Ani watching you intently. “-also nice.”

               “Phasma said you are both idiots,” Ani says, wrinkling up his face. “But I think she meant it in a nice way.”

               “Yeah, well,” you say as you shrug. “Everyone can be an idiot sometimes.”

               “Even me?” Ani asks, and you laugh as you shake your head.

               “You have to ask your father that one,” you tell him. “I want to see what he says.”

               As if on cue, Kylo comes back outside, but you can sense some kind of dark, unhappy energy emanating from him that Ani doesn’t seem to pick up on. “Dad,” Ani calls to him, the staff still swirling around in the air. “Dad, am I an idiot?”

               Kylo stops short and quirks his eyebrow up at the question as he looks at you, and you just shrug. Kylo reaches out his hand and the staff instantly drops lifelessly down to the ground before he slowly pushes it over back into Ani’s hands. “Go with Phasma,” he orders, his voice commanding but still trying to be gentle for Ani’s sake. “She’ll instruct you on how to use a blaster again.”

               Ani cheers and doesn’t even look to you for permission as he runs back into the house. You were starting to hate that. Before, you had been Ani’s ultimate authority on everything, but now he was starting to accept his father’s permission as just that, permission, without checking with you first. It wasn’t that you didn’t implicitly trust Kylo so much as you questioned his judgement on certain things, and you couldn’t really see him disagreeing with you on that front. If Kylo hadn’t learned the critical skill of thinking things through by now, you doubted he ever would.

               “We need to talk,” Kylo says sternly as he looks down at you, and you just pat the spot of grass next to where you were sitting.

               “Let’s talk, then,” you tell him, keeping your voice light and casual.

               “Not here,” Kylo says sternly, and he doesn’t even extend a hand to help you up as he turns on his heel and walks back inside. Concerned, you get to your feet and let out a sigh as you cross your arms over your chest and follow him inside the house, heading up the stairs leading to your bedroom.

               “So what’s going on?” you ask as you brush your hair out of your face with one hand. “I can feel you, and I can tell you’re concerned, so just talk to me. What’s going on?”

               Kylo shifts uncomfortably as he runs a large hand through his hair. “I need to leave.”

               You blink at him.

               _What?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What? _What?_ Just when it looks like everything is going to be okay and Reader and Kylo are finally back together and _happy_ , something has to happen. This is Star Wars, and while the galaxy is never quiet, you'd think they'd be able to afford more than a month of rest...but alas. 
> 
> So Kylo has to go...and considering that the Reader's number one fear is that Kylo is going to leave her - again - the only real way he can really prove to her that he will never abandon her again is by leaving...and coming back. No spoilers, but if you're worried that I'm going to pull another part 2 and have Kylo disappear for years and years again, I would definitely _not_ be concerned about that. Kylo's back and he's here to stay. Well, I mean, you know. Right after he goes off and does...this quick thing...
> 
> But where is he going? Is he back in with the First Order again? How long will he be gone for? Two days? A week? Can the Reader and Ani go with him? Is it bring your child to work day at the First Order? Check back in on Saturday to find out!! Until then, cheers!!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW content ahead

               He couldn’t be serious. After you had just spent a month warming up to him, now he was just going to take off and go? What about you? What about Ani? Did that mean that you were going to be headed back to the Resistance after all? You have a million questions, but the only word that escapes your lips is a tight, pain-stricken, “Why?”

               Kylo sighs as he hears the pain in your voice and you can see your own despair reflected in his dark eyes. “I don’t want to go,” he tells you. “But it’s imperative that I do so.” You close your eyes and turn away from him. “It’s only for a short while, though, I will return to you.”

               “Oh yeah,” you snap bitterly. “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.” You turn back to him angrily. “And I suppose this has something to do with the First Order again?”

               “Yes,” Kylo confirms immediately, and although you appreciate the fact that he’s answering your questions quickly and directly, you can’t help but be incensed by the circumstances all the same.

               “I thought you had left that all behind you,” you exclaim as you spread your arms out at your sides. “I thought it was just going to be you and me and Ani from here on out.”

               “I want it to be,” Kylo insists. “But it’s not that simple. Right now with Snoke gone and Hux in hiding, Phasma is having trouble maintaining a hold on the fractured legions of troops that she’s set up. She fears that a specific few are scheming to take advantage of the division and are attempting to take power for themselves, and we need to show them that there is still a hierarchy in the First Order, that we are still in charge.”

               “That _you’re_ still in charge,” you say flatly. “Right, of course, I should have known-“

               “Do you really want scattered factions of Storm Troopers roving the galaxy, each group attempting to gain power for themselves?” Kylo asks. “We’re doing our best to contain it early, so I can come back here and stay with you and help from a distance.”

               “So you never gave up the First Order,” you say with a sigh. “I should have known.”

               “This is the legacy I created,” Kylo snaps. “I have worked with the First Order for years and I can’t turn my back on that now. Even without my mask, everywhere I go, people will see this scar and know my face. I can’t simply hide away forever.” He lowers his voice slightly, almost placating, as he tries a different approach. “Think about Ani-“

               “What about him?” you ask bitterly. “What about the fact that I have to tell him that you’re going, that you’re leaving us, _again_? How can he be sure that you’re ever going to come back?”

               “I will come back,” Kylo says firmly. “I don’t know how long it will be-“ You scoff reproachfully. “But it will be no more than two weeks, I-“ He hesitates, just on the verge of a promise. “If it takes longer, I will send someone. I will let you know how I am, or I’ll, I’ll come back myself, let Phasma take care of the rest.”

               “Why don’t you just let her take care of all of it now?” you ask. “She’s more than capable-“

               “Phasma has been managing almost everything so far,” Kylo says, his face suddenly twisting into a dark smile. “Her loyalty and commitment to the First Order is really more than Hux could have ever hoped for, but she cannot do everything alone. Besides, they will need to see raw power to make them understand that we are still the ultimate authority, that there is still a First Order to unite behind.”  

               “So you’re going to find the people that are attempting to take over, and do what exactly?” you ask. “Run them through with your lightsaber? Force choke them to death? And what will that do? Do you really think that will suddenly make them all just bow down and step in line?”

               “Fear can be a powerful motivator,” Kylo says with a shrug, as if he doesn’t seem entirely put off by the idea, and you can’t help but roll your eyes.

               “What is wrong with you?” you demand before you shake your head in frustration. No, you weren’t going to get into this sort of a fight with Kylo. That wasn’t what you wanted. You knew what you wanted, and if you wanted to get it, you were going to have to ask for it, directly. “No, if you are insisting on going, then you are taking us with you.”

               “It is _far_ too dangerous for Ani,” Kylo says firmly. “And if I recall, you said you were never going to leave his side.”

               “Well I can’t just leave him here alone,” you say as you shake your head again, crossing your arms over your chest. What he was saying was sensible, but you didn’t want him to go. You didn’t want him to leave you, not again. “You’re not going,” you tell him, just as firmly. “If you do, Ani and I will leave, and head back to the Resistance.”

               “Fine,” Kylo snaps, and you can’t help but let your jaw drop as you stare up at him. “Fine, go, if you must,” Kylo tells you, the intimation of a sneer rising up into his voice. “But I’d like to know how you plan to leave the planet’s atmosphere. Where were you planning on getting your ship?”

               “You’d leave one,” you tell him. “In case something happened to me and Ani while you were away, you’d probably have some secret ship hidden away in some nearby location so that we could get off the planet if we needed to.”

               Kylo’s nostrils flare and you can see his rage building. “Did Phasma tell you about that?”

               “She didn’t need to,” you reply, reflecting his anger back at him. “I don’t know if it’s because I know you so well or what, but every move you make is _so_ fucking _transparent_.”

               “If I’m so transparent,” Kylo says, lowering his voice slightly. “Then you know that I’m going to come back.”

               “It’s not that simple,” you say as you shake your head from side to side. “Something can happen to you, or, I don’t know, the Resistance could capture you again.”

               “And then you know right where to find me,” Kylo says, and suddenly his voice is gentle. “If something happens to me, and I’m not back within a month, go back to your academia. You should be safe there. I’ll leave instructions-“

               “Wow,” you snap sarcastically, unable to believe what you were hearing. “Go back and wait for me again on the planet where I left you waiting on my return for _five_ years. Yeah, that sounds like a _great_ plan.”

               “It wasn’t five years,” Kylo says dismissively.

               “You’re right, it was longer.” You suddenly have the urge to slap him, and it takes everything in your power not to. You would not cave and resort to violence just like Kylo would. He kept saying you were better than him, and if you really were, you had to act like it.

               “I don’t want you to go,” you say firmly, although there is a palpable twinge of weakness in your voice.

               “I know,” Kylo says softly, sadly.

               “Like, things just got better between us,” you tell him, your anger weakening. “Like, I finally thought that things could start to go back to normal again, or as normal as they could be, and then you’re just suddenly going to walk out on me?”

               “I’m not walking out on you,” Kylo says firmly. “But I have to do this. I don’t have a choice.”

               “Bullshit,” you tell him. “You have a choice and you’re choosing the First Order over Ani and me. Again.”

               “But I’m not,” Kylo insists. “I have to go and take care of things, but I’ll be back.” Your lower lip quivers, and Kylo quickly grabs hold of your face in both hands. “I’ll be back.” He kisses you, firmly, and you can’t help but respond to it. He pushes you back up against the wall and pins you there with his hips, never once breaking the kiss.

               “Tell me you’ll come back,” you pant into his open mouth. “Promise me.”

               “I thought. You didn’t. Like. Promises,” Kylo says, his words broken by the kisses that he was trailing down your neck as his hand moved underneath your shirt.

               “This way I know you mean it,” you tell him. “This way I know you _will_ come back.”

               As much as you don’t want him to, Kylo stops kissing you and pulls away so that he can look you in the eye. “I promise you, I am going to come back,” he says, and you can’t take it anymore as you lunge yourself at him, wrapping your arms around his neck as you press your lips together. You need him, you need him to stay, and although you know he’s going to go, again, for some reason you think if you can please him enough that he’ll stay, that he won’t go anywhere. You kiss him roughly, using your teeth to skim along his jaw, before you take a nip at his earlobe and tug at it, testing the sensitive flesh there between your teeth.

               Kylo adjusts his positioning as he puts a hand firmly on your abdomen before he slides it into the waistband of your pants, slipping two fingers inside of you. You pant as you roll your hips, thrusting yourself against him, savoring the contact as he presses his lips delicately against yours. He doesn’t kiss you, just holds them there for a minute, savoring of the feeling of you panting against him as he feels you growing hot and slick and desperate against his fingers. “I’m ready,” you murmur against his lips. “Please, just, _now_.”

               “Beg me for it,” Kylo whispers as he brushes his lips across your cheek to your ear where he releases a hot breath that makes you groan out in frustration.

               “You’re going to pull this shit now?” you ask him. “Really, now?”

               “Beg me,” Kylo warns, and you can feel his teeth gently nip into your earlobe as you quiver against the rapid pulse of his fingers inside of you. Your brain was too foggy to think, but perhaps he needed this. Perhaps he needed to hear you beg him to let him know that he was in control, that you were his, that you weren’t going anywhere. As much as you didn’t want him to leave, he had no idea that you wouldn’t just take Ani and run as soon as his ship ascended through Naboo’s atmosphere.

               “Please, Kylo,” you beg him. You pull his fingers out of you, as much as it pains you to do it, and quickly drop to your knees in front of him as you pull down his pants and let his erection spring free. Kylo lets out an appreciative hum as he puts his fingers into his mouth to taste your sticky juices, which is only furthered as you take his length into your mouth, bobbing your head back and forth along his shaft. Kylo’s free hand immediately finds its way to the top of your head where he strokes you softly, gently, just the way you like it, and the sensation is almost more than you can take. Slowly, without him noticing, you slip one of your hands between your thighs and insert one finger inside of you. It wasn’t the same as when Kylo did it, but something was still better than nothing as you teased your clit with the edge of your thumb as you continue to suck his cock.

               “Mm,” Kylo murmurs as he looks down at you. “Do you really want me that badly?”

               “Yes,” you pant. “Please, please, Kylo, yes.”

               Satisfied, he picks you up and lays you down on the bed, face-down, with your ass hanging over the edge. You were close, you were so, so close, and you can feel Kylo positioning himself at your entrance before he thrusts into you without any sort of warning or preamble. You cry out and scoot yourself a little ways off the bed as he holds your hips steady with one hand, strong enough to leave a bruise, while the other hand finds its way to your clit where he starts to tease you softly with his fingertips.

               “Oh _fuck_ ,” you groan, biting into the blankets to keep from crying out.

               “I can’t hear you,” Kylo muses from behind you, and the pressure against your clit stops as his rhythm slows.

               “No, Kylo, don’t stop,” you cry out, pushing yourself up on your elbows so you could give yourself at least some distance between yourself and the bed. He pushes into you a little faster, but ignores your clit as he runs his hand along the swell of your ass, pinching the skin there, and you whimper from beneath him.

               “Kylo, _please_ -?”

               “Yes?” he asks, and his cocky, superior tone does strange things to your insides.

               “ _Touch me_ ,” you say through gritted teeth. Kylo knew full well what he was doing to you as he just runs a finger along your spine, teasing you further.

               “Where?”

               “You know-“

               “Tell me where,” he says, and you bite your lip as you scrunch your eyes shut.

               “Kylo, I swear to _fuck-_ “

               Kylo suddenly runs two fingers over your swollen clit before he starts teasing you, gently, with his fingertips, and you can’t suppress the noises that you’re making, urging him on, urging him to go faster, to fuck you harder, to keep touching you and teasing you in the way that only he could. When you finally do find your release, you are sweaty, and out of breath, and your body is aching. You take a glance down at your side where you can clearly see the outline of a Kylo-shaped handprint in your flesh, and you close your eyes as you collapse down on the bed, waiting for Kylo to curl up beside you.

               “See you can’t go,” you murmur idly as he wraps his arms around you. “You’ll miss me too much.”

               “I will,” Kylo agrees, and he smooths your hair back as you bury your face in his chest. “But I’ll come back, and by the time I do, you’ll be dripping for me.”

               “Oh, fuck you,” you murmur into his chest, but you’re too exhausted to let your words have any real venom behind them.

               Suddenly there’s a knock on the door, and although you’re too tired to move, you can feel Kylo’s muscles stiffen around you, and at least he has the sense to quickly reach forward and pull up a blanket to cover the both of you, just as the door opens a crack. “Mom? Dad?” You bite your lip as you look up at Kylo to keep from giggling nervously, and Kylo quickly puts his hand over your mouth to stifle your sounds.

               “What?” Kylo asks. His voice is firm and authoritative, but you can sense him weakening as you close your eyes and lick at the tender skin of his palm.

               “Are you okay?” Ani asks quietly, and there’s silence for a moment as the door opens and Kylo releases his hand from over your mouth and drapes it protectively over your body as you roll over onto your back.

               “What did I tell you, they’re fine,” Phasma says as she glances down at him. She glances back up at the both of you, cuddled together in bed under the one small blanket, and you feel yourself literally shrivel under her gaze. “The sounds you were making are not fit for a child’s ears,” she scolds. “Honestly.”

               “Why were you not in the basement?” Kylo asks, and Phasma rolls her eyes.

               “The boy was hungry,” she says firmly. “And I’ll be making dinner shortly if you two would like to get dressed and join us.” You cover your face with your arm, trying to hide your embarrassment.

               “We’ll be down shortly,” Kylo assures her, and you’re glad he does, because you don’t think you can speak right now.

               “See, Ani, what did I tell you?” Phasma asks as she shuts the door behind her. “Idiots.”

               You turn back to Kylo and snicker before you press your lips against his. He seems a little more apprehensive than before, but quickly melts into your touch as he wraps his arms around you and lets you kiss him, his hands languidly stroking the soft skin of your back. “We should probably tell Ani what’s going on,” you tell him quietly. “Together.”

               “I can tell him myself,” Kylo assures you. “I don’t want him picking up on anything you’re feeling and getting concerned.”

               “He’s really getting good at that, huh?” you ask idly as Kylo smooths back your hair.

               “Probably gets that from you,” he murmurs under his breath as he settles down beneath you.

               You kiss his shoulder and run your lips along his smooth skin, taking him in. You feel a cloud of depression settle over you, and you feel colder, although absolutely nothing has changed from this moment to the last, except for the fact that you realized that Kylo would be gone soon, and might never return. “Hey,” Kylo says quietly as he cups your cheek in his palm. “I’m coming back.”

               “Please,” you breathe, and it’s different from all the times that you had just yelled it previously. You needed Kylo to stay, because you didn’t know how you’d handle the disappointment if he left. You could always go back to the Resistance, but how would things ever be the same? You had slowly opened yourself up to the thought of loving Kylo again, to spending the rest of your life with him, and now that you had, all of that was in jeopardy of being ripped away again.

               He takes your face in both hands and forces you to look at him, really look at him. “I’m coming back,” he repeats. “I won’t leave you again, I promise.” The word echoes around your head for a moment, and that’s when you realize he’s not just talking to you, he’s also channeling it through the Force, into your head, making sure that you really and truly understand that he _is_ going to come back. You know it’s supposed to comfort you, but it only reminds you of the fact that he can’t know that for sure.

               “It’s fine,” you tell him gently. “I mean, either way I’ve still got Ani, right? So it’ll be fine. A little over a month ago I didn’t think I’d see you ever again anyway, so-“ Kylo grabs you and kisses you so hard you can’t breathe for a moment as he holds your face in both of his large hands.

               “I love you,” he tells you firmly. “I’m leaving just this one time, just this once, but-“              

               “But there’ll be other times,” you say softly. Kylo looks uncertain, but you just nod your head in affirmation. “It’s going to start with just this once, but then they’ll need you for other stuff, and then you’ll be gone again.” You shrug your shoulders. “I wish we could work something out. Like maybe I stay at the Resistance while you’re gone, and then when you’re back you could let me know somehow, and then I could come back-“

               Kylo lets out a sigh and he doesn’t even need to say anything for you to know he’s right. That would never work. While you were here, safe and secluded, it was almost easy to forget that the Republic wanted to capture him almost as much as they wanted him dead. They would only use you as a pawn to lead you to him again, or worse, keep you prisoner in the hopes that Kylo would come back for you. In either case, neither way would end up being favorable for either of you. “I’ll stay here,” you tell him with resolution in your voice. “I’ll stay here and wait for you. I don’t like it and you know I don’t but, you know, if I want to stay with you I don’t really have much of a choice, do I?”

               “You do have a choice,” Kylo says softly, slowly, as if he almost doesn’t even want to make you aware of that fact. “You can-“

               He doesn’t even need to say it. You weren’t going to leave him, especially not after how happy you had been in these past two weeks. “I’m not leaving,” you tell him firmly. “I’m staying here, I chose you.” You meet his eyes again. “I choose you.”

               Kylo pulls you down slowly, gently, to kiss him again, and you relax in his arms, taking in the feeling of his soft, warm skin beneath your hands as day turns to dusk outside and you can hear dinner being made downstairs. “We should get down,” Kylo tells you.

               “Eventually,” you say teasingly as you kiss him one more time. “Yeah, we should.” You sit up and brush your hair out of your face, stretching your neck from side to side to ease the stiffness in your muscles. “I’m glad Ani’s helping out Phasma with dinner again.”

               “Oh?” Kylo asks as he pulls on his pants.

               “Well,” you say with an idle shrug as you start to get dressed yourself. “I mean, I still can’t cook for shit. I never learned how, but it’s something maybe Ani should at least ought to know.”

               “You can always learn,” Kylo offers. “I’m sure when we get back, Phasma would be more than happy to-“

               “Eh,” you say loudly as you roll your shoulders back. “I mean, probably, but it’s just one of those things that I’ve sort of given up on. It’s a skill that I’d _like_ to have, but I literally have no interest in pursuing it.”

               Kylo raises an eyebrow at you. “So if it’s not a natural skill you’ve acquired, it’s not worth the effort to learn?”

               You pause and think about it. You were gifted with being able to harness the capabilities of the Force. The Force made you lucky, which made you naturally able to wield a blaster. The Force gave you limited foresight, which helped you to be a better pilot. The Force gave you better response times, which helped you in combat, and it also was what allowed you to summon and wield a lightsaber. It was even the Force that bound you to Kylo Ren in the first place, the Force that allowed you to have your son, and for a moment you were dismayed by the fact that all that you were, all that you are or ever would be, was a product of the Force. Even when you had been an interpreter, you had only been skilled at that because you had subconsciously been able to pick up on the thoughts and impressions of other people, which helped you read their body language to better discern their meaning. The Force had been with you all along, even when you hadn’t been consciously aware of how to harness its full potential.

               “Hey,” Kylo says softly as he senses your thoughts. “You have a gift, a natural advantage-“

               “I know,” you say quickly. “I just, I don’t know, I always thought I worked really hard to do, well, _anything_ , but suddenly I feel like I haven’t done anything myself, that it’s just the Force that’s doing everything and I’m just taking all the credit.”

               “The Force doesn’t control everything,” Kylo tells you. “Even with the Force bond, you didn’t have to stay. You could have left.”

               “I know,” you say quickly. “But I mean, is that all I am? Just a product of the Force?”

               “We all are,” Kylo tells you. “Everyone has the Force to some extent, but only a few are really capable of harnessing its full potential. Think about when I first met you on the Starkiller Base, do you remember how innocent you were back then?”

               “Innocent,” you echo with a smirk, and Kylo laughs as he takes a step closer to you.

               “You didn’t know how to control what you didn’t know you had,” Kylo says. “But you did, and you learned, quickly. You focused and you applied yourself. You wanted to be stronger-“

               “I _had_ to be stronger,” you remind him.

               “So you needed to be-” Kylo says with a shrug, “-given your situation, but you also could have just accepted your circumstances. The fact that you didn’t says more about you than the Force does.” You just look away uncomfortably, but Kylo tilts your chin up so he can meet your eyes. “Remember when I came in here and you were levitating slightly off the bed?”

               “Yes,” you say as you nod your head.

               “Could you do that back on the Starkiller Base?” Kylo asks you.

               “No,” you admit. “No, Rey had to teach me how to do that.”

               “The Force didn’t provide you with that ability,” Kylo tells you. “It was a skill that you learned, that you had to teach yourself, not out of necessity for survival, but because you, yourself, wanted to become stronger.”

               You bite your lip as you look up at him. “So you were impressed with me.”

               Kylo looks taken aback, but quickly recovers himself as his lip pulls upwards into a smirk. “Of course I am,” he says softly. “I always am.”

               Whether by the Force or the intimation in his voice, you can hear that he means it, he really means it. It makes you think back to Poe, who always had such resolute faith in your abilities, that they were yours because you earned them, and not just because the Force had provided them to you. Thinking about Poe shifts your thoughts in a whole different direction, and before you can even stop yourself you think about how Kylo hadn’t yet commented on the stone around your neck that you refused to take off.

               That, of course, brings his attention right to it. “You never take that off,” he observes as he casts his eyes down to get a look at it. “Who gave that to you?”

               “It was a gift,” you manage. “Back at the Resistance base.”

               “Hmm,” Kylo takes a few steps forward and puts two fingers around the stone, lifting it up off your chest as he leans in to get a better look. You don’t move, afraid that the slightest squirm will give something away, but Kylo suddenly surprises you by grabbing it in his fist as he sweeps it up and off your head.

               “No-“ You exclaim suddenly, lunging forward, but Kylo just holds up his hand to stop you and you’re frozen in place as he walks over to the window as he observes it in the natural light. You immediately free your limbs but stay still, watching him helplessly as he dangles it in front of his face at eye level. “There’s nothing special about it,” you tell him. “It’s just a stone.”

               “Then why do you never take it off?” Kylo asks, and you don’t have a good answer for that. “Who gave it to you?” You don’t have an answer for that either. Kylo smirks as he turns back to look at you. “The scavenger?”

               Your mind momentarily clouds over with confusion. _Rey?_

               “No,” you say firmly, as you meet his eyes, and that’s when the realization hits him. His face sours and suddenly he takes the stone in one large hand and squeezes it. “No…” You can feel the jealousy, the silent, fuming rage coursing through him and for a moment you imagine that he’s completely crushed the stone to bits in his hand. The feeling, though, is gone almost as quickly as it had come, and you’re almost not sure you had felt anything at all as Kylo walks back over to you and slips the stone back around your neck, pulling your hair out of the cord with one hand. You stare at the floor at his feet, utterly mystified, as he reaches down and kisses your forehead.

               “Keep it,” he tells you. You want to ask him why, but you quickly realize it’s a pointless question. He was trying to show you that he could be better for you than Poe was, although it wasn’t exactly hard to be when you didn’t know if there was ever a chance of you seeing Poe again. Even still, the fact that you were still wearing it was something that you had to figure out on your own. Was it a symbol of Poe’s unconditional support, a symbol of all of your time spent at the Resistance, or was it something else entirely? You couldn’t deny the dull ache in your chest every time you thought his name, and although it thankfully didn’t come up when you were being intimate with Kylo, sometimes when you were alone you couldn’t help but think about him, and, almost regretfully, wish that he was here with you, just to talk to, just to have someone listen to you and offer their unconditional support. Kylo was trying to do that, and it showed, and it helped, a bit, but you weren’t sure if it could ever really be the same.

               You reach up to kiss him, softly, gently, and he reaches down and takes your hand and intertwines his fingers with your own as he reaches up and kisses the back of your knuckles. “We should get down,” he says gently, and you just nod your head as you follow him out of the room and down the steps into the kitchen.

               At dinner that night, the food is good and Ani is anxious to tell you all about the fun he had playing with a blaster. Kylo smiled when he talked to him and ribbed and bantered playfully with Phasma, and it was good. You were happy, at least, you should have been. You weren’t sure if it was the news of Kylo’s impending departure or just the natural ebb and flow of your emotions, but you couldn’t help but think about what Poe was doing right now. Was he eating dinner? Was he still looking for you? After a month, had the search been called off for good?

               Had he moved on, or was he still thinking of you too?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Kylo hasn't taken off _quite_ yet. He still feels obligated to assist the First Order, especially in light of how much Phasma seems to be doing behind the scenes to make sure that there is still a First Order to go back to, but what will happen when Kylo and Phasma take off to assist the First Order? Will the Reader try to get some word out to Poe to at least let him know that she's safe? Will she take the ship that Kylo plans on leaving for her and head back to the Resistance? Will she decide that she really does want to be with Kylo and turn her back on the Resistance for good, despite how much she misses everyone there? Or will something else happen that I haven't mentioned because of spoilery reasons? 
> 
> Guess you'll just have to check back on Tuesday to find out!! ;) Until then, cheers!!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW content ahead (yes, again!! xD)

               The night before Kylo left, he and Ani went for a walk outside to talk about why he had to go. It seemed to be something he wanted to talk to Ani about himself, and so you let him have that conversation. It seemed only fair, considering Ani was too young to understand the circumstances surrounding his departure the last time he left. You knew Kylo would return, eventually, or rather, you hoped he would. He _planned_ on returning, you were able to sense that much, and it was something that you hadn’t been able to conclude with any real certainty when he had left before. Either way, you could assume that he wanted to talk to Ani about it, to assure him that he wasn’t abandoning him again, to make sure that Ani knew he wouldn’t have to grow up without him, and you didn’t want to get in the way of that father-son bonding moment.

               You knew you were going to have a bonding moment of your own when Kylo returned, and nothing confirmed that idea more than when Kylo came into your room, immediately walking over to you and wrapping his arms around you as he pressed his lips against yours. You wanted to take things further, you more than wanted to, but you held off for a minute as you pulled away. You wanted to talk to him first. “So how did Ani take it?” you ask softly. “I want to make sure he’s going to be okay while you’re gone.”

               “He understands,” Kylo says softly, letting out a heavy exhale. “All things considered. He knows that I’m coming back.” He brushes a stray strand of hair out of your face, tucking it behind your ear. “I told him he’ll just have more time to spend with you, to keep up his Force training. He wants to be as strong as I am by the time I return.”

               “Oh, I think that’s definitely doable,” you say sarcastically, trying to keep the mood light, although you bite your lip before you venture to ask your next question. “By the way, do you think that I’m stronger than you?” Kylo raises his eyebrows in surprise, and you can tell he hadn’t expected this question at all. “I don’t know, I’ve always just kind of wondered, considering all the Force training I’ve had with Rey-“

               “Do you want to find out?” he asks, and you consider it for a moment, thinking it over in your head. You could only imagine heading out into the dusk of Naboo with your lightsabers in hand, battling it out over the wet grass until you eventually tossed your lightsabers aside and started to spar like you used to. It was a familiar memory, a happy memory, but in the end you decided against it. It was going to be his last night here, and you didn’t want to accidently do anything that might set him off and ignite his anger. You knew that he was _probably_ stronger than you, but you didn’t know what he might do if you started to gain the upper hand and start taking the fight more seriously than you had intended. You and Rey had always been cautious when you sparred, making sure to take the proper precautions, but you weren’t completely sure that Kylo’s lightsaber could be dimmed, or set to any mode that wasn’t lethal.

               Kylo frowns, as if he’s reading your thoughts, and if he is, he knows that you’re scared that his lightsaber is going to claim one of your limbs. “We’ll be careful,” he insists. “I can control myself.”

               You just smirk and let out a small laugh as you glance down and then back up at him, your expression suddenly shy as you let a new thought come to you. “You really think this is going to work?”

               He tilts his head to the side in confusion. “What’s going to work?”

               “Well, I mean…” You let your voice trail off as you roll your shoulders back, stretching out the stiff muscles in the side of your neck. “Not between us, I guess I just don’t see how you can go back to the First Order.” He looks like he’s about to speak, but you hold up a hand to show that you weren’t done speaking. “I know, I know you need to intimidate them into obedience, or whatever, but you’re just not that scary, to me, at least, but I don’t know, maybe that’s just me.”

               “Do you want me to scare you?” Kylo’s lip quirks upward in amusement and you can’t help but laugh.

               “You know I don’t,” you concede. “But I’m just saying, you don’t have your helmet anymore. How are you going to intimidate people without the voice distortion thing making your voice all low and grumbly?”

               “I think I’ll manage,” Kylo says, dropping his voice so low that you have to purse your lips together to contain yourself.

               “I guess the scar helps,” you offer, but Kylo just narrows his eyes as he looks away, and you can’t help but pout at his reaction. You knew he was sensitive about his scar, and it felt like your heart was splintering down the middle every time you saw his reaction when you mentioned it, even if you didn’t mean anything by it. “It just makes you look like someone who’s seen a lot of stuff and has been in a lot of battles, that’s all. The fact that you can take a blow like that and still live says something, that you’re not someone to be messed with.”

               Kylo just rolls his shoulders as he glances away, and you know not to push things any further. Although you knew some men probably wore their scars with a sense of pride, you knew Kylo didn’t like the scar across his face any more than he liked talking about the soft spot on his side that Chewie left him after he had killed Han Solo, the bruise that never truly healed properly. “So you think I’m not intimidating enough to restore order?”

               “Oh, I think you can be intimidating,” you say quickly, trying to reassure him. “You’re just not like that, not around me, not that I really want you to be but-” You let your voice trail off as a sudden thought occurs to you, and you quickly clap your hands and widen your stance. “Do it. Do it right now.” Kylo just raises his eyebrows and shakes his head like he doesn’t quite understand what you want him to do. “Intimidate me. Be scary.”

               Kylo shakes his head. “You know I can’t, not around you.”

               “Try it,” you say, hitting his shoulder lightly. “I want to see it, come on, let me see the rage.” Kylo just shakes his head, and you can’t help but smirk as you try to goad him on. “Hey, I need to see this, okay? I need to see that you can still be the fearless Kylo Ren who storms about the galaxy and instills fear in the hearts of men at a single glance. It’s that Kylo Ren that I know is going to make it back to me.”

               Kylo’s dark eyes flash, and you can tell that you touched a nerve. He knew how much it meant to you to have reassurance that he would, in fact, return and he would do anything, absolutely anything, to prove that to you. “I will have order,” he snaps, his face twisting into a snarl, and the look of pure contempt and rage on his face actually puts you almost in awe of him, at how quickly he can summon his anger and contort his features in such a way that you almost feel terrified of him yourself when you had been laughing beside him only moments ago. You had no idea how he was able to channel his presence in such a way that you suddenly felt like you were talking to a whole different Kylo Ren, but it was good to see that at least he was still the powerful leader that the First Order expected him to be.

               “You will obey me,” Kylo continues, taking a few steps towards you, and you can’t help but smirk as he grabs you around the neck, applying light pressure with his fingers. “You will _submit_ to me.” You let out a deep breath as you let your eyes close for just a moment, feeling desire start to pool hot and thick inside you. “Is it working?”

               His voice is low, deliciously low, and you know he’s doing it on purpose as you bite your lip and grin up at him, completely unable to help yourself. “Yeah, I think that’s pretty good,” you tell him, almost a bit breathlessly. “Although is it bad that I almost miss your mask? I used to hate it but now I almost miss that low grumbly sound you used to make.”

               “I can make another one,” he tells you, running his fingertips up and down your neck. “If you want.”

               “Maybe,” you tell him. “For protection.”

               “Mmhmm.”

               “And intimidation.”

               “Mm.”

               “And…recreational…purposes…”

               He has you down on the bed in an instant, his hands on either side of your head, cheeks brushing against your thumbs as he kisses you more firmly than you think he ever has before. You wrap your legs around his waist as he pins you to the bed, tilting your chin up with one hand so he can kiss and suck at your neck, being as forceful and aggressive as possible without outright hurting you.

               “Trying to leave a mark?” you ask breathlessly as one of your hands fists in his hair.

               “Give you. Something. To. Remember me. By,” Kylo murmurs against your warm skin, and you can’t help but emit a murmur of pleasure as you let him take full control. You supposed he needed to feel in control right now, needed to mark you as his own, needed to leave you two weeks’ worth of love bites and bruises so that you couldn’t possibly forget who you belonged to. Not that you needed the reminder, and truth be told you kind of liked how it felt when he sucked this hard, but you were concerned about what Ani would say if he turned your entire neck an ugly shade of red and purple. One or two marks were fine, but if he saw what Kylo was capable of doing to you in the past, then he would probably start asking questions that you really didn’t want to answer.

               “Maybe not the neck,” you tell him gently. “Think of Ani.”

               Kylo just growls as he nips at the skin just beneath your shoulder blade, but relaxes as he considers your point. Instead, he lifts your shirt up over your head, and at first you think he’s going to take it off of you completely, but no, he just lifts it up and over your arms so that it’s covering your face as he pushes you back down on the bed. You scooch the fabric up so that at least your mouth is free, but Kylo doesn’t seem to notice as he grabs one breast firmly in one hand while he starts his rapid assault on the other, licking your erect nipple with his tongue before he starts to suck on the swell of your breast, nipping at the fragile skin between his teeth.

               You can’t really see much through the admittedly thin material, and so you close your eyes as you take in the sensation of his mouth against your breast, of your hips desperately trying to get whatever sort of contact they can against him. You wanted him, you wanted him so badly, and now he was going to be going again, leaving, and you didn’t know how to feel about that, especially when you knew it was more than possible that you might never see him again.

               _I’m coming back._ You can hear Kylo’s voice in your head, and it’s comforting, and warm, and you allow yourself to trust it as he continues to kiss you, his lips working their way down your abdomen. You quiver as his lips grace the sensitive area just underneath your navel, and Kylo pauses his descent to plant a slow, fleeting kiss against your lips that leaves you wanting more. You can’t see him with the thin material still stretched over your face, but you let it enhance your other senses as Kylo slowly pulls off your pants. You can feel every bit of it, the way his fingertips curve around your hips, and the warmth of his hands against your thighs as he slides them off, exceedingly slowly and gently. You whimper and buck your hips, waiting, waiting…

               You can’t see him, and you figure he must love this, leaving you desperate and hungry for him as he takes his time, building up the anticipation. Suddenly you feel his hand close around your calf as he languidly rolls his tongue up your inner thigh, and you shudder beneath him, shudder at the contact and the sensations flooding through your skin. You lick your lower lip slowly, eager to feel his taste again, as Kylo gently, tenderly, licks your clit, using just the tip of his tongue. You can’t help but audibly whimper between him, bucking your hips up towards his face, but he just pulls away as he places a hand on the outside of your thigh. Even that small amount of contact is more than you can bear, as you press your leg into the warmth of his hand, desperate to feel as much of him as possible.

               “I want to tease you,” he admits. “But I’m concerned it will just make you sad.”

               He has a point. The slower he goes, the more you are going to be focused on the fact that he’s going to be leaving soon, and trying to memorize every sensation as much as you possibly can. “Take me quickly, then.” He growls as he nips at the area just to the right of your entrance hungrily, and you buck your hips up involuntarily as a pleasurable burst of pain shoots through your core. Kylo wastes no time circling you with his tongue before he starts to lick you clean, sucking and kissing while you take deep breaths in through the fabric. Suddenly he’s beside you, kissing you, letting your juices drip into your mouth as he envelopes you with wet, sloppy kisses. You gasp at the sudden contact, and arch your back up from the bed as he suddenly sticks a finger into you, teasing your clit with his thumb. You moan and gasp beneath him, but it’s suddenly gotten difficult to breathe with Kylo’s mouth over your own and the fabric over your nose, and so you quickly wrestle with your hands to free them as you eventually yank the fabric off and over your head.

               You inhale a deep breath through your nostrils as you embrace him now, one hand trailing his side while the other runs through his hair. You honestly loved touching his hair, you couldn’t get enough of how thick it was, how it just seemed to part naturally through your spread fingers, and you supposed the reason why you were thinking about this more than usual was because he would be going so soon. Kylo seems to sense this and adds a finger, thrusting at a more rapid pace, and you pull away slightly to take in a deep breath as your fingers find his cock. You hadn’t realized when he had taken off his clothes, probably when you were blindfolded by your own shirt, but you didn’t mind one bit as you ran your hand up and down his firm length, trailing your thumb over the drop of precum that had collected at the head. You lean your head back slightly as you put your thumb in your mouth, pressing the salty taste of his cum onto your tongue, and Kylo bites his lip as he watches you, his dark eyes reflecting the little light that was in the room.

               You look into his eyes, really look, and suddenly feel quite small beneath him, and it’s almost as if time stops. You can still feel the sensation of him pumping into you, but it seems almost detached as you look at him, and it’s like you’re connecting on a completely different level. You don’t just feel drawn to him, it’s stronger than that, and for some reason looking into his eyes like this almost makes you feel lightheaded. _Is this the Force bond?_ you ask quietly, reaching out with your mind.

               You know Kylo feels it too, knows he’s affected, simply by the way you see the brief intimation of fear pass over his features. “I love you,” he breathes. You’re not expecting him to say it, especially not in that desperate, pleading voice, and for a moment you let shock consume you as he kisses you again, frantically, as his fingers continue to pump in and out of you. You feel dizzy at the way he kisses you, hungry and fervent, trapping your lower lip loosely between both of his as he pulls it away with a hungry growl, sinking his teeth into the corner of your lip hard enough to draw blood. You gasp and cry out as you wrap your arms around him, pushing yourself up onto him, and Kylo pulls his fingers out of you as he takes you into his lap.

               You sit up to adjust yourself, to sit on him, when suddenly you hesitate, biting your lip as you shoot a glance at him. “Should we do this?”

               Kylo’s brow furrows in confusion, and he looks completely taken aback as he stares you down. _Why_ wouldn’t _we do this?_

               “Well the last time we fucked desperately right before one of us was going away for a while, I got pregnant,” you remind him, and Kylo just laughs as he pushes you down onto him. You moan as you take his length inside of you, wrapping your arms around his neck as you kiss his collarbone. “I mean if the Force could override my implant once, what’s to stop it from doing it again?”

               “Would it really be so bad?” Kylo asks as his teeth tug on your earlobe. “If we had another child?”

               You stop moving against him as you turn to look at him. You couldn’t believe you were having this conversation with him, now, right before he was about to leave you again. “Are you serious?”

               “I’m here now,” Kylo reminds you. “I can help you raise him this time.”

               “Or her,” you say pointedly, but Kylo just shrugs. “I know that you want to make up for lost time missing out on the early years of Ani’s childhood, but having another child isn’t the way to do it. We would need to have a long talk about it, and I don’t think that’s the conversation we should be having right now when we’re in the middle of, well, this.”

               “Do you want to stop?” Kylo asks, and you shake your head as you press yourself firmly down onto him, pressing him deep inside of you.

               “No,” you tell him as you slap his arm playfully in an attempt to keep things light. “Maybe last time really was just a glitch and the Force had nothing to do with it.”

               Kylo laughs as he adjusts his rhythm in time to yours, and you put your hand on his shoulder to keep yourself steady. “Do you really believe that?”

               “No,” you admit breathlessly as you start to build against him. “No, but if the Force is paying attention, it should know that I do _not_ want another child right now.”

               Kylo shakes his head and lets out a good-natured chuckle as he smooths back your hair, brushing it out of your face. “Do you think the Force really cares what you want?”

               You bite at his lower lip, affronted. “The Force _better_ care,” you tell him. “It’s my body.”

               Kylo hums appreciatively as he runs his hands over the swell of your breasts, using his thumbs to tease your nipples and you can’t help but moan as you push yourself against him, trying to ride out the sensation for as long as possible. Eventually his hands slip up your breasts, over your shoulders, one hand gliding to the nape of your neck as he pulls you in closer, kissing you as firmly and passionately as possible without using his teeth. Your lip already feels slightly sore from where he bit you before, and although you hadn’t yet tasted blood, you couldn’t care less if you had. You grab hold of either side of his face as you press your forehead into his, your thumbs brushing against his cheeks, completely ignoring the scar that was practically invisible to you as you find your release.

               “Fuck, Kylo, I fucking love you.” You shudder and hook your fingers into his hairline at the base of his neck as you come around him, and Kylo whispers your name into the soft skin of your shoulder as he holds you close to him for a moment, not yet willing to let you go. You sit like that for a few minutes, just embracing each other, until you can feel his cock twitch inside of you, and while the feeling is pleasant, you roll yourself off of him as you cuddle up beside him.

               You want to tell him that you don’t want him to go, but you know that he knows that already. He knows that you love him, he knows that you’ll miss him, he knows that you’re scared that he won’t come back. He knows everything that you could possibly have to say to him, except for one thing. “I’m glad I’m here,” you tell him quietly. “With you, I mean. I’m glad I’m here with you.” Kylo lets out a slow exhale as he wraps you in his arms, pulling you to face him as he runs a hand through your hair.

               “You don’t-“ he starts, but you just shake your head.

               “I mean it, and you know I mean it,” you say quietly. “Now that you’re here, it feels good, and it feels right, but back on base I just couldn’t allow myself to get close to you, not while I thought I knew what was going to happen to you. I thought you were going to be sent off to _die_ , and I didn’t know how to deal with the fact that I was basically the one responsible for turning you in. For killing you.”

               “It’s okay,” Kylo says quietly. “You don’t have to explain yourself.”

               “Don’t I?” you ask with a short laugh. “I mean, between everything that you saw between me and Poe, I just feel like I should apologize for that, you know? Like, I wasn’t doing it to rub it in your face or anything. It started before I even brought you back and I just-“

               “You needed someone to take care of you and Ani,” Kylo says softly as he kisses your shoulder. “I don’t hold it against you. I left you; whatever you did from that point on was in your own best interest, and I can’t fault you for that.”

               “I mean-“ You’re silent for a moment, and you decide not to continue. You can’t talk about Poe with Kylo in the same way you were able to talk about Kylo with Poe, not that you really wanted to, anyway. This was going to be your last night here with Kylo, and you wanted to make sure he knew exactly how you felt about him before he left again.

               “I don’t deserve you,” Kylo says at length, and you can feel despair creeping into his voice. “I am constantly reminded of it, but I don’t deserve you. I have done many terrible things, and yet you overlook each and every one simply for the sake of being with me. I don’t deserve the happiness that you and Ani give me, and yet I selfishly crave it all the same.”

               You stare at Kylo, unable to believe what you’re hearing. “Aside from that time you choked me, and the time you tried to kill me, and the time you abandoned me and Ani…” Your voice trails off as you realize you were defeating the point you were trying to make. “Overlooking those three times, you never treated me badly,” you tell him. “Although now that I bring all that up, I can see why you think you have a lot to atone for.” You take a deep breath as you sit up and face him, holding his hands in both of yours. “You do have a lot to make up for, both to Ani and myself, but you’re trying. I can see that you’re trying, and I can understand why you had to take me away, and it wasn’t just because of your selfishness or your jealousy. You wanted to make up for the terrible things you had done, and deep down I think you knew the only way you were ever going to redeem yourself was by working things through with me and Ani.”

               “I don’t think I could live with myself,” Kylo admits after a moment. “If I lost you, and Ani, and the First Order, and Snoke. He was there since my childhood, instructing me, whispering to me from the shadows, but he was still present all the same. Now it feels as though all of those things have been taken from me and I don’t know how to get them back.”

               “You don’t need to get them all back,” you remind him. “Forget Snoke. He’s gone. I can see why you’re trying to help with the First Order, but they can find someone else. You can stay here with me and Ani and be a family, like we’ve both always wanted. All three of us want it, so you don’t have to fight so hard to try to make it happen. It will happen, and it will probably be easier if you let it, instead of obsessing about it all the time.” You pause briefly as your eyes scan his face, searching for any flicker of new emotion. “That’s what the nightmares are about, aren’t they?”

               “They’re about many things,” Kylo admits. “I’ve done too much evil to ever atone for-“

               “But making things up to me and Ani is a start,” you say quietly, finally bringing yourself to ask the question that had been on your mind since Leia had first told you. “Kylo, do you regret killing your father?”

               He’s silent for a moment, his face absolutely still, and for a moment it seems almost as though he’s turned to glass, that if you reached out and touched his cheek that his face would shatter into a million tiny shards. “I don’t know,” he admits after a long pause. “I don’t know what you want to hear.”

               “I want to hear the truth,” you tell him with a small laugh. “It won’t change things. It won’t change how I feel about you. I never knew your father-“

               “But it still makes a difference,” Kylo says with a sigh. “Truthfully, I’m not sure. I would like to, I want to, forget, but it seems I am incapable of achieving your indifference.”

               “I’m not indifferent,” you say firmly. “I just apparently have a terrible habit of ignoring the bad things that you’ve done so long as they don’t affect me or Ani in any tangible way. The fact that we have to keep a low profile is, I admit, kind of troubling, but I want to be with you. I’m here with you now and no matter what you’ve done, I’m staying.” You quirk your lip up into a smirk. “I don’t know if you’re saying all this to push me, to test me, to make sure I’m absolutely devoted to you before you leave so you know for sure I have no intention of going anywhere, and if that’s really what you need from me, then I can do that for you.”

               “Tell me you love me,” Kylo says, but it’s more of a question than a statement.

               “I love you,” you tell him. “And I’m going to miss you every second that you’re gone. I’m going to miss the way you rub my knee under the table when we’re eating dinner, the way you cuddle me out on the balcony, the way you smell after a shower, the way you look when I wake up beside you in the morning…should I go on? Because I can assure you, there’s more. A lot more.”

               Kylo closes his eyes and smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling in the corners. “Like I said, I don’t deserve you.”

               “I don’t want to hear that,” you tell him. “No one deserves another person, it’s just choice, and it’s my choice to be with you, both here and now and in the future, so just tell me you love me and get it over with.”

               “I love you,” Kylo says as he grins. “You know I do, and you know nothing you do could ever cause me to stop.”

               “That’s reassuring,” you say, mimicking his grin as you lean forward to kiss him again before settling back in his arms. In truth, you knew he knew everything you wanted to say already, that you loved him, that you’d miss him, that you wanted him to be safe, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t tell him again and again and while you wrapped yourself in his arms, you told him so over and over again until you fell asleep.

               That morning, things were somber between you. Kylo got up and showered, and you sat on the bed, decidedly giving him his space. Honestly, you wanted to spend every minute wrapped around his waist, but you couldn’t, you just couldn’t, knowing the more emotionally involved you got with him the harder it would be to let him go, and so you did the best that you could for yourself, putting up an intangible barrier against the depression that you knew his departure would soon bring. At least on base when one of your friends had been away, another would be there to take his or her place, but you were alone now, really and truly alone, and you had to make the best of it. It was true that Ani would still be there to keep you company, but Ani had become so much a part of your daily life that you didn’t think it would make much of a difference.

               Then again, you had never really spent much alone time with Ani. You had been alone with him, of course, but there were other people always there or nearby, and for a moment you wondered if your sadness about Kylo leaving was a distraction from the fact that you had never spent a huge amount of alone time with Ani. It was true that you hadn’t really thought you wanted children, but then again, you honestly couldn’t say that you had really given it much thought, as you hadn’t really found anyone that you wanted to have children _with_. And then, on the Starkiller Base, things had been so dramatic and hectic that having a child with Kylo Ren in the midst of a war seemed entirely out of the question. Maybe the real reason you didn’t want to leave the Resistance base was because you would have to care for Ani yourself now. Especially with Phasma and Kylo gone, cooking Ani meals and caring for him would be completely up to you. You would be lying if you said that you weren’t at least a little bit afraid of failing him.

               “You’ll be fine,” Kylo offers as he comes out of the bathroom, and you smile up at him as you take him in.

               “Probably,” you say as you walk towards him and press your naked body against his. He’s still warm and slightly wet from the shower, and you wrap your arms around his neck as you press your lips against his, fisting one of your hands in his damp hair. “We should shower together, when you get back.”

               “I thought we already tried that once,” Kylo muses against your lips. “As I recall, you said never again.”

               “It’s worth a second try,” you murmur as you kiss him again, closing your eyes as you let yourself relax, let yourself pretend that he really wasn’t leaving all over again.

                Kylo pulls away slowly as he goes to get dressed, and you quickly throw on some clothes, just a simple shirt and pants, as you go into Ani’s room to wake him up. To your surprise, he’s already awake, sitting at the end of his bed with his hands on his knees, the staff sitting on the bed in front of him, being raised and lowered by the power of the Force. “You’re getting good at that,” you say, trying to keep your voice light and friendly.

               Ani turns back to look at you, and his expression is sobering. “Is dad leaving now?”

               “Pretty soon, yeah,” you say quietly. “But you know he’s coming back, right?”

               Ani’s mouth twists into a frown. “Yeah, I know,” he says, his voice quiet and resigned. “I still don’t want him to go though.”

               “You and me both,” you say with a light laugh as you go over and muss his hair. “Come on, let’s go wait for your dad downstairs.”

               Ani takes his staff in his hand as he follows you downstairs, where you see Phasma packing things and making final preparations. “Do you need any help?” you ask, but Phasma just grunts and shakes her head as she lifts a large crate and carries it through the open doorway. You’re wondering what’s inside, when it occurs to you that it is probably a crate load of plasma vials, considering how easy they were to fill on Naboo. You peek out the entrance after her to see a commercial-rigged Corvette parked on the expansive lawn outside in front of the house. To be honest, you considered this a smarter play than you had originally given them credit for. Since this was Naboo, a corvette bearing any sort of diplomatic markings would be of great interest to Theed Control and would immediately be tracked and logged; however, considering that commercial trade was the backbone of Naboo’s economy, a commercial-rigged Corvette would be overlooked and relatively unnoticed as it blended into the flow of local traffic.

               Even still, you wondered idly if you should grab Ani and sneak on board anyway, but there was no way that Kylo wouldn’t be able to sense your presence through the Force, nor was this really an adventure that was appropriate for Ani. Maybe when he got older there would be a time when you could all travel together if Kylo had to go away on another assignment for the First Order, but as for now you had to stay behind on Naboo where it was at least relatively safe.

               You turn around to see Kylo coming down the stairs, pulling on his gloves, and you instantly avert your eyes as you take in the sure sign of him preparing to leave. You don’t want him to go, don’t want him to leave, and yet no matter what you say or do you know it’s still going to happen, so there was no use fighting it. “I’m going to miss you,” you say softly as he embraces you.  He just smiles as he looks down at Ani, kneeling down to his level to give him a quick hug.

               “Take care of your mom,” Kylo says gently. “You know how she can get.”

               “Hey,” you say loudly, gently kicking the side of his leg, and Kylo just laughs good-naturedly while Ani nods his head in silent obedience.

               “I’ll be back soon,” Kylo says. “Remember what we talked about.” Ani just nods again, and you bite your lip as you wonder what was said when you weren’t there. You know you can probably draw it out of Ani, although you supposed some things should maybe just be left between father and son.

               Kylo stands back up again as he looks at you, and you can tell from the look in his eyes that there’s a million things he wants to say, and no idea how to express any of them. “You know, I wouldn’t blame you if you left. If you went back to the Resistance.”

               “I’m not going back,” you tell him firmly. “I’ll wait for you.” You suddenly hesitate as you glance down at Ani. “I mean, I’ll wait a few months, but when it gets to the one-year mark, then I’m just going to assume the worst and head back. If I can even wait that long.”

               “That’s fair,” Kylo admits. “I don’t plan to be gone for even a month, I can assure you.” You look down and he places a hand on your shoulder, forcing you to meet his eyes again. “Keep your lightsaber with you at all times. If you run into trouble, any sort of trouble, anyone comes looking for you, there’s a transport shuttle hidden in the forest about six kilometers south. Go there and head back to your old academia. It’ll probably be safer for you there, and I will come find you. Just use your lightsaber to carve an _X_ in a nearby tree if you can, so I know that’s where you went.”

               “Okay,” you say softly. “But why would anyone come looking for me?”

               “Because you’re the easiest way to get to me,” Kylo says, and you tilt your head to the side in consideration. "Are you really going to stay?”

               “Yes,” you reply, a bit incredulously, unable to help the smile that surfaces to your lips. “How many times am I going to have to tell you, yes?”

               “I won’t disappoint you again.” Kylo grabs your face in his hands as he kisses you firmly, desperately, not daring to pull away. You can feel all of his energy, his need for you, his desire to make things right in that one simple point of contact between your lips as his tongue brushes against yours, and for a moment you completely lose yourself in the sensation. In this moment, you don’t want him to go, you know you never want him to go, and that’s why he has to. He needs to prove that he can leave and come back, and the only way he’s going to do that is by leaving in the first place, no matter how much you don’t want him to.

               “Ren,” Phasma says as she appears in the doorway. “We’re ready to depart when you are.” Idly you wonder when she started calling him _Ren_ and not _sir_ , but that didn’t really seem all that important right now. It was probably around the time the First Order less than officially disbanded, and for a moment you wondered if Kylo really did want to opt out of the whole thing and just spend the rest of his life with you and Ani.

               “Wait for me,” Kylo says firmly as he grabs your hand, and his dark eyes are blazing as they meet your own. For a moment he is squeezing your hand so tightly you feel like he might crush it, but you don’t want to pull away, knowing what sort of effect that gesture might have on him.

               “I will,” you reply, just as firmly, because you know that’s what he needs to hear. He doesn’t need to hear anything about how you love him right now. You had already expressed all of your fears and doubts and emotional pining last night. Right now, all he wants is staunch confidence that you will stay put. “I will wait for you, Kylo, I promise you that.”

               You can see the flash in his eyes as he registers how much that means to you. You hate promises, you had never broken one in your life, and so if you were promising him this, it was only so he knew that you really meant it. You really weren’t going to leave. He reaches forward and kisses you again, swiftly, and puts his hand firmly on Ani’s shoulder for a moment as he looks down at him, and they exchange a nod before he’s off and out the door. You can feel an invisible thread tying you to him, tugging you through the door as you stare after him, past Phasma’s form. She has her signature chrome armor back on, complete with her helmet, which she has already placed over her head while you and Kylo were saying your farewells.

               “Are you going to stay?” Phasma asks, and you tilt your head in surprise.

               “Yeah,” you say quickly. “Yeah, I’m not going anywhere. I mean, Kylo told me what to do if people come looking, but otherwise I’m not going anywhere.”

               “Stay put,” Phasma says firmly. “Stay inside, and don’t open the door if anyone comes around. No one should, but just as a precaution.”

               “Okay,” you say softly, and you’re about to ask her what all the fuss is about when she is out the door, closing it behind her. For a moment you wonder if there is more to this than you’re being told, if perhaps she was spotted somewhere on Naboo and Kylo is planning on making a show of appearing elsewhere to draw their suspicions away.

               “So,” you say as you look down at Ani. “It seems it’s going to be just you and me for a little while, huh, kiddo?”

               “I guess,” Ani says as he looks up at you. “So what are we going to do while they’re gone?”

               “Well,” you say with a sigh. “I can continue training you in the Force, and maybe Phasma left some blasters down in the basement that I can train you with _if_ you promise to behave.” Ani nods his head enthusiastically.

               “What about fighting?” he asks. “Can we spar?”

               “Spar?” you ask as you raise your eyebrows. “Honestly, I think I could take you.”

               “Phasma showed me where she kept some more of her staffs,” Ani says. “I want you to teach me how to be good with one like you are. Dad said it’s the first step to learning how to wield a lightsaber.”

               “Wield a lightsaber,” you muse under your breath. “I haven’t heard any talk about making you a lightsaber. Did he say how old you would have to be before he’d help you make one yourself?”

               “Just when you both think I’m ready,” Ani replies, and you can’t help but smirk. At least Kylo wasn’t taking full control of Ani’s Force training. He had more experience than you had, and a more formal education on how to train someone in the Force, but you had done pretty well yourself, all things considered.

               “Then we’ll see,” you tell him patiently. “I know they may look cool, but they’re very dangerous. You saw me and Rey fight.”

               “But you won,” Ani says as he smiles up at you. It’s a proud smile, a knowing smile, and you just laugh and shake your head as you muss his hair again.

               “Yes, I did, because…who’s the best?”

               “You’re the best,” Ani cheers, and you give him a quick high-five as you head into the kitchen.

               “Except at cooking,” you remind him. “So, I’m willing to make you some breakfast, but only if you help me out, because I’m thinking you know a lot more from just watching Phasma cook than I’ve ever learned.”

               “Can we use the Force?” Ani asks excitedly, and you think about it for a moment, envisioning a pot of boiling water spilling over, a hot pan being dropped, and all sorts of culinary catastrophes that could go wrong which would result in horrific burns or scalds or injuries of any sort.

               “No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can we all just agree that the thought of Ani trying to use the Force in the kitchen is scarier than Snoke? xD So Kylo is going, going, and......gone. But how long will he be gone for and what will happen in his absence? Something? Nothing? Will I try for a new record and have four NSFW chapters in a row? Btw, if you're wondering about the overall direction the story is heading in, I can now safely tell you that I'm about halfway done with the story...and I surpassed the 200k word mark the night before last....so...super long story? Super long story. xD A lot happens in the final act and I've considered splitting it up into four parts, but that defeats the whole point of a trilogy, so I think this is just going to be one super long ending, basically an Act III with two parts. (All the cool movies are doing it nowadays, anyway!) 
> 
> Also, the movers are here and tomorrow begins my long, 5-day roadtrip to my new residence. Thursday I'll be visiting my mom, so I'll be able to update the chapter later that night (or earlier in the morning from the hotel, depending on what time I wake up...hopefully earlier, she still has super shitty dial-up Internet, ugh) and on Saturday I'll be back at MY old academia, so even if the hotel's Internet is super crappy, I can just update it from there or a friend's place. I move in to my new place on Sunday, so by Tuesday I should have all of my Internet woes sorted out. (If not, I'm just going to thank the Force that I can still use MS Word to keep writing the story without Internet) and I'll probably try to update it from a Starbucks or something. 
> 
> Either way, wish me tons and tons of luck!! I'm going to need it and I'll see you all again on Thursday!! ^_^ Until then, cheers!!


	10. Chapter 10

               Over the next few days, you had fun with Ani, although somewhere in the back of your mind, something still seemed off. Kylo and Phasma had both seemed insistent on you staying put for your own safety, and while a part of you assumed that people would want to kidnap you and Ani in order to use you to get to Kylo Ren, a part of you couldn’t help but wonder if there was something else that you weren’t being told. If you happened to find yourself in a truly vulnerable position, wouldn’t at least a part of him want you to go back to the Resistance for your own safety? Why would he want you to go back and hide out at your old academia, which was at the other end of the galaxy? D’Qar was close, but you had a feeling Kylo suspected that if you ever went back, they would never let you leave. They would use you as bait to draw him in, knowing he would have to turn himself over if he ever wanted to see you again. But even that would be short-lived in itself; after escaping once, they would probably put him down right then and there. That wasn’t something you wanted to see happen and so you would do as you were instructed and simply stay put.

               As it turned out, you had a lot to do with Ani, or rather, he made everything you wanted to do take insufferably longer than usual. Then again, you had time to waste, and so you didn’t mind in the slightest. It turns out that you were just as miserable at cooking with or without Ani helping, but he didn’t seem to mind all that much. It was something that you both could learn, or at least, attempt to figure out together, two novices stumbling ignorantly in an attempt to figure out how to heat up a decent meal. You overcooked things just to the point of burning, just to make sure they were cooked thoroughly, and while it made them less delectable as they could have been in more skillful hands, Ani didn’t voice his complaints about it. You were silently thankful that he wasn’t a fussy eater, especially because you would rather make sure you overcooked rather than undercooked what you fed him. At least if it was on the crispier side, there was less of a chance he would get some kind of food poisoning. You had never seen him gravely ill before, and you didn’t want to start when you were alone with him for who knew how long, without any real way of reaching out for help.

               Most days started off with a light breakfast before you went off to meditate, preferring to sit on the balcony to feel the cool air sweep over your face as you focused on the languid inhale and exhales of your breath. Now, however, the weather was getting chillier, and you decided it would be best to stay inside, and so you set yourself up on the bed, with Ani facing opposite you. He had adopted your form immediately, left foot in front of the right, his hands braced against his knees. “Now this is probably going to seem boring,” you tell him. “But it’s important to do this to help quiet your mind and channel the Force. Center yourself and let it flow through you; once you know yourself, you can know the Force.”

               Ani nods solemnly, and you’re happy that he’s not as antsy or enthused as he usually is. He seems to be taking your lead on how to act and behave, with a sort of refined deference that concealed a quiet, resilient strength, and for once you believed Kylo when he told you that Ani wanted to be just like you. “Focus on your breathing,” you tell him. “Breathe in and out through your nose, and when you start to feel anxious or unfocused, then breathe out through your mouth. Picture all of your thoughts and your anxieties just being pushed out of you in that one long exhalation.”

               “But I don’t have any anxiety,” Ani says, and you peek open one eye as you look at him. “Sorry,” Ani says quickly as he bows his head, but you just smile.

               “No, don’t be sorry,” you tell him. “It’s good that you don’t have any anxiety, although that’ll probably kick in when you’re older. Just enjoy things while they last.”

               “Just enjoy things while they last,” Ani repeats solemnly, his eyes closed, and for some reason it sounds a lot wiser coming from his childish inflection.

               Looking him over, you can see from the way that he’s wiggling back and forth that he’s not going to be able to just _sit_ and meditate with you, and so you decide to do something else. “Let’s try something different,” you say as you open your eyes, and Ani opens his as he looks up at you.

               “Will it make me stronger?” Ani asks, and you roll your shoulders.

               “There’s many different types of strength, Ani,” you tell him. “There’s strength in power, strength in endurance, strength in knowledge and strength in wisdom. There’s also strength in the Force, and the better we can control ourselves and our thoughts and our emotions, the better we will able to control the Force as well.”

               You clasp your hands in front of you, and Ani follows suit. You hover your hands there in front of your chest for a few moments before you stretch your hands out in front of you, raising them over your head, watching Ani follow suit. “Focus on your breathing,” you remind him. “But sway back and forth. Keep your legs grounded into the bed but just stretch back and forth and let your body move naturally.” Ani seems a little awkward about doing it, and bites his lip to suppress a giggle.

               “No, it’s okay, you can giggle,” you tell him. “Do I look funny?” Ani nods his head. “Well, if I’m going to look silly, at least it’s with good reason.” You lower your hands back down to your knees and hold them there for a moment as you take a few more steadying breaths. “Now.” You put your right hand out to your side and stretch your other arm over your body, focusing on the stretch in your side as you reach, keeping your legs flat. “See, this feels good, right, Ani?”

               “Mmhmm,” Ani nods, and he follows your lead as you roll over to reach the other side. You stretch your arms out behind you and push out your chest, focusing on the pleasant way your back arches as you do so. Ani seems to have a harder time with this and you laugh as you stretch your hands forward.

               “Is this a little easier for now?” you ask, and Ani nods his head as you drop your head. “Just let your shoulders relax,” you tell him. “And focus on your breathing. That’s very important.”

               Ani sinks a little further down in the bed, his fingertips just brushing against the fabric of your pants, and you can’t help but smile as you watch him. You breathe in a little bit more until Ani starts to wriggle restlessly beside you, and you smile as you take the stretch to one side, and then the other, giving Ani time to move and adjust to the new position.

               “Let’s lean back again,” you tell him, watching as he does so. “Is it a bit easier this time?”

               “A bit,” he admits, rocking his legs from side to side.

               “Okay then,” you say. “Then let’s take your neck to one side as you twist-“ Using your arms to steady yourself, you twist your neck to the side and hold the position, as if waiting for Kylo to kiss you in that sweet spot. But you know that’s not going to happen, at least for a while, and so you remind Ani to draw his shoulders back as you switch to the other side. “Having fun, Ani?”

               “It’s kind of boring,” Ani admits, and you laugh as you bring your palms back to center and stretch them out in front of you.

               “So you want to do something more fun, huh?” you ask, and Ani bobs his head enthusiastically up and down. You decided that there was no use trying to meditate with Ani if he wasn’t really that into it; he wasn’t going to learn anything if he wasn’t paying attention, and he was only going to resent it later if it was something you forced him to do. “Okay then, staff or blasters?”

               “Both,” Ani says excitedly, and you laugh as you put your hands on your knees.

               “Well, let’s go then,” you tell him, and he takes your hand as he pulls you out of the room and down the stairs, all the way down to the basement. Things had been moved around since you had been in there last, and you could tell from the bottom of the stairs that while there were still blasters on the tables in the far back of the room, there were a lot less than before. In fact, you can now make out the impression of indented panels in the walls, where you presumed she was hiding more weaponry, and you wondered if Phasma’s home also served as a hiding place for First Order heavy artillery.

               “She left the staffs out,” Ani says happily as he points to a nearby corner of the room, and there you can see that several have been laid out along the wall. You walk over and pick one up, surprised by how light it feels in your hands. Your lightsaber’s handle had been made of Mandalorian iron, and so you had simply adjusted to the extra weight from the staff that you had previously carried. Now, as you turned this new staff over and over in your hands, you felt like it was so light that it might simply fly off in any direction when you spun it.

               Ani takes his staff in his hands a short distance away to expand it, and that’s when you notice that it falls a bit short of his eyebrow, more so than it usually did when he held it at his side. “I think you’re growing up,” you tell him as you take the staff from him, adjusting its height. “Or getting taller, at least. At least the staff will be a good measure of how you’ve grown.”

               “Am I going to be as tall as dad someday?” Ani asks, and you laugh as you tilt your head to the side in consideration.

               “It’s possible,” you admit. “But I don’t know how I’d feel about you and your dad and Phasma towering over me all the time.”

               “But you’re tall,” Ani says with a frown. “You’re a little shorter than Ladson, but you’re taller than Sadie.”

               “And yet,” you say teasingly. “Kylo and Phasma are like giants to the rest of us other folk. I don’t know what they’re feeding them over at the First Order, but it has to be laced with growth hormones or something.”

               “I want to be taller,” Ani says, his voice bordering on a mope, and you just shake your head.

               “Well you’ve got good genes,” you tell him. “I know your grandma isn’t very tall, but your dad and I are, so that’s got to count for something, right?”

               “I guess,” Ani shrugs, and you laugh as you stand up and muss his hair.

               “Trust me,” you tell him. “In a few years from now, you’re going to spring up like a weed and then your legs are going to be so long you’re going to have to squint to see the ground.” Ani narrows his eyes like he’s not sure if you’re joking and you laugh as you balance the staff in your hand, trying to get a good feel for its weight. “So you really want to spar, huh?”

               “Yes,” Ani says, grabbing his staff in front of him and dipping his leg way back in a deep lunge.

               “We’re going to need to practice your form first,” you notice aloud. A part of you wants to laugh at how silly he looks, but another part of you wants to scold him. His form, untrained, was terrible, and likely to cause injury if he decided to fool around. “I don’t want you to fall on me and get hurt. If you do, then you’re not going to be able to train at all.” Ani’s eyes go wide and you nod your head seriously. “And you know I mean it, so you better pay attention, okay?”

               “Okay,” Ani says, and you cast him a reassuring smile as you adjust your own footing to show him the proper form, mentally trying to take into account the variation for his small legs. He may have been growing, but he was still just a child, and so you knew you would have to take that into account. The only problem was that you had been trained by and had only trained adults yourself. You had no idea how to alter your technique to fit a child, but you supposed that it didn’t have to be that much different. Besides, if you taught him the proper basics now, it would be that much easier for him to master the advanced concepts once you finally got around to them.

               You pick up your staff and hold it out in one arm, balancing the staff in your outstretched hand as you motion for Ani to do the same. “I guess the first thing you should know is that no two staffs are the same. Each staff is made differently, and so it’s important that you first figure out where the true center of the staff is.” You hesitate for a moment, not sure if Ani is following what you’re saying. “Okay, um, hold it with each hand two fist lengths away from the center, like, uh, this.” You adjust your hands as you explain, immediately noticing that Ani is naturally using a converse grip instead of mirroring the symmetrical one you were trying to teach him. You waited silently for a moment until he eventually caught on and flipped his left hand to match yours. Mentally, you made a note that if he was having this much trouble holding a staff, if you ever did help him make his own lightsaber, it would have to be a single blade lightsaber like Rey’s. You would be far too concerned what would happen if he had a double bladed one like yours.

               “Does holding it like that feel weird to you, Ani?” you ask him, and Ani tilts his head to the side in consideration before nodding slightly. “Okay, um, it may feel a little weird for now, but it’s important to learn this grip for blocking. If you hold it the other way, it feels like you have more power but it’d be really easy for your opponent to knock your staff out of your hands.” He looks down at his hands, switching back and forth between grips, mentally picturing the results of blocking one way versus the other, and you see the realization dawn at him as the results of his little imaginary scenario finally make sense to him. You wait for him to switch back to the symmetrical grip before continuing.

               You position your feet shoulder-width apart before you turn slightly to drop your right hip back, and Ani mirrors your stance, dropping his left back. For a brief moment, you had forgotten that Ani was left-handed, but you simply shook it off as you thought about how exactly to position yourself to start teaching him a basic block. Ordinarily, you would have preferred teaching Ani how to strike first, considering how if he ever needed to use his staff, offensive would come more in handy than defensive, but you were concerned that he might run around _practicing_ on everything in the house, and you didn’t want Phasma to come back to her house looking like it had been turned into an active warzone.

               “Remember that high block I showed you?” you ask him, and Ani nods his head forward and raises his staff above his head, much too high, like a soldier surrendering, and you use the Force to gently lower it until it sits at a much more protective angle. “You want to hold it like this. If you go too high, your opponent will just pull back and take your nose off instead, and you don’t want that, do you?” Ani giggles as he shakes his head from side to side. “When you’re blocking, you have to make sure you do it in a way that protects you, but still lets you move. Like, try blocking from side to side, but keep your staff out like that.” Ani sways back and forth, angling the staff first one way and then the other. After about a minute, he seems to have the hang of it.

               “Okay, now block me like that,” you instruct. “Ready?” He nods, and you gently strike downwards towards him at various angles, giving him enough time to think about where your staff is going to land before he jerks his arms in frantic movements to block it each time. You realized immediately that flow and pacing, two things that had come quickly and naturally to you, were not really some of his clear strengths, although you weren’t quite sure if his jerky, spasmodic movements were due to the fact that he was still a child. At least he was catching your staff exactly in the middle between his hands, so you wouldn’t have to teach him that. As you alternate your strikes, Ani unexpectedly disengages from his last block as he aims a blow toward your side, and you quickly twist to block it. Ani tries a few more strikes, each one more reckless than the last, and you physically have to stop yourself from calling out Kylo’s name instead of his own. Even still, Ani keeps swinging, and idly you worry that the shock from his bad form is going to lead to him actually hurting his wrist, or worse. As he goes in for a high strike, you catch it at the height of his wind-up, and he groans in frustration.

               “Ani, I know you really want to impress Kylo when he comes back, but you have to be patient,” you tell him as gently as possible. “Before we can really spar, I have to train you, and I know it’s boring, trust me, I know, I’ve been there, but practice and patience are how I got to be so good.” At this point, it’s clear that he’s really not paying attention to anything you’re saying, and so you just sigh as you shake your head from side to side. “Would you like to take a break from this and train with the blasters instead for now?”

               “Yeah,” Ani cheers excitedly, and it’s all you can do not to groan loudly in frustration as Ani races over to the table of blasters. He grabs the first small blaster pistol he sees and turns to the range, firing two wildly inaccurate shots before the third fizzles out with a click, and you’re glad to see that the charge pack is empty. He pulls the trigger again, but nothing happens, and Ani looks up at you with a frown on his face, as if he thinks that you’re the one that’s suppressing his fire.

               You simply shrug your shoulders carelessly as you look down at him. “Never run out of plasma before?”

               Ani looks up at you quizzically, even more confused than before. “They can run out?”

               “Yup,” you say evenly. “Did Phasma ever tell you they need to be refilled?”

               “No,” Ani says as he drops his gaze down to the blaster pistol in his hand. “She just always told me to use this one. Maybe she refilled it when I was done?”

               You just let out a sigh as you gesture for him to hand over the blaster. “Here, let me take a look. Finn taught me how to do this, and now I guess it’s something I can show you how to do, although I don’t want you recharging this yourself if Phasma or I or Kylo isn’t around to do it with you, is that understood?” Ani nods his head solemnly as you bend down to his level and remove the charge pack, quickly locating the plasma port. Nearby, you locate the small box where Phasma had told you she kept a few handy vials of plasma and pull one out, frowning as you realize there are no syringes. As you take a closer look at the rim of the plasma port, you notice that it’s threaded, and the turns seem to match the vial in your hand. On a hunch, you try to screw the vial into the charge pack, and find that the vial fit perfectly into the port on the blaster. Once you find the small reload button, you press it and you’re surprised to see the plasma in the vial suddenly glow an angry, brilliant red that reminded you of Kylo’s lightsaber before it empties into the pack with a quiet beep. You stare at it curiously for a moment, and make a mental note to ask Phasma about it when she returned as you shrug your shoulders and slot the pack back into the blaster as you carefully hand it back to Ani.

               Without even thanking you, he disengages the safety and starts firing down the range in a series of misaligned shots. You close your eyes and sigh deeply, feeling disappointment turn into a steady drumming in your temples. Either Ani wasn’t even trying to hit the targets, or his aim was incredibly abysmal for someone who was supposed to be so naturally strong in the Force. Finally, seemingly just by luck, one of the bolts just manages to clip the rim of a target, and Ani lets out a large celebratory cheer, confirming your suspicions that his aim really was that terrible. What you couldn’t understand, though, was why. Hadn’t Phasma been teaching him? Wouldn’t she have at least started by coaching him on proper form, or had she simply given up on trying to show him how and was too afraid to admit to Ren that she didn’t think she would be able to teach his son?

               “Ani, if you want to hit the target, you have to hold the blaster right, like this,” you tell him as you grab one of the blasters off the table and demonstrate, mimicking his form as you put your right hand over your left, keeping your elbows slightly bent. “If you fire with straight arms all the time, the blaster will just kick and you’ll never hit what you’re aiming for.” Ani lulls his head to the side as if he’s bored before he lets out a sigh and adjusts his position to match yours. You fire a shot to encourage him, and it hits the furthest target in the dead center of the ring. Ani tries for the same target, and despite his improved form, the bolt still misses by a few meters at least.

               “Don’t worry, Ani, we’ll keep practicing and you’ll get better,” you say encouragingly. You continued to try to correct his form as he fired, but forty shots came and went before he was finally able to hit the nearest target twice in a row. After a few more two-in-a-row hits, Ani had finally had enough and you put the blasters away. As you headed back upstairs to make Ani some dinner, it occurred to you that Ani had fired more than fifty shots on less than half the plasma that you had used back on D’Qar, and that was definitely something you would have to ask Phasma about, when and if she and Kylo ever returned.

               The days went by like that for some time, cooking, playing around, training, meditating, and shooting, but all of it felt empty. The days passed by without any real significance, and while you were having fun with Ani, you couldn’t help but feel as though you were hovering in abeyance while outside these walls, the rest of the world, the rest of the galaxy, continued on with their lives. When you had been with Kylo back on his Star Destroyer, this didn’t really seem to bother you, and yet now it was like you could think of nothing but. It didn’t help that Ani kept mentioning his name, asking when you thought he was going to return, asking if you could sense him. A few times you thought you did, when you were lying alone in your bed at night, although sometimes you couldn’t help but feel as though it was just wishful thinking. Deep down you knew Kylo was thinking of you too, you felt it, although these were just subtle impressions that did nothing to alleviate the overall gloom.

               “Can we go outside?” Ani asks one day. “We haven’t gone outside since dad left.” It had been almost two full weeks since Kylo had left, and the monotony of your days had not been lost on either of you, so instead of heeding their warning, you decided to take some risk. You were an adult, you were free to make your own decisions, and it wasn’t as though they were actually going to find out if you had snuck out or not.

               “Sure,” you say idly. You opened the sliding crystalline glass of the back door and let Ani out first, closing it gently behind you as you turned to face the lush green lawn in front of you. Ani immediately throws himself on the ground and rolls around in the grass, laughing playfully as he forcefully uproots a few blades of glass and throws them at you. They’re carried off by the breeze before they can reach you, and as you take a few steps towards Ani, he gets up and starts running towards the trees in the distance.

               “Ani, stay close,” you yell, but Ani just laughs as he looks back at you, taunting you, and you curse under your breath as you take off after him. Idly you wonder if Kylo was this mischievous as a boy, not that it really mattered now. You had pretty much stopped trying to reflect back on his past altogether, in order to focus on how to preserve your future with him, and your son, who was quickly building distance between you as he scampered off into the thick cluster of trees ahead.

               “Let’s go explore,” Ani says with childish abandon, and you grumble under your breath as you chase after him. You wanted to tell him that you weren’t _supposed_ to be out here, but honestly that just made you feel like more of a child than he was, and you resented that. You didn’t want to take orders, no more than you already had, even if they were for your own safety. You knew that they didn’t want to risk anyone potentially seeing you out and about on Naboo, but you had your lightsaber by your side, and the Force, and you felt confident that you could protect Ani if you had to, so long as he didn’t run off by himself somewhere.

               “I’ll go exploring with you but only if you come back here and walk with me,” you tell him, and Ani stops in his tracks as he waits for you to catch up. You shake your head as the thick foliage crunches under your boots, and you pick your way over the tree roots that snake up from the ground, watching your step. There’s a lot of stray twigs and leaves on the ground, signaling a planetary shift towards colder temperatures, and you inadvertently rub your hands up and down your arms, as if you’re cold. Ani, however, seems more or less unaffected as he dances around the trees.

               “So what are you hoping to find out here?” you ask him.

               Ani just shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know. Is there anything to find?”

               “Well, you heard your dad,” you remind him. “There’s a transport shuttle hidden somewhere around here about six kilometers south. Do you want to try to find it?”

               “Yeah,” Ani cheers, and you smile to yourself. It couldn’t hurt to find it, just to be sure you knew where it was if the time ever came for you to make a hasty exit off Naboo. You weren’t quite sure you wanted to find it, weren’t quite sure you wouldn’t be tempted to just leave the planet altogether and head back to D’Qar. Up until now, you had simply made the best of your circumstances with Kylo knowing that there was no way you could really escape, but you weren’t sure if your feelings on the subject would change if you actually knew you could go back if you wanted to.

               Regardless, you end up walking for what you assumed to be more than two hours before you became worried that you had gotten horribly lost in the wilderness around you. You had never really been lost in the woods before, and you could only hope that the Force would guide you to where you needed to go. Then again, your sense of direction had never been stellar, although you had to admit that you had at least wound up at the _Resolute_ right where, and when, you needed to be there. That, at the very least, had to account for something.

               Finally, you reach a clearing and see a large grey mass from somewhere between the thinning tree line. Excited, Ani runs forward through the trees and you quickly follow after him, not daring to let him out of your sight, as he runs over to the ship, skipping around it in circles as you take it in. It’s just a simple transport shuttle, nothing different than what you had flown before, and yet you can’t help but get a feeling of unease by just being around it. You could do it, right now, you could, you knew you could; it was practically whispering for you to just hop in and take the shuttle and head back to the Resistance. You knew how to talk to Naboo’s Controller in Theed to get permission to pass through sovereign airspace and you were more than familiar with how to enter D’Qar’s airspace. How surprised would the Resistance Controller be to hear _Moonstaff_ asking for permission to dock in their hangar?

               _Control, this is Moonstaff, I’ve just returned from a long sojourn with my son and am requesting permission to dock in Approach Alpha. Do you read me, Control, or have you dropped dead from shock?_

               You could just imagine the look on Poe’s face when-

“We should head back,” you tell Ani softly. “We found it, and now we should head back.”

               “Why can’t we fly back?” Ani asks. “You’re a pilot. You know how.”

               “Of course I do,” you reply. You’re eyeing the shuttle like it’s something that might come to life and bite you at any moment, and you don’t know how to rid yourself of that sensation aside from running as far away as possible. You were tempted to go back. You wanted to see all of your friends again, Finn, and Rey, and Poe, and Ladson, especially Ladson. Part of you was relieved to know that he was finally free of you and Ani, that he was free to live out his own normal life now, but a part of you was concerned that he would join the Resistance out of some misplaced sense of guilt to try to find you. In truth, it hadn’t been his fault that he hadn’t been there that night, and even if he had been, you didn’t know if Kylo would have spared him. Honestly, the thought of him trying to cope with struggling, and failing, to defend Ani as he was pulled away in front of him might have just made things worse for him to deal with.  

               Idly you wonder what would have happened if Poe had been there with you that night, or if you had been in Poe’s room when Kylo and Phasma came looking for you. It was all meaningless hypotheticals, of course; Kylo would have been able to find you regardless of where you were due to your Force bond that allowed you to sense when he was near. The connection, as you often forgot, worked both ways, and so it wasn’t really much of a surprise that he was able to find you, and Ani, quite easily on the Resistance base. Although…

               “Hey, Ani?” you ask quickly, and he swivels his head back to look at you. “When we were back on the Resistance base, what did you and Kylo talk about when you visited him with Leia?”

               “Just stuff,” Ani says with a casual shrug.

               “Just stuff?” you repeat. “Stuff about his past? Or the Force? Or anything like that?”

               “Mostly about the Force,” he says, not turning back to look at you, and you can sense a note of trepidation in the way he answers you, as if he’s hoping that you won’t ask him any more questions.

               You bite your lip and mull things over as you continue walking, trying to figure out just what was bothering you. “Were there times when he wanted to talk to you alone? Like, without grandma there?”

               Ani’s pace slows a bit, and it’s a while before he answers. “Sometimes.” It only made sense that Kylo would probably want to talk to his son, alone, but you were almost a bit surprised that Leia would have granted this request. Surely, she should have known better than anyone that leaving Kylo alone with a family member, especially unprotected, was a risky business. It could be argued that there was no way he would have killed his own son, but then again, you still couldn’t wrap your head around the fact that he had murdered his own father, either.

               “And what did he talk to you about when she wasn’t there?” you ask softly.

               “Just stuff,” Ani repeats, but his voice sounds wary.

               “Did you talk about me?” Your voice is cautious as you continue to probe, trying to extract the truth without asking Ani something that might cause him to shut down and stop answering you entirely.

               Ani stops as he turns back to look at you. “Promise you won’t be mad?”

               “I won’t be mad if you tell me the truth,” you say gently, keeping your voice light. If Ani and Kylo had been talking about you behind your back, you _had_ to know what was being said. Even if it was just something that happened on the Resistance base and didn’t seem to affect the circumstances much now, you still wanted to know what exactly they had said about you.

               “I may have told dad that you told me you still loved him,” Ani admits, and you feel your heart sink in your chest as he waits for you to catch up with him. He seems to notice your reaction, as he’s quick to offer an explanation. “I didn’t know what to do. He said he sensed that you were happy there, but I didn’t want him to go and leave us behind.”

               “You knew?” you ask quietly, and now your heart doesn’t just sink in your chest, it almost stops beating entirely. “You knew he was going to try to escape?” Ani shrugs uncomfortably at the tone in your voice, and you bite your bottom lip as your eyes flick up to scan the treetops.

               “I’m sorry,” Ani says quietly. “He said he trusted me not to tell anyone, and if I didn’t, then we could go off and be a family again.” You close your eyes for a moment, trying to figure out what this means, if it means anything. “I didn’t know _when_ it would happen. He only told me that people were coming for him.”

               “I wish you would have told me,” you murmur under your breath. “Did he tell you not to? I know he told you not to tell anyone, but did he tell you to not tell me, specifically?”

               Ani shakes his head. “I don’t remember.”

               “That’s fair,” you say quietly as you continue to mull things over. “One thing I don’t understand, though, is when I walked into the living room, Phasma was carrying you over one shoulder and you seemed pretty out of it. Do you remember what happened that night?”

               “Dad told me he was putting me to sleep,” Ani explains. “He said that it was probably going to be difficult getting off the base, and people would try to stop us, so it was just better if I was asleep.”

               “I wish you would have come and told me first,” you tell him. “I thought-“ _Your dad was kidnapping you, taking you away from me forever._ “I thought you didn’t want to go.”

               “I’m sorry,” Ani repeats, looking for at the ground beneath his feet, and you muss his hair sadly.

               “Hey, it’s okay, kiddo, it’s okay, Ani,” you say quickly, bending down to his level as you put your arms on his shoulders. “I don’t hold it against you, really, I don’t.”

               “You mean it?” Ani asks, although his voice still sounds glum.

               “Of course I do,” you tell him. Ani was just a child who was caught up in something much, much bigger than you had ever anticipated, and he was still too young to understand the weight of the consequences of the decisions he made. You would have to teach him that lesson, eventually, especially considering that the ability to really think through the consequences of his actions and how they would affect others was not a trait he would inherit from Kylo. “You wanted to come out here and be a family again, and that’s what we’re doing. And you’re happy, right?” Ani nods his head up and down. “Good, then that’s all that matters. That we’re here and we’re together and we’re happy.”

               You stand back up and take Ani’s hand in yours as you start to walk the rest of the way home, heading due north. You’re still a reasonable distance away when suddenly you feel something, a blinding hot spike of rage that emerges from out of nowhere. You look down at Ani, quickly, thinking it might be coming from him, but his facial expression doesn’t change as he looks back up at you. Suddenly his eyebrows raise in confusion as he senses it too. “I think dad’s home.”

               “Yeah,” you agree, but your voice is soft. Immediately, your mind starts to race as you imagine what had occurred. Kylo came home, expecting to find you there anxiously awaiting his return, and instead he found you… _gone_. He was probably so consumed by finding you missing that he didn’t even try to feel you through the Force. You can feel his anger growing, but beyond that, a sense of hopelessness, a sense of despair, that feels like it’s ripping you through to your core.

               “Are we in trouble?” Ani asks as he looks up at you, and you bite your lip as you pick up the pace, internally wincing as you picture the devastated state of Phasma’s house by the time you return.

               “We might be.”               

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told you Kylo wouldn't be gone for too long. ;) I know everyone expected trouble when Kylo left, but of course the real trouble is when he returns. xD Out of all the fastballs that I could have thrown...the Reader deciding to escape, Ani getting hurt, the Resistance finding her or Kylo...I figured this was the best one of all, because in a galaxy where it seems like something is constantly happening at every moment, at least the Reader gets a short time to herself to bond with Ani and at least catch her breath. I think she deserves that much....especially now that Kylo's back and in one of those moods again. xD What will happen? Check back Saturday to find out!! 
> 
> PS: If the above message wasn't coherent, I apologize. I was up at 6 AM today, packed the car, drove 8-9 hours, and have so far been suffering with terrible, terrible hotel Internet that is making everything take ten times longer than it should (and technically it's not even a hotel, it's a conference center, which makes it about twenty times worse) and it's 1 AM now and I'm driving to my mom's house in the morning so I should probably head to bed......zzzzzz....Until Saturday, cheers!!


	11. Chapter 11

               “She’s gone.”

               “Ren, calm down.”

               “I didn’t want to _do_ this anymore, I told you I didn’t want to go, and you forced me. You made me leave and now-“

               “Ren, calm down. You’re a grown man, not a child. I didn’t force you to do anything.”

               “She left me,” Kylo hollers, and by now you’re close enough that his volume is almost painful to your ears as you approach. “She went back to them, to that fucking _pilot_ , back to my _mother_ -” The predictable sound of something shattering reaches your ears, and you instinctively flinch as you screw your eyes shut and duck your head, even though you had not yet entered the house. “Do you know what they’ll do to her? They’ll turn her in, and then she’ll blame all of this on me, she’ll _hate_ me, again, and this time-“

               “Or not, considering I’m right here.”

               Kylo whirls around to face you, his eyes wide and reckless, and you can’t help but let a wave of pity flow out towards him. His lightsaber wasn’t in his hands, which was a good sign, but you can’t help but feel the tidal wave of negative emotions pulsing out of him, and you knew that if you could feel it this strongly, then you could only guess how much of an impact his flowing waves of wrath were having on Ani. A look passes between you before you finally break eye contact as you glance aside at Phasma. “Phasma, can you-?”

               “Done,” Phasma replies immediately as she walks over and takes Ani by the hand, escorting him back outside. Ani doesn’t say anything, and you silently hope that whatever explanation Phasma offers for Kylo’s temper will be a good one.

               Kylo stares you down until they are safely outside, out of earshot, and for a moment it registers that he’s trying to figure out whether to give into his longing and kiss you or kill you for making him think that you had left. Well, maybe not _kill_ you, but he definitely had ways of making sure you understood his displeasure. “Of course the one day Ani decides he wants to take a walk outside, you’d come back,” you say quietly, and that’s enough to bring Kylo back to himself.

               “I thought you _left_ ,” he hollers, his gloved hands balling into fists at his side. “I thought you went back to them. Do you know-?” He shakes his head viciously from side to side, as if he can’t even bring himself to continue with that particular line of thought.

               “Hey,” you say gently, forcing a tight smile to your lips. “I’m still here. Ani’s still here. It’s okay, it’s all okay.” He rubs at his forehead with one gloved hand and you wait for his shoulders to stop seething before you approach. “Are you mad at us?”

               “At you,” Kylo snarls. “He’s a child, but you should have known better than to leave, especially after I left strict instructions for you to stay put.”

               “He wanted to check out the transport shuttle,” you tell him calmly, but you can’t help but feel a flash of irritation bubble in your chest. He may have been used to giving people orders from within the First Order, but you were not a soldier, and you were not about to take orders from him. “And I figured it couldn’t hurt to know where it was, just in case.” Kylo looks like he’s about to argue, but you just shake your head and hold up a hand to stop him, feeling your frustration mingle with disappointment.

               This wasn’t what you wanted. You didn’t want to fight with him like this. You had been anxiously awaiting his return, and out of all the ways that you pictured him coming back, this wasn’t that way you had envisioned it. You had pictured him coming in while you were asleep and cuddling up in bed beside you, or to catch you at breakfast one morning as he walked through the door and swept you up in his arms. Honestly, you were a bit disappointed with yourself for being surprised that things had turned out this way. You could always hope that Kylo was going to turn around and surprise you, but in the end his volatile temper was always there, just beneath the surface, ready to be ignited at any moment. No matter how much he wanted you to think he had changed, the minute something didn’t go his way, he was back to screaming and yelling, smashing objects, breaking things, and becoming a tornado of destruction all over again.

               “Hey, hey, hey,” he says quietly, his voice soft and placating as he begins to realize your shifting emotions, but now you’re too frustrated with him, too incensed from his temper pulsing through the Force bond that you had to share, and you don’t want to hear anything more he has to say. You hold up one hand and push him back with the Force as you make your way past him, through the kitchen and up the stairs, with Kylo in hot pursuit. “I’m sorry, okay, just talk to me?”

               “Is there even a point?” you snap, waiting until you get to the top of the staircase before you turn around to look at him. “Why couldn’t you just take one minute to sense me, sense Ani, sense that we were still here? Why did you have to scare him? Why do you have to get so angry _all_ the _time_?”

               “Because that’s how I draw my power,” Kylo reminds you, and you just shake your head as you walk into your bedroom. “Because for the past few weeks, that’s all I was, angry, because I had to be. I couldn’t show fear, or reserve, or weakness, or someone would have noticed, and then when I got back and you weren’t here, I thought that something had happened, that I hadn’t been here to protect you.” He folds his arms over his chest as he sulks. “You can’t fault me for that.”

               You can feel your resolve weakening, but just a little. “I have other reasons to be pissed at you right now,” you say, and Kylo looks taken aback, as if he honestly didn’t know what he had done wrong this time. “Although sensing how concerned you seem to be about someone finding _me_ here brings up more questions on its own, somehow.” You let out a groan as you rub your fingertips against your temples in small, rhythmic circles of exasperation. “All you do is leave me with questions-“

               “I’ll answer them,” Kylo says quickly. His eyes are still wide, and he looks almost panicked, as if you might really walk out the door for good this time. “Anything you want to know, I’ll tell you. Any questions you ask, I’ll answer.”

               “Okay then,” you say quickly. “Let’s start with this one. Why did you tell Ani that you were planning to escape?” Kylo bows his head and lets out a deep sigh, as if he was expecting to have this conversation with you sooner or later. “Why would you be that reckless? He’s a child. He could have told someone. He could have told Leia. If he had, then they would have improved security, added more guards around your cell, maybe they would have made it impossible for you to escape.”

               “I didn’t know when they would come for me,” Kylo admits openly with an idle shrug of his shoulders. “If they even would at all, but this was the only way I could be sure that you and Ani really wanted to come with me.”

               “Ani didn’t tell me,” you say firmly. “I didn’t know any of this was going on. You both kept secrets from me, and then I just woke up here on Naboo. I didn’t know that this was something you planned during one of your clandestine meetings with him, and I don’t-“

               “Clandestine?” Kylo demands, his dark eyes flashing. “You could have come. I begged for you to come. You heard me. I even lowered myself to ask my mother-“

               “And that must have killed you, didn’t it?” you ask dryly. “To show her some kind of raw emotion, to show her that you still had feelings?”

               “I killed her husband,” Kylo says quietly. “I had no right to ask her for anything.”

               You can feel a chill rush through your chest as you can only imagine how that conversation must have gone, and you were almost grateful that you hadn’t been there to witness what was probably the most uncomfortable mother and son conversation in the history of the galaxy. Had Kylo apologized? Something told you that he hadn’t. Words weren’t enough to heal a wound that deep, and neither of them were shallow enough to pretend otherwise. “And yet she just let you spend alone time with Ani, then?”

               The corner of Kylo’s lip quirks upwards in a smile. “I can be persuasive.”

               “Did she know?” you ask quickly. “Was she in on this? Did she know you were planning on escaping?”

               Kylo just shrugs. “I think she had her suspicions,” he admits. “She had no faith in the Republic. She had been fighting to have me tried by a military tribunal, but they believed that I would most likely escape during transport. Instead, they just wanted her to execute me back in that cell.” You let out a deep breath as you lower your gaze. Even though he had taken Han from her, she still couldn’t have brought herself to kill her own son, or even give the order to do so. “She convinced them to wait until Snoke was defeated, just in case they still needed me.” He smiles to himself. “As it turns out, Phasma had very auspicious timing. The scavenger took out Snoke, and I was freed in more ways than one.”

               “Rey defeated Snoke?” you ask quickly, tilting your head to the side. You remembered Kylo mentioning it before, but now it struck you as odd. “How do you know it was her, specifically?”

               “I could _feel_ it,” Kylo says, and you can’t quite make out the look in his dark eyes as he stares you down. Was it pain? Regret? Relief? You just couldn’t be sure. You knew that Snoke had had a strong influence over him, that it had been almost as powerful as the bond you shared with him, and for a moment you wonder if Kylo had actually felt Snoke’s pain as he died. He probably had, but Snoke was gone now, and you were done thinking about the past.

               “Why were you so worried about me here?” you ask as you cross your arms over your chest. “You said the Resistance would turn me in. Turn me in where? I haven’t done anything.” Kylo bites his lip as he looks at you, nervously, and you can feel a sense of panic rising in your chest. “Kylo? What did you do, Kylo?”

               “I didn’t do anything,” Kylo says defensively before he visibly relaxes. “I’m sorry, I had no idea that they would do this.”

               “Do what?” you ask, your voice almost devoid of emotion as you stare at him with rising horror. “Kylo, tell me, what happened?”

               “The Republic-“ Kylo lets out a breath as he runs a hand through his hair. “We found out that the Republic has listed you as an accomplice in my escape. They’re holding you accountable for treason and are calling for your immediate capture, as well as mine.”

               “Are you kidding me?” you demand, unable to conceal the look of shock that takes over your expression. “So basically I’m on the run, same as you?” Kylo looks away. “But I thought the Republic wanted you dead on the spot.”

               “They do,” Kylo says softly, and as the realization sinks in, you can almost feel icy fingers race up and down the length of your spine.  

               “So when you say capture, you really mean they want me dead or alive?” you ask incredulously, and Kylo nods his head solemnly. “No way, no fucking way. The Resistance would never-“ You pause as you realize that the Republic did, unfortunately, seem to have a hold over the Resistance. If you went back to the Resistance now, they would have no choice but to turn you over to the Republic. “No Leia would never allow it, and neither would Poe. No, fuck that.”

               “Apparently you’ve made some enemies of your own,” Kylo says, looking up at you seriously. “I found out the order was proposed and enacted by Captain Deso from within the Republic. Have you ever heard of him?”

               “Deso,” you shout before Kylo can finish speaking, and he rolls his eyes as your hands ball into fists at your sides. “No, no way. He’s _Poe’s_ enemy, not mine. He’s the reason Poe left the Republic in the first place, because Deso failed to take the threat that you and the First Order posed seriously.” Kylo lets out a small hum of appreciation as he muses over this. “I can’t fucking believe this,” you snap as you turn away from him. “He’s doing this to get back at Poe, I just know it, and probably Leia too. After that whole _Yissira Zyde_ incident, I’m pretty sure both she and Major Ematt told Deso to go fuck himself before that meeting with Poe and the other Rapiers. I can’t fucking believe that snake-“

               “Did everyone know?” Kylo asks suddenly. “About you and the pilot?”

               “What?” you blink as you turn back to him, the thought of your relationship with Poe momentarily distracting you from your anger. “No, I mean, I don’t think so. I was just there with him after-“ You hesitate, not quite sure how to explain it.

               “Tell me,” Kylo urges, but you just shake your head.

               “It’s too difficult to explain,” you say. “But I was at this, well, thing, with a lot of people from the Republic, and I didn’t feel safe there. I had a bad feeling, like I shouldn’t have been there, with Poe, specifically, but also that I shouldn’t have been there at all.” You bite your lip as you mull it over in your head. “I had that thought almost right after I met Deso, though.” You look up at him suddenly. “Do you think that was from me then? Instinctually? Or part of the Force’s foresight? Telling me I shouldn’t have gotten close to Poe because of the kinds of enemies that may attract?”

               “It’s possible,” Kylo admits, but you get the feeling he doesn’t really know what you’re talking about.

               “It’s hard to explain,” you repeat. “But there were all of these Republic officials there trying to take credit for me, trying to take credit for the amount of training I put in. They called me the Champion of the Republic or something like that, like all I did was exist to serve them and feed their own egos.”

               “Champion of the Republic?” Kylo muses. “Do they know how much power you possess?”

               The question throws you off for a moment. “Do I?” you ask hesitantly, and you take a deep breath as you decide to just tell him what happened as bluntly as you possibly can. “They made me fight Rey as entertainment for the Republic, to prove that I knew what I was doing before I went off…to capture…you.”

               “Hey,” Kylo says quietly, forcing your eyes back up to meet his just by using that gentle, low tone of voice. “It’s okay. I had a feeling I knew why you were there.”

               “Then why didn’t you try to stop it?” you ask desperately. “You could have sent me away. Hell, you could have killed me. You didn’t have to give in to it. You didn’t have to let yourself be captured.”

               “I wanted you,” Kylo says softly.

               “Then why didn’t we just run off together?” you ask him softly. “We could have gone back to the Resistance base, gotten Ani-“

               “And how would we have gotten out?” he asks quietly. “Was I supposed to just hide away on some ship in that hangar and hope no one noticed me until you found Ani and we dashed away somewhere?”

               “I don’t know,” you shrug. In truth, it sounded like a pretty stupid plan. “Anyway, things worked out for the best, didn’t they? I’m here now. I’m with you.” Kylo’s gaze softens, but at the same time, another thought strikes you. “Although,” you say, your voice hardening. “Apparently now I’m also being hunted down, so I can’t exactly thank you for that.” You brush your hair behind your ears, trying to concentrate on the implications of what this meant. “What if we do get captured? What about Ani? What will happen to him?”

               “We won’t,” Kylo says firmly, so firmly that you almost can’t even bring yourself to question it. Kylo just shakes his head, as if he doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. “Tell me more about this fight. What happened there?”

               “Well-“ You suddenly pause as you look up at him. He raises his eyebrows expectantly as a smirk pulls at the corners of your lips. “Why tell you when I can show you?” You take his hand in yours as you press it to your temple. It had been quite a while since you had given him this much unrestricted access to your mind, but you hardly cared now. You focus on the memory and remember walking through the halls with Ladson, with Ani on his shoulders. You remember Rey coming out of the hangar to talk to you, your embarrassment at the whole ordeal, and then Poe coming out. You try to gloss over this part as quickly as you can, but Kylo lets out a snort as some slip of emotion betrays you.

               Regardless, you show him everything, from Rey’s address to the crowd, to your subsequent fight, to the part where you pulled a blaster away from someone in the audience in order to take out those two shielded droids from between the spinning blades of your lightsaber. Kylo lets out a small murmur as he watches the scene unfold, as if he’s impressed, and you can’t help but smirk to yourself as you continue the memory, making sure he paid close attention to the part where you defeated Rey.

               _Well done,_ Kylo thinks in your direction, and you can’t quell the bubble of elation that surfaces in your chest upon hearing his praise.

               _It’s coming up,_ you tell him as you attempt to skip through the hugs and the greetings from the various Senators, but you can hear Kylo make some kind of noise in the back of his throat as he sees your meeting with Wedge. _Did you know him?_ you ask immediately. _I mean, I assume he probably knows you, but-_

Kylo just gives a small shrug of his shoulders and doesn’t answer, something you immediately took to mean a yes. _Did you?_

 _Only a little,_ you reply. _He helped me participate in a Starfighter evasion exercise with Poe. It was a lot of fun, I-_ But suddenly you realize that that memory was directly tied into the moment when you first thought that you were starting to have feelings for Poe, and that wasn’t really something you were really inclined to dwell on, considering your present circumstances. You didn’t know how to deal with Kylo seeing that either, and so you quickly focused back on the matter at hand as you turned back towards your own memory. _It’s coming up,_ you tell him as you watch Captain Deso approach you.  

Poe had told him off pretty quickly, but there was no denying that Deso had pointedly glared at you, not Poe, before he took off, and then you had used the Force to trip him in order to make him lose his balance. You hadn’t really been _with_ Poe at that time, but you were with him there, hanging off his arm, and so it only made good sense to suspect that Deso had figured out your arrangement and, after your _escape_ with Kylo Ren, decided to take his revenge out on Poe, and you, and even to some extent the Resistance, by listing you as an accomplice in his escape instead of accepting that Kylo had taken you and Ani captive, seemingly against your own free will. Unless…

               You pull Kylo’s hand away from your face as you remember something. “Does Poe think I betrayed him? I knocked his blaster out of his hands before you could fire, and then you knocked him out. Maybe he thought that I decided to go with you after all?” You pause as a worse thought strikes you. “But then I heard blaster shots outside the ship while we were taking off. Did something happen to him? Is he-?”

               “He is fine,” Kylo tells you, and you can practically hear the contempt dripping from his voice as he appraises your concern for him. “We know he is alive; he’s causing the First Order quite a bit of trouble right now. He’s either trying to find you, or they are simply taking advantage of our division and trying to wipe us out more quickly that way.” You can’t help but make a face as you look away. “But-“ Kylo continues, somewhat unwillingly. “I _don’t_ think he would have approved any measure that would take your life. Capture, perhaps, to give an incentive for people to try to find you, but he saw me carrying you out of the hangar. I intentionally-“

               “Oh you did not intentionally knock me out to make me look like a victim in all of this,” you snap. “You weakened me because you knew it was the only way you were actually getting me off of that base.” You cross your arms over your chest as you shake your head. Arguing with Kylo about what had happened wasn’t going to make the situation any better. You were here now, and you didn’t really want to think any more about it. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter right now. What’s done is done. We’re here, we’re with Ani and we’re going to have to stick together from now on to make sure that it stays that way.” He nods his head silently, but that’s not good enough for you. “Right?” you ask firmly, and Kylo smirks as he takes a step closer to you.

               “Right,” he agrees, and that’s when you realize that it’s been weeks since you had last kissed him. You press your face up into his, pressing your lips together with all the force you can muster. Kylo opens his mouth immediately and you can’t help but let a groan slip out from the depths of your throat as you fist both hands in his long hair, letting your fingers trail across the nape of his neck. You don’t notice the scar anymore; it’s become as much a part of him as you have, and all that matters when you close your eyes is that you can feel him, not only with your hands, but with the Force bond. He is so close to you now, just being in his vicinity was soothing, like a panacea to all that ailed you, and right now, there was a lot that troubled you.

               Truthfully, there was so much to be concerned about that you didn’t quite know where to even begin. The biggest stress was the fact that you and Kylo were both now enemies of the Republic, and if anything should happen to the both of you, it meant that Ani would be alone. At first you were concerned that Kylo would say that you would have to split up for your own safety, but he seemed to know that you were stronger together, and you were thankful for that. There was also the other option that he was too tired of fighting the bond between you, that he just wanted to submit and stay together for his own selfish reasons, and you could hardly have blamed him. Either way, as long as you both managed to lie low and avoid capture, there was no reason for the Republic to find you. Kylo had evaded them for years, and he had only allowed himself to be taken in when you had gotten involved. Now that you were here, fighting on his side, there was no way that the Resistance or the Republic would be able to get anywhere near him.

               That was another thing that concerned you. After the First Order had destroyed the Republic’s fleet that had been parked on Hosnian Prime when Hux destroyed that entire system, the Republic needed some kind of defense, and it seemed that they were taking advantage of the Resistance’s military systems and intelligence, wielding them as if they were just another part of the Republic. You supposed they were, in a way, but you also thought that the Resistance didn’t take a side, that they were, in a way, almost neutral. You had been secretly hoping that they didn’t truly exist to serve the Republic, that they sought to maintain a balance in the galaxy and counteract evil in any form that might take, whether it be the First Order, or the Republic itself. If history was any indication, the Republic could definitely be turned into a greater terror than the First Order posed, and wasn’t it the job of the Resistance to counter that if it happened? Right now they seemed too much under the Republic’s control, and you wondered how long that would last for.

               In truth, you wondered about a lot of things. You wondered about Leia, whether she had somehow secretly hoped that her son would escape, knowing that the Republic would have assassinated him the first chance they got. You wondered about Poe, for the first time, allowing yourself to wonder if he really thought that you had gone with Kylo willingly. A part of you refused to believe it, but another part of you wasn’t so sure. You had clearly knocked the blaster out of his hands, but then Kylo had followed with his attack no more than a second later, knocking Poe to the ground. Did Poe think you had done that? If anything, he had to have known that it was to protect him, for his own safety. He was surrounded by Storm Troopers. If he had fired that shot and killed Kylo, he would have been dead right now. He may have been willing to give his life for the Resistance, but you sure weren’t, especially when he wouldn’t have been giving his life for them, but for you. Even if he had been struck down before you could do anything, you had been too weak to fight back and Ani had already been on board. There was nothing you could have done but mourn him, and you supposed that’s why Kylo told them to keep him alive. If he had ordered Poe’s death, you would never have forgiven him for it, not now, not in a few years, not ever.

               “Thank you,” you whisper quietly against his lips. You know it’s a stupid thing to thank him for, stupid to be thanking him at all, considering how much danger he put you in, and was still putting you in. But, yet again, Kylo spared someone’s life for no other reason than he cared about you, and for that you were thankful. You knew you shouldn’t have been; abstaining from murdering someone in cold blood was not a sign of affection or goodness, and yet this was Kylo Ren. You knew who he was, what he was capable of, and what he had done. The man that had killed his own father had decided that he couldn’t kill you, and hadn’t killed Poe, whom he had plenty of reason to loathe, simply knowing that his life was directly linked to your love. If anything, that only seemed to prove how selfish he could be, but if his selfishness could be used for better purposes, to spare the lives of others, then you would not hold it against him. You knew you shouldn’t exactly reward him for it, either, but you couldn’t help the sense of relief that came with the knowledge that Kylo had spared not one, but now two people, simply because of you.

               “Don’t be,” Kylo whispers back, and you know he means that. You know he regrets at least some of what he’s done, if his nightmares are any indication, and although he wouldn’t talk about them, you knew he still harbored guilt about what he did. You knew some people thought that Kylo Ren was heartless, that he couldn’t care less about the things he had done or the people he had killed, but you knew that wasn’t true. He was able to justify at least some of what he had done simply because, in his mind, he had thought it was right, and in the end, anyone could use that to justify anything. You couldn’t tell him how to think, how to live. You could not teach him morality, or right from wrong, simply because you were in no position to judge him. Who said that his own morals and ethics were any better than yours? Whatever sense of self you had, whatever ideals you held yourself to, didn’t apply to him. He lived by his own rules, and he would suffer the consequences of his own actions, just as you would have to pay for yours, if that time ever came.

               But, in truth, you hoped it wouldn’t. You hoped with all of your heart that you could stay on the run with Kylo Ren and keep running forever and ever. You had no idea what that kind of future would be like for Ani, but you were sure that the Force would eventually yield an answer to that predicament. The Force had led you and Kylo back together, and if the Force wanted you and Kylo to stay together, then you just had to have faith in the plan, as difficult as it was for you to accept. You didn’t want to submit control of your life. You wanted to take responsibility for your own actions, carve out your future with your own decisions, without destiny getting in the way of your choices. Then again, you couldn’t help but wonder if there were no less than a thousand roads scattered in front of you, if they all would inevitably lead you back to the same destination, if they would all lead you back to an uncertain, but guaranteed, future.

               If that was the case, you hoped it was with Kylo. You wanted nothing more than to be with Kylo, with Ani by your side, and maybe Phasma too. You missed having just another person around that you could call a friend, and that was what you had thought of her as, back on the Starkiller Base. Phasma was simply a product of circumstances, trying to do the best for herself by joining the First Order, just like you were trying to do the best for yourself when you had met her. Just like Kylo was trying to do the best for himself by doing whatever it was that he thought was right. Everyone in the entire galaxy acted in regard to their own best interests, and you could never hold that against any of them.

               All you could do was pave your own way, and do the best that you could with what you had, with the little family you had gathered around you. As you took Kylo into your arms, you made a solemn vow to yourself that this was your family, and you loved it, and you were determined to protect it by any means necessary. It didn’t matter who tried to stop you, or why, whether they were with the Resistance or the Republic or the First Order; any threat against you and your family would be targeted and swiftly eliminated. That was your mission now, that was your goal, and you would spend everyday training and preparing so that when the time came, you could defend what you had waited so long to finally achieve.

               You would not lose this. Not again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not going to lie, I thought this chapter would end in smut too, but then I remembered that I had broken this chapter up into two parts so that it didn't detract from the big reveal. xD The good news is that the Reader has decided to really and truly _choose_ Kylo...but how much of a choice is it, really, considering she can't go back to the Resistance anymore? The Reader is on the run now, just like Kylo, and Phasma, and the rest of the First Order. How will this affect things going forward? You'll just have to wait and see. ;)
> 
> In the meantime, I'm sure you're wondering why this chapter was posted so early!! If it's because you think I love you, then you're right, because I do, but also because I'm finally back in my home town after three days of driving and I am wiped. No lie, I am absolutely exhausted, I am ready to literally plop face down in a pillow and just pass out, but I am meeting friends in half an hour, and then tomorrow, literally every hour is scheduled to see as many people as possible before I head off for the final leg of my move on Sunday, and then I'm off, never to return. Well, not never, I'm only moving four hours away, but four hours is still a pretty long drive one-way. xD Okay, I'm sorry, I'm rambling, I just drove eight hours and I've had very little sleep in the past three days and I seriously don't know how I'm still functioning. I'm totally going to need a vacation when all this is said and done, or at least a very, very, very long nap. xD At least by the time the next chapter of this story rolls around, I should be (mostly) moved into my new place, since the movers won't actually deliver my stuff until the end of next week. Gah, who needs really life stress when we have Star Wars? Okay, I'm seriously procrastinating and I need to go get ready. See you all Tuesday, until then, cheers!! <3 
> 
> (And thanks for all your well wishes!! I really truly do appreciate it, and in case you couldn't tell, I really need them right now. I have absolutely no idea how much of the above message is actually coherent or not...I'll get someone to edit that back through later. xD)


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and Kylo has returned (part 2) 
> 
> NSFW content ahead

               There was a bounty on your head. The Republic wanted you captured, dead or alive, and you didn’t know which they preferred, not that you were truly all that invested in their opinion. It made you think back to years ago, when you had been pulled into the Starkiller Base and duped into working for the Resistance. _That_ had not been your choice, and yet you had still accompanied Poe Dameron to their base on D’Qar when the opportunity arose. That _had_ been your choice, and you went willingly. That fateful night, however, you told Kylo that you wanted to stay, and yet he had put you in a weakened state, slung you over his shoulder, and ran off with you. You weren’t quite sure why you had resisted him at first, whether it was the shock of seeing Ani defenseless and the fear of leaving him behind, or a misplaced sense of obligation to the Resistance or because of your feelings for Poe himself, but either way, that night, you hadn’t really had much of a choice as Kylo took you away. The Republic, however, didn’t seem all that concerned with the details of your departure. You knew Poe must have tried to defend you, of course he would have, but Captain Deso was his enemy, and of course the Republic would listen to one of their own instead of the pilot who had defected to the Resistance. It hadn’t been your choice to go, and yet you were still being pulled into the same shit all over again, being thrown into a situation, not by choice, and yet still suffering the consequences of the actions of others. This was between Poe and Deso, the Resistance and the Republic, and yet you were caught in the middle of it, simply by affiliation.

               Suffice it to say, you didn’t want to be caught in the middle of things anymore. You were sick of the Republic and their games and their deceit. In a way, they were worse than the First Order, manipulating everyone and anyone they could to advance their own political power. By default, that also meant that you no longer wanted to return to the Resistance. They were too far involved with the Republic, and while you assumed that had been necessary to counteract the First Order, now it was the Republic that appeared to be in need of control, if Captain Deso had so much power to label you a traitor without anyone calling question to it. Then again, one of the senators had mentioned that they had recorded a holo of your whole battle with Rey, and you could admit that between your amber blades and your fierce fighting style that they had no choice but to take you seriously as a threat to the Republic now that you were with Kylo Ren, under the assumption that he would taint you and turn you against them. Not that you needed much convincing. If they wanted to give themselves a better image, they could have done that the night they were there, and you had given them just as much of a chance as they had given you. None.

               Kylo can see what you’re thinking about, and he wraps his arms around you protectively as he gently brushes his lower lip against yours in a remarkably tender gesture. “I’m here now,” he says, in his deep, low voice, and it’s so soothing that you find it almost impossible to resist him. Not that you really had any reason _to_ resist him, and so you let yourself give in as you grab the sides of his face in either hand as you kiss him, really kiss him, pushing your lips together with all the force that you can muster. Kylo wastes no time as he picks you up and pushes you against the wall, pinning his hips against yours, and you can feel his desperate sense of need as he attacks your lips with fervent, hungry kisses.  

               “Fuck I missed you,” you pant against him as you trail your hand down his back, searching for his familiar warmth, but you quickly find yourself disappointed. “You’re wearing too many clothes.”

               “Then take them off of me,” Kylo says with a smirk, and you pause. You had never taken Kylo’s clothes off before, and you weren’t quite sure how to go about it. His gloves were already off, so the easiest part was done, and you head for the belt next, fumbling as you open the latch. The scarf comes off next, as you simply unwind it once and drop it to the floor beside him. You help pull the tunic off next, helping his arms out of the sleeves, before you see the a long, flowing layer of armor that is zippered up down the middle and drops down to his knees. You bend down slightly as you grab the zipper at the waist and unzip it, slowly, sliding it off his arms as your fingertips graze the muscles in his biceps. Underneath that, there’s some sort of harness or protective pad that’s secured over his abdomen, probably to further protect him from any additional damage to the tender area Chewie left in his side with that bowcaster, and it makes you stop as you consider him.

               “Does it really still hurt there?” you ask him. “Where Chewie hit you?” Kylo narrows his eyes, as if you’re trying to identify a weakness, and you shake your head to indicate that that was definitely not your intention. “I just want to know, not so that I’m not too rough with you or anything like that but I just, I don’t know, I want to know. Does it still hurt you?”

               “Sometimes,” Kylo admits, although he still looks wary as he says it.

               “It looked bad,” you say gently, but you make the mistake of letting pity creep into your voice. Fortunately, Kylo ignores it.

               “Keep going,” he urges, but beneath the protective pad over his abdomen there looks to be another layer of armor underneath that, covering his chest, and some protective fastening holding the two together.

               “You’re going to have to show me,” you say with a light laugh. “Your whole ensemble here is complicated, to say the least.”

               “Fair,” Kylo relents as he starts to take off the remaining clothes himself. “Although I had assumed you spent enough time watching me change to figure out how to do it yourself.”

               “I don’t watch-“ you start, but Kylo just smirks in your direction as you close your eyes and shake your head. “Okay, fine, maybe I peek,” you confess. “But that’s as much as I’ll admit to.”

               He pulls off his shirt and as he lets his pants drop to the floor, that’s when you decide that you can’t take it anymore. He hadn’t been gone for all that long, but you had still missed the way he felt underneath your hands. You tear off your own shirt as you rush towards him, pushing your chest against his, determined to feel as much of him as possible as you run your hands through his thick hair. Kylo lets out a heavy groan as he plants a sloppy kiss against your lips, his hands bracing either side of your neck as you push yourself against him. “Oh fuck, I missed you,” you repeat as you run your hands over the muscles in his arms, letting them trail down his toned sides to his waist.

               Kylo growls something back, but he’s too busy attacking your lips for you to actually understand him. Not that you really need to. You had always communicated best with Kylo in this insistent, physical way, speaking with either idle touches or firm ones. You knew the way his kisses were either soft and gentle or vicious and firm was his way of communicating the measure of how much he missed you as he addressed you with his fervent need.

               Honestly, at this point it didn’t even matter what he was doing to you as long as he was doing something, anything, as long as he was touching you in some way, you couldn’t get enough of him. His hands fist in your hair, holding you tightly, and you pant into his open mouth as you press your fingertips into his chest, desperate to convey your desire for him. You wanted to touch every inch of him, and your hands trailed off his shoulders, down his back, as you explored and caressed his warm skin with your hands.

               Kylo doesn’t break the kiss as he leads you to the bed, and you stumble over your own feet as he pushes you down on the very edge. For once it didn’t matter that you had hardly any foreplay at all, you were already so ready for him that your body was bursting with need. You scoot yourself down to the edge of the bed and he remains standing as he guides your legs around his waist, quickly, before he pushes himself into you.

               Your chin collapses forward onto your chest before you roll your neck back, sliding the backs of your hands over the blankets as you curl them up by your head, reaching them out behind you as you arch your back in reaction to his slow, deep thrusts. “Do you like this?” Kylo asks as he keeps up his slow, but constant, rhythm, and you can’t help but whimper with need beneath him. It’s a pitiful sound, and it only makes Kylo slow his rhythm even further, keeping you wanting and desperate.  

               “Faster,” you plead breathlessly. “Please, Kylo, faster.” Your voice sounds whiny, even to your own ears, and you bite your lip as you look up at him to try to suppress any further outbursts; no matter what he did, no matter how slow he went, you were not going to beg. At least, not yet.

               He starts to increase his speed, just a little bit, but even that extra burst of sensation is enough to make your entire body quiver with need. You want to touch him, want to feel him, but instead you just grab fistfuls of the blanket in both hands as you clench the muscles in your legs around him, holding you tighter to him as you take him in. His thrusts become more and more frantic as he starts to build, and it doesn’t take you long to find your climax, surrendering yourself to him as you arch your back for a final time before you collapse back into the bed. Kylo, however, withdraws from you immediately, crawling onto you as he kisses you passionately, his hands fisting in your hair. You mimic his motion, entangling your fingers through his own dark locks as you press your body up against his, your legs still wrapped around his waist.

               Eventually he breaks the kiss to bury his face in your neck, and while at first you think he’s going to bite down on the sensitive skin there, he just traces the curve of your neck with the tip of his nose before he plants a kiss against your collarbone and relaxes there, wrapping his arms firmly around you as he lies with his cheek against your shoulder. You wiggle your arms a little bit until they are free and then maneuver them so that you can wrap your arms around him, one hand resting in his hair as the other one smooths the unblemished skin over the small of his back with small, gentle strokes. Kylo lets out a hum of appreciation, and you keep up the movement, gliding the very tip your fingertips up and down the length of his spine.

               “Do you like that?” you ask softly, and Kylo barely inclines his head in a nod as he exhales your name. It brings a smile to your lips as you relax, just resting here with him. It felt nice, and peaceful, and for a moment you almost believed that you could lie with him like that forever. You knew you couldn’t, but with your mind at ease you allowed yourself to just take that moment to pretend that it was just you and him, capsuled in the great seat of time, where you would never have to part from him ever, ever again.

               Kylo sits up sooner than you would have liked, but he makes no move to go as he sits back on the bed, spreading his legs. “Join me.” You look down at his cock before back up at him.

               “Again?”

               He looks down and smirks good naturedly, but he holds out his hand for you and you take it as he sets you in his lap, between his legs, facing away from him. You lean back against him, and Kylo begins to rub the muscles in the base of your neck with his fingertips. He had only done such a thing once or twice before, and both times was because you had thought you injured yourself or overworked your muscles from the strength of your training and he had done it out of assumed necessity. This time, however, it seemed he was doing it just _to_ do it, and the action confused you more than anything else.

               “Are you massaging me?” you ask at length, unable to quell the confusion in your voice.

               His fingers pause against your sensitive skin, and you immediately regret saying anything at all. “Do you want me to stop?” His voice is light and surprised, and it immediately draws a smile to your lips.

               “No, please,” you tell him, and as the motion continues, you allow yourself to relax into him. His fingertips work the base of your neck between your shoulders blades for a bit before they work up to your neck, massaging the tight muscles there with his fingertips, using his thumbs for support.

               “You’re tense,” he muses, and you want to shrug but you can’t really with the pressure from his hands resting on your shoulders as he rubs you.

               “That’s what happens when you’re gone for so long,” you tell him. “I worry about you. I can’t help it.”

               “I worried about you too,” he says softly as his fingers making their way down your shoulders. You lean forward a little bit so he can use his fingertips to massage the tops of your shoulders, using his thumbs to penetrate the deep muscle over your shoulder blades, and you can’t help but let out a small murmur at how good this feels.

               “Yeah, but you were only worried that I was going to leave,” you counter as you lean further forward, and he responds by moving his fingertips down your back, massaging the firm muscles in your sides with both hands.

               “Partially,” Kylo responds. “But I also worry about your safety.”

               “Just my safety?” you ask as you lean completely forward now, bent at the waist, as he rubs the area on either side of the base of your spine. “Is that all you were concerned with?”

               “Roll over,” Kylo instructs, and you don’t even register his lack of an answer as you plop down onto your front. Kylo positions himself over you, straddling you on either side as he massages your back, starting with your shoulders again. You immediately let out a small moan of pleasure as he digs into the sensitive, sore muscles at the base of your neck, and you feel yourself slowly start to dissolve into the bed.

               “You should do this more often,” you tell him softly, and he just lets out a small chuckle as he continues to caress you.

               “Tell me about how things were here,” he requests. “Tell me about Ani.”

               “Things with Ani were good,” you reply. “I mean, there’s not too much to tell on that front. I trained him a little bit, taught him how to hold a staff and how to stand when firing a blaster and such.”

               “Oh?” Kylo’s voice is vaguely teasing. “How well did that go?”

               “About as well as trying to get him to sit still and meditate with me,” you reply, and Kylo laughs out loud at that. It’s a rich sound, and it tugs a smile to the corners of your lips. “Hey, at least I tried. He has a shorter attention span than you do and sometimes I’m willing to believe he’s twice as reckless.”

               “You’re not so patient yourself,” Kylo teases as his hands continue to glide across your skin in a series of comforting caresses. “You couldn’t wait for me to get back.”

               “For many reasons,” you say without the slightest hint of reserve. “Not all of which concern my safety. In fact, that was probably the least of my concerns. I feel safer with you here, of course, and Phasma, but it’s not the primary reason I like having you around.”

               He pauses for a moment, his fingertips hesitating over your skin, and you can tell that he’s reading you through the Force bond. “Do I truly make you this happy?”

               “Yes,” you reply instantly, and your eyes open in surprise at how quickly and readily you were able to answer him. Kylo did make you happy. You had been fighting it for quite a long time, but now that you were finally together, you wanted to be with him. You wanted this kind of relaxed lifestyle with him, where you didn’t really have to concern yourself with whatever skirmish was raging on in the galaxy. As long as you both stayed hidden and out of sight, you could disappear until history itself forgot your names, and then no one would come looking to take you out of this blissful existence.

               “Stay with me,” Kylo says suddenly, and you roll over to face him, glancing up at his large frame hovering over you. His eyes are serious, trained on yours, but your own expression is much more bemused, your eyebrows raised with good humor as you appraise him.

               “Is this what I think it means?” you ask, and you can tell by Kylo’s silence that it is. “Are you really serious about this?”

               “I am,” he replies, his face set, and he looks more uncertain than anything else. You just smile widely as you gaze up at him, trying to relax his firm demeanor.

               “Okay then,” you say quietly, shrugging your shoulders openly. “Okay then, I’m yours.” In truth, you were his, you always had been, from the day you had first met him to the day you had become bonded to him. You loved Kylo Ren with every fiber of your being, and although sometimes it seemed unfathomable to you that he could feel the same way, he was here, making a proposal that only a few months ago you would have laughed at if anyone had suggested it. To be fair, you were giggling right now, although you couldn’t help yourself. The thought of a secret love affair, a secret marriage, with Kylo Ren had made you giddy, almost lightheaded. You had no idea when you first met him on board the Starkiller Base that he would be here proposing to you on Naboo with your son only a few rooms away, but you supposed if this was going to be your story, then at least you were happy. That was all you could really ask for, anyway. “Who is going to officiate it? Can Phasma do it?”

               “Does it have to be officiated?” Kylo asks as he bends down to kiss you, intertwining one of his long legs with yours as he lays down beside you. “Letting anyone know of our whereabouts here would be a risk.”

               You just shrug, undeterred by the inopportune circumstances. “Okay then,” you reply simply. “I mean, we don’t need to do it now. We don’t even need to do it here. Just knowing that you’re mine and I’m yours, that’s enough. It’s always been enough.”

               “I’ve always been yours,” he whispers as he brushes your hair out of your face, cupping your cheek with one large hand as he kisses you again. “From the moment I felt myself becoming bonded to you, I couldn’t stay away. I couldn’t resist you. I knew from that moment that our futures would forever be interconnected, no matter how much we both tried to prevent it.”

               “You mean how much _you_ tried to prevent it,” you admonish him softly, slapping his chest lightly with one hand. “I’ve always been here waiting for you to come around and come back for us.”

               “I won’t leave you again,” Kylo says, his voice dipping into the realms of seriousness again, and you roll your eyes as you laugh.

               “No more seriousness,” you tell him. “You’re back now, and you just proposed to me, which I accepted, so you have no reason to be anything less than the happiest man in the galaxy right now.”

               Kylo lowers his lips to yours but does not kiss you, not yet. “Your optimism _confounds_ me,” he admits, his voice a tone of good humor as he slowly presses his lips against yours, and you exhale a happy murmur as you arch your back slightly, leaning into the kiss.

               “I have you and Ani and I’m happy,” you tell him. “I don’t know, it just feels like I have everything I want right now and I don’t know what to do to keep it, but I feel like I’ll do anything, absolutely anything, to keep us together.” He gives you a bizarre look and you quickly flush in embarrassment. “Sorry, that probably sounded really stupid.”

               “No,” Kylo says gently, running a finger down your cheek. “No, it doesn’t. It sounds like exactly what I was thinking.” You run your fingertips along his side, waiting for him to continue. “I have you and I have Ani. I have something outside myself that I am finally prepared to protect. I wouldn’t die for the First Order, but I would gladly give my life for you.”

               “Don’t do that,” you say playfully as you push yourself on top of him. “Seriously, no, none of that. I don’t want to hear anything more about danger and life risking. I want us to be safe here.”

               “Which is why I need to stay involved with the First Order,” Kylo tells you quietly, and you frown as you look down at him. “I can keep us safe if we do. I have power there, and it would be foolish for us not to benefit from it.”

               “I don’t want you going away again,” you say quietly as you place your hand in his.

               Kylo just shakes his head as he runs his thumb over the backs of your fingers. “Considering what has happened recently, the First Order is operating in a much more clandestine state than before. We are operating remotely, so I can stay here, in secrecy, with you, and command things from afar.”

               A smile tugs at the corners of your lips. “Okay,” you relent. “But what happens when things start to build up again? I know things aren’t exactly good right now, but what happens when the First Order starts to get stronger and develop more of a militaristic presence until they can’t go unnoticed anymore?”

               “One of the goals of the First Order has always been to explore and inhabit the Unknown Regions,” Kylo tells you. “No one knows what’s out there, it operates completely out of the Republic’s sphere of influence-“

               “And you want the three of us to go out and live there?” you ask as you raise your eyebrows in surprise. You could imagine that pirates probably operated in the remote secrecy of the Unknown Regions, but besides that, you didn’t have a clue what else was out there. It could be dangerous. The oxygen levels of one planet could seem tolerable at first, but what happened if it was filled with a new kind of undetectable gas that killed you within five years? Ten? No one would know it was happening until it was already too late to stop it.

               Kylo seems to register your concern. “I wouldn’t bring you or Ani unless I was confident that it was absolutely safe,” he tells you as he gives your hand a tight squeeze.

               “And you’re not going alone,” you tell him. “The three of us are together now, and it’s going to stay that way. You’re not going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere, and we’re sure as hell not letting Ani out of our sight, so that’s just the way it’s going to be from now on. Okay?” Kylo just chuckles at you. “I mean it,” you say as you give his arm a light slap. “I’ve never known what my future was going to look like, and after I met you, I learned to stop trying to take control of things, because any plans I make, any time I drift off course, I’m somehow pulled right back to you. I’m not going to fight it anymore. The Force wants us to be together, and that’s how it’s going to be.”

               “And if the Force decides that we should part?” Kylo asks, his voice suddenly turning solemn.

               “The Force can’t dictate choice,” you tell him firmly. “Loving you is my choice, being with you is my choice, and there’s nothing anyone can do to change my mind.”

               Kylo just chuckles as he studies your face. “Should I be concerned by how much you’re beginning to sound like me?”

               “No,” you reply simply. “Because you are the most powerful man in the galaxy and if I had even a fraction of your strength, I would already have taken out both the Republic and the Resistance and we would be commanding everything from the depths of the galaxy where no one could possibly take away or destroy the legacy that we achieved.”

               “Together?” Kylo asks as he presses his lips to yours. You just nod your head in confirmation as you close the distance between you.

               “Together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we return with smut and fluff, heavy on the cheese. This and the next 4-5 chapters I wrote on one big all-nighter writing splurge, so it was interesting reading back and facepalming at the mush, which I am personally not a big fan of, but hey, let the Reader be happy 2k16....things are definitely not going to stay this happy for her forever. ;) 
> 
> And for inquiring minds that want to know, I have safely made it to my final destination! The movers should be here the rest of my stuff tomorrow, I have Internet, (albeit incredibly slow Internet that fluctuates between .04 and 2.8 mbps depending how many other people are using it >.


	13. Chapter 13

               Kylo lets out a whimper from beside you, and you roll over in his arms as you reach up to stroke his cheek. “Kylo,” you whisper quietly. “Hey, Kylo, wake up.” He jerks his head from side to side quickly, and you can feel the muscles in his upper arms tense. You consider putting your fingertips to his temple in order to take a quick peek at his dream, but ultimately decide against it. You were happy, for maybe the first time in your entire life, you were truly, incandescently happy, and you didn’t want anything that happened inside his head to ruin it, especially when it was something he couldn’t control. He couldn’t control his dreams any more than he could control the weather, and you didn’t want to see anything that might make you hold them against him, regardless.

               “Kylo, wake up,” you whisper again, and his leg gives a small jerk as he sits up suddenly, knocking you backwards. You take a firm hold on his arm, but he only responds by making a move to throw you off of him. Nevertheless, you tighten your grip and stay put. “Kylo, it’s me, you’re okay, calm down.” His eyes settle on you and his panicked expression soon retreats as he lets out a sigh and throws his head back onto the pillow. He murmurs something as he grinds the heel of his palm into his forehead, mumbling a small string of curses out from under his breath.

               You wait patiently for Kylo to collect himself, gently running your hand up and down his side in an attempt to calm him until he grabs your wrist suddenly, pinching it between his thumb and middle finger. You still, waiting breathlessly, before he raises the backs of your fingers to his lips and kisses them. You breathe out a sigh of relief as he releases your wrist, and you smooth back his hair with your free hand as you bend down to kiss his temple. “Better now?”

               “I’m fine.” Kylo’s voice is gruff, and you can’t help but roll your eyes. You had thought that you had gotten past his rough exterior by now, but you supposed he was still on the outskirts of wake and sleep and was feeling suspiciously vulnerable at his circumstances. Whatever he saw in his dream must have really shaken him, and you give him a few more minutes to calm down until his breathing returns to normal.

               “So do you want to talk to me about what happened?” you ask at length as you roll over onto his chest so he can’t ignore you.

               “No,” Kylo says flatly, although his eyes are wide open and it doesn’t look like he’s going back to sleep anytime soon.

               “Well, I want to see.” You teasingly put your palms up against his temples, and Kylo squirms as your skin makes contact, but his shoulders are trapped underneath your elbows and you have a quick window in which you can peer into his thoughts. You look, quickly, and while you open your mind to see something, another vision lashes out at you instead. From out of the immense blackness behind your eyelids, you see a snake’s head lunging towards your face from out of nowhere, and you instinctively pull yourself back and topple over, collapsing beside Kylo.

               “What was that?” you demand as you clamber up into a seated position beside him. “Kylo, what was that?” That was not the first time you had seen a snake’s head lashing out at you. When you had been on the Resistance base and Kylo had tried coaxing you into taking Ani to come visit him, you had a brief flash of the trees of Takodana, and then a large snake’s head had burst out of the foliage into your field of vision before you had abruptly broken free of the dream. You had never quite figured out why it was that you had seen a snake, or how that vision had gotten there, but clearly it was linked to Kylo if you had seen it both then and now.

               Kylo can see the thoughts flicking through your brain and he has no choice but to answer if he doesn’t want to be peppered with questions over the course of the next hour. “Curse that scavenger,” he grumbles as he throws his head back into the pillow again, and you quirk one eyebrow in confusion.

               “Rey?” you ask blankly. “What does Rey have to do with anything? What does she have to do with this snake I keep seeing?”

               “I hate snakes,” Kylo murmurs, and you prop yourself up on one elbow as you lay down beside him, waiting. There’s a story here, and you’re not going to let him fall back to sleep until he tells it. Sensing your resolve, he continues. “It happened back while I was training with Luke,” he tells you. “I was a mere boy at the time. I had been meditating quietly by myself, alone, when I thought I heard something behind me. I turned to look, and that’s when I saw it.”

               “The snake?” you ask, and Kylo merely nods his head. So the snake that you kept seeing was a memory from something traumatic that had happened in his past? “Were you okay? How badly were you hurt? Was it poisonous?”

               Kylo holds up a hand to stop your barrage of questions. “It didn’t bite me,” he says simply, although you can’t help but detect something else in his words. “Luke stopped it mid-strike with the Force, just in time.” He shakes his head as if he’s disgusted. “He told me that I shouldn’t be taunting the wildlife. _I_ didn’t taunt _anything_. I was just sitting there-“

               Kylo keeps talking, keeps ranting, but you’re almost mesmerized by how such a seemingly insignificant event seemed to have such a profound impact on Kylo’s life, to the point where he still remembered it vividly enough to obsess over more than decades later. You weren’t sure if it was the fear of being snuck up on, of being vulnerable, that impressed upon him so strongly that made him reject the very thought of weakness, or if it was the fact that it had been Luke who had come to his rescue, Luke who had admonished him for something that was not his fault in the first place.

               “So that’s clearly a strong memory for you,” you say softly when he’s done speaking. “But I’ve seen that before, back when I was in that dream with you, back on the Resistance base. How was it that I was able to see it then?”

               “The scavenger,” Kylo replies crossly, and you shake your head, not understanding. “You linked minds with her, didn’t you? She let you see everything that I did, including-“

               “Including when you interrogated her,” you finish for him. “And when you were looking into her mind, seeing her fear, she was strong enough to turn it against you and see into your head, see everything you were afraid of.” You hadn’t remembered seeing the snake specifically in her mind, but you supposed that a portion of it had transferred its way to the depths of your memory, waiting only to be stirred up by a direct intimation to call it forth. “But that doesn’t explain why I was able to see it then.”

               “Were you afraid of me?” Kylo asks softly, and you bite your lip. At the time, you had been, although you weren’t quite sure if it was because _you_ had been afraid of Kylo, or if it was because Rey had been afraid of Kylo. Either way, it suddenly made sense. Rey had been clearly afraid of Kylo, and so when you had started to feel a similar impression, you were able to stir up his past memories to use against him as a subconscious defense mechanism, whether through the Force or your own will.

               “Inadvertently,” you reply. “It took me a while to separate Rey’s emotions from my own, but-“

               “She was trying to get you to hate me,” Kylo says bitterly. “She was trying to turn you against me, trying to-“

               “She was doing nothing of the sort,” you snap back. “Rey was my friend. She was trying to help me. She encouraged me to keep an open mind; it’s my fault that I was too weak to put up enough of a barrier between her emotions and mine, but I’ve sorted through all that now and I’m past it.”

               “I want to see it,” Kylo says at length. “I want to see the Force training, see everything that went on at the Resistance base. You are stronger now, much stronger, and I want to see how you accomplished this in so short a time.”

               “And that’s one request I’m going to have to deny,” you tell him. He looks taken aback, but you stay firm. “Things that happened on the Resistance base are private, not just because of Poe, or Rey, but because I went through a lot of difficult emotions trying to figure out how I felt about you and where we stood and I honestly don’t feel like going back and replaying all that. I just don’t.”

               “I can-“ Kylo starts, but you press a quick kiss against his lips to stop him.

               “It’s private,” you tell him firmly. “I had a life with you and a life with them, and I kept both parts of myself separate. I want to keep it that way.”

               Kylo grimaces, not liking your reply. “What else aren’t you telling me?”

               “Nothing,” you say with a huff. Honestly, you weren’t quite sure why exactly you didn’t want Kylo to see any of your memories, but it just felt distinctly wrong in a way that you couldn’t describe. It felt unnatural, as if the past consisted of two separate spheres that were rapidly colliding and smashing into each other, trying to fit together when they clearly didn’t belong. Kylo had been at the Resistance base only a brief time, and even then, he had been caged like an animal. He hadn’t ever truly fit into your life there the way the rest of them had. No, they existed on two separate planes and you wanted to keep it that way.

               “What are you afraid to show me?” Kylo asks, and if you’re not mistaken he sounds almost nervous.

               “Nothing,” you repeat. “I mean, there’s not a lot that happened. In the mornings I had piloting lessons with Poe, then I learned how to shoot a blaster with Finn, and then I had Force training with Rey that then led to sparring after she helped me build my own lightsaber. Then we’d usually go down to the mess hall and meet Ladson and Ani and we’d all have dinner together and then Ladson and I would go back to the apartment with Poe and Ani would sit on his lap while we sparred.” You picture the scene in your mind again, catching glimpses of Ladson’s frame moving towards you, the corner of Poe’s lip pulled up in a happy smile, the slow clap of Ani’s hands as he watched you knock Ladson to the floor. It all seemed to be happening in slow motion, and for a quick moment, you would almost do anything to have that old life back. Almost.

               “You were happy,” Kylo says after a moment, although his inflection gives nothing away.

               “I was,” you admit. “I missed you but I was happy there. I didn’t just find a life and adapt to the circumstances that I was in like I had when I was on the Starkiller Base. I took advantage of my resources and I made a life for myself. Granted, Leia offered, but I still took her up on it.”

               Kylo just shakes his head. “We should go back to sleep.” He wraps an arm around you and you place your head in the familiar spot between his shoulder and his chest, but sleep doesn’t come to you. Kylo’s breathing eventually evens out as he slips back into whatever dreams or nightmares he was having, but you feel the stone hit against your chest as you shift into a more comfortable position and for a moment it almost feels heavy, as though it’s pulling you down. You ignore the feeling as you wrap your fingers around the stone, bringing your fist to your mouth as you run your upper lip across the backs of your knuckles. You were thinking thoughts that you shouldn’t, couldn’t be having, especially not on the night after Kylo had proposed to you.

               You had no regrets, but you couldn’t help shake the feeling that something was missing. It was probably Ladson, after all, you had lived with him for over five years and he had become something of your family, but Ladson had started to live his own life before you had left and it’d hardly be fair to say that you held it against him. No, you were happy that he had moved on, and you silently hoped that he had still managed to move on after your disappearance and didn’t blame himself too much. You couldn’t even say that you missed Poe, or Rey, or Finn all that much either, but there was a deep ache in your chest when you thought about life back on D’Qar. It had become a familiar, structured routine, and although you tried to think of it as a brief recess from your time with Kylo Ren, a part of you _had_ wished it had been permanent.

               Idly, you tried to think of another universe where the circumstances had been different, where you weren’t bonded to Kylo Ren and you had eventually moved on. What would that life have looked like? Would you be going on more adventures with Poe and your friends to different planets now that most of the First Order had been wiped out? You could only imagine visiting Naboo with them, or even going back to your old academia. You could only imagine Sadie’s reaction when you told her that you were involved with the pilot who you had knocked out on your doorstep all so long ago. She wouldn’t have believed you, you _knew_ she wouldn’t have, and something about the thought was so delightfully funny that it almost made it painful to think about, probably because that had been your life, or at least, it could have been. That door had been unlocked for you, but when Kylo came to collect you and Ani, it had been shut, locked, and bolted almost as quickly as it had been opened. And now, of course, thanks to the Republic’s interference, that door had been bricked up and discarded, leaving a wall in its place that you could not break through no matter how much power you had.

               In truth, there really was a wall there now, a wall that separated you from the Resistance and everyone within, and while you liked your future with Kylo, while you were happy with him, a small part of you couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like if you had stayed. It was these hypotheticals that floated around your brain, that stayed with you, until you eventually drifted off to sleep once again.

* * *

               “I have to leave again.”

               Your mouth gapes open at Kylo as you stare incredulously at him from across the bed. It had been only a week since he had gotten back, just seven days, and he was ready to take off again? Just like that? You had finally gotten back into a normal rhythm of things, meditating in the morning while Kylo went off with Ani for some father-son bonding time before you met them for lunch and played with them outside so that you could earn some alone time with Kylo while Phasma took Ani into the shooting range in the basement to help further his training with a blaster. Afterwards, he helped her prepare dinner and then the four of you ate your supper together as if you were some kind of cohesive family unit. It had been awkward, at first, but you were quickly becoming friends with Phasma again, and to be honest, you liked the playful, ribbing banter and barbs that Phasma and Kylo traded back and forth. You liked the fact that Phasma called him _Ren_ instead of _sir_ and you liked how happy Ani seemed to be. Not that he hadn’t been happy on the Resistance base, but truth be told, you had been so wrapped up with your own affairs that you hadn’t really noticed if he was happy or not. You weren’t going to make that mistake again.

               Although now that Kylo was leaving, again, you couldn’t be sure of anything anymore.

               “Is it me?” you ask. You don’t want even want to ask this question because you know it’s not you, you know that you haven’t done anything wrong, but a small part of you needs to hear that confirmation pass through his lips anyway. “Is it me? Did I do something wrong?”

               “You know you didn’t,” Kylo snaps, and you can tell he’s frustrated by the insinuation.

               “Does this have something to do with the First Order?” you ask, and Kylo just shrugs as he looks away. “Okay so if it doesn’t have to do with me or the First Order, then what does it have to do with?”

               “There’s just something I need to do,” Kylo says, and for a moment you can see the old Kylo, the emotionally withdrawn Kylo that you had come to know on the Starkiller Base. His facial expression was giving absolutely nothing away, and you couldn’t help but pout as you crossed your arms over your chest.

               “Is it dangerous?” you ask at length, and Kylo shrugs again, as if it doesn’t bother him one way or the other. You let out a sigh as you pinch the bridge of your nose between your eyes, massaging the taut skin with the tip of your thumb and index finger. “You know, you’re not making me feel any better about this whole thing. Can Ani and I at least come with you this time?”

               “No,” he says firmly. “This is something I have to do alone.” His words stir something within you, and you blink as you look up at him.

               “Alone?” you echo. “So, you mean, Phasma’s not coming with you, either?” He gives his head a brief shake of dissent, and you purse your lips as you narrow your eyes and study him, tapping your fingers against the tense muscles of your strained bicep. Something was going on that he wasn’t saying, and you weren’t keen on the idea of letting him go until you found out what. “Is this for Ani?” you venture. “Are you going out to collect parts to help him assemble his own lightsaber?”

               Kylo’s eyes widen in surprise, and it’s the first real flicker of emotion you’ve seen from him this entire conversation. “No,” he says eventually. You’re not exactly disappointed, considering you didn’t think that Ani was quite ready for the responsibility of having his own lightsaber yet, but it still didn’t get you any closer to figuring out where he was going. “This is something that I have to do.”

               “Is this about revenge?” you ask, trying to replay the previous week in your mind. Kylo had seemed more or less fine, okay, sometimes a little gloomy and withdrawn, but you figured that was due to a combination of the nightmares and whatever else he had gone through when he had visited the First Order again. You knew he probably suppressed any and all emotions while he was there in order to seem stronger, especially without his helmet, but-

               “Is this about your helmet?” you ask. “Are you gathering materials to make a new helmet?”

Kylo’s eyebrows raise slightly, and his lips pucker together as if he’s considering the idea. “Yes,” he says at length, and you involuntarily let your shoulders drop.

               “Why didn’t you just _say_ that then?” you ask as you let a small smile pull at the corners of your lips. “I was worried that you were going to be putting yourself in some kind of danger again.”

               “I did not mean to worry you,” Kylo says softly. “But I had intended it to be a surprise.”

               You smile as you shake your head, biting the corner of your lip as you appraise him. “I hate surprises, you know that.” You brush your hair out of your face. “So how long are you going to be gone for?”

               “A few days to a week,” Kylo says absent-mindedly, and while you’re not exactly thrilled at the thought of him leaving again, at least Phasma would be there to keep you company so you wouldn’t be as lonely.

               “And you’re sure we can’t go with you?” you ask again.

               “No,” Kylo says with a brief shake of his head. “No, I’d rather you stay here. It’d be much safer and I don’t want to risk it.”

               “Fine,” you say with a sigh. “I’d argue about at least taking me with you, but I don’t feel right leaving Phasma here alone to babysit.”

               “While I agree it’s best you stay behind,” Kylo tells you. “Phasma is more than capable to take care of Ani, should we ever need.”

               You link your hands behind your back, playing idly with your fingers as you bring yourself to ask the question that had been on your mind for quite a while. “Is she your friend?”

               “What?”

               “Phasma,” you clarify. “Is she your friend?” The corner of Kylo’s mouth twists into a frown, and you roll your eyes. “I’m just saying, the playful ribbing at dinner, she calls you Ren now, I was just wondering if you two were friends, that’s all.”

               “I don’t have _friends_ ,” Kylo tells you, and there’s a rough edge to his voice that you can’t quite decide if you like or not. “I have allies, not friends.”

               “You can have both,” you tell him. “Like Hux. Hux is an ally, not a friend.”

               “Hux will never be a friend nor an ally,” Kylo says as his posture stiffens. “Trust me when I say I’m glad the contact I have to have with him is being kept at a minimum.” You think back to when Phasma had told you that Hux hadn’t wanted to rescue Kylo in the first place. You had your own reasons for hating Hux, but you could have only imagined the antagonism that went back and forth between them in the years that you hadn’t been there.

               “Where is Hux now?” you ask, unable to quell your curiosity. “Did you see him when you went to wherever it is that you went to?”

               “Unfortunately.” Kylo doesn’t even bother to try to hide the bitterness in his voice as he speaks. “Hux is just as insufferable as always, planning, scheming, even in defeat he still has delusions that the First Order will return stronger than ever in order to conquer the galaxy and bring the New Republic to heel.”

               “And you don’t?” you venture cautiously. You knew roughly where Kylo stood on the issue, but he was so seldom in a mood to talk about it that you took the opportunity whenever it arose.

               “We need a better strategy,” Kylo says, and you immediately clam up. You knew what Ackbar and Wedge had told you about Kylo’s less-than-stellar military planning, that he was a disappointment to his grandfather’s legacy. They had even said that Kylo’s strategy was sloppier than Hux’s, and considering how Kylo felt about him, that was not a subject that you needed to bring up right now. Regardless, Kylo sees the look on your face, and your jaw immediately snaps shut. “What?” Kylo is looking at you expectantly, and you’re not quite sure what to say.

               “Nothing,” you say quietly as you let out a brief exhale. “I just wish I could help, that’s all.”

               Kylo’s lips quirks into the semblance of a smile, and you’re glad to see it. “You want to help?” he asks, his voice light and teasing. “You want to help rebuild the First Order?”

               You just sigh and shake your head as you brush your hair out of your face. “I mean, if it will keep us together, and if it will keep us safe, then why not? I remember way back when everyone said that the First Order was evil, but now I know firsthand that they’re not any better than the Republic.” You tilt your head to the side in consideration. “In fact, I might even be inclined to say that the First Order was better. Sure they’ve directly killed scores of people in their crusades, but how many people has the Republic killed for who knows what? If no one knows about it, no one can do anything about it, but I know for a fact that there’s more than one or two corrupt power-hungry officials in the echelons of the Republic, Deso being one, but as long as their power is unchallenged, no one is going to stop them, and pretty soon it won’t be long until they’re vying for unchecked power too, and then we’ll have to wait and see if the Resistance will turn around and stop them from taking over the galaxy.” Kylo’s eyes are practically glowing as he looks at you, and you can’t help but blush. “What?”

               “Exactly,” he breathes. “Finally you understand. The Republic is not what they pretend to be. This isn’t a battle between right or wrong or between good or evil. It’s simply a struggle between two opposing ideologies to maintain power. My grandfather always knew that democracy would eventually fail. He was smart enough to realize that everyone craves power in one form or another, and no matter what system of checks and balances remain in place to limit the powers of elected officials, there always comes a time when one becomes more corrupt, more hungry, more driven than the rest. The only way to curb that lust for authority is to demand obedience to a central agency that is so powerful that no one can dare oppose their might. That was, and has always been, the hope of the First Order, to curb the Republic’s façade of democracy and expose it for what it really is so that we may rule in its place.”

               “I’ve always understood that,” you tell him. “I mean, to be fair, I didn’t know anything much about the Republic until I was at the Resistance base, but I always knew this was not a war between the good guys and the bad guys. Whoever wins the war gets to write history in their favor, and in this case it just so happens to be the Republic, but if you want to challenge that, then go ahead and challenge it. I don’t know if the First Order will win. I don’t have the same blind loyalty to the cause that Phasma has, but I think it’s more than obvious that I am completely devoted to you and whatever you want to accomplish, and if there’s anything I can do to make this task easier, then please, consider me at your disposal.”

               Kylo looks like he’s practically dripping with lust, and you could honestly say that the look suited him. “Here,” he orders. “Now.” You walk over to him, slowly, placing one foot in front of the other, watching Kylo’s hands clench and unclench by his sides. As soon as you’re within reach of his long arms he grabs you and drags you forward, holding you at arm’s length as he looks you up at down. “The Force brought you to me for a reason,” he says at length. “I had started to lose faith in the First Order, lose faith in what we hoped to accomplish, but I see now that I was always meant for this. I was always meant to conquer the galaxy, and with you beside me, I have no doubt that we can accomplish this together.”

               You’re about to tell him that you don’t know about _together_ , as you didn’t know about ruling, but it almost looks as though a spark of the old Kylo had been ignited, and for once he looks happy, happier than he had been in ages, and you didn’t want to take that away from him. “Whatever you need me to do,” you say as he puts both hands on either side of your face as he leans forward to kiss you. You kiss him back, wrapping your arms around his neck as you push your bodies together. You can literally feel his pleasure through the Force, his gratitude that you were there with him as he kisses your neck, running the tip of his nose along your jaw as he nuzzles you appreciatively. You can’t help but melt in his arms at the gesture as you run both hands through his thick hair.  

               “When are you leaving?” you ask quietly.

               “In the morning,” Kylo tells you. “The sooner I go, the sooner I will return. I don’t want to draw it out if I don’t have to. I want to-“ He pauses suddenly as he looks at you, really looks at you, almost as if he’s seeing you for the first time. You don’t know what he sees, don’t know what he’s looking at, but you don’t fight it. If anything, you just smile up at him, letting the full amount of confidence you have in him and his abilities shine through your features. “I need you.”

               Your eyebrows raise in surprise and you’re sure he can register the shock across your face, although his expression does not change. “So, I guess this means I’m not a weakness anymore, huh?” you ask quietly, and Kylo just chuckles in response as he wraps his arms around you. You sway side to side gently, still trying to wrap your head around the words. Kylo Ren wanted you. Kylo Ren _needed_ you. In a way, you were a weakness, now more so than ever. It was clear Kylo would put his life on the line to protect you and the family that he created, the family he always wanted, only this time, he wasn’t going to do it alone.

               You were going to do it together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope everyone had a great Star Wars Day yesterday and everyone's enjoying Revenge of the Fifth today!! (And the sixth tomorrow, come on, we can make this last...) I spent way too much money on Star Wars merch sales yesterday, like, way, way, _way_ too much, but hopefully it's all worth it. I have an ultimate goal of creating a Star Wars themed house, so it's only a matter of buying things now or later...and I chose now. xD Friendly reminder that I post all of my Star Wars themed merch on my Instagram @ [streetsolo](https://www.instagram.com/streetsolo/) so I'll be posting those pictures as the shipments come in if you want to check it out!! (Amazon stuff gets in on Monday, but Thinkgeek and the Disney store take longer and one of my friends said they got me something super exciting "that I didn't think of" and I think of everything so...I AM EXCITED. I hate surprises, but I am excited!!) 
> 
> Not much to say in terms of story, mostly because I feel like right now if I open my mouth I'm going to spoil something and give something away, so I'm just keeping my mouth shut. xD I can say that Kylo won't be gone long and will be back next chapter...maybe with some...*mumble mumble*...NSFW content? I guess you'll have to wait until Saturday to find out. ;) Until then, cheers!! 
> 
> PS: I have finished Bloodline (the Star Wars book that focuses on Leia's "journey" leading up to the formation of the Resistance that came out a few days ago.) I'm not going to say anything here because I don't want to spoil it, but if you want to chat with me about it, (or want me to spoil it for you xD), come chat with me on my Tumblr @ [streetsolo](http://streetsolo.tumblr.com/) because I have thoughts. A lot of thoughts. xD And friendly reminder that Poe Dameron Comic #2 came out yesterday and Phasma has more lines in that comic than in the movie itself!! ALL THE PHASMA LOVE, THANK YOU WRITERS!! <3


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW content ahead

               When you roll over that morning, you can’t help but notice that Kylo’s not in bed with you, and your heart sinks in your chest as you realize that he probably already took off for another week again. You could understand why he didn’t want to draw out the long goodbye, but then again, you would rather he had not left at all. Even still, you had entered into a new kind of understanding with him, and you were at least glad that his absence didn’t ache as much as it did before, whether it was because he had just recently left and you were still sore from the previous night’s excursions, or whether it was because you were finally starting to appreciate the extent of his devotion to you. Either way, you’re in good spirits as you head downstairs and into the kitchen. At first you had thought that you would have been the only one awake at this early hour, but Phasma was already sitting at the kitchen counter, drinking out of a mug, apparently lost in her own thoughts as she doesn’t turn around as you approach.

               “Hey there,” you say brightly as you head into the kitchen to get a mug of caf for yourself.

               “Well, look at you,” Phasma says as she studies you over the rim of her cup. “Someone looks happy today. I would have expected quite a bit more moping, considering Ren is gone again.”

               “Only for a little while,” you say with a shrug of your shoulders. “He’s an important person. He’s off doing important things. He’ll be back soon enough.” Phasma studies you quietly for a moment, watching you help yourself to the breakfast that she had made before you sit down beside her.

               “Something changed last night,” Phasma observes as you stick a forkful of food into your mouth, and you can’t help but roll your shoulders.

               “Oh?” you ask through a mouthful of food.

               “Ren was in quite different spirits this morning,” Phasma says, swiveling her large frame on the stool so that she can better appraise you. “For the past few weeks it seemed like it was all I could do to keep him invested in the First Order, and suddenly he has no doubt that he will be able to conquer the galaxy and bring the New Republic to heel, all on his own might.”

               A smile tugs at the corners of your lips, but you try not to let it show. “Guess he was just in a good mood this morning,” you reply. “It is a rarity, I admit, but it’s been known to happen now and again.”

               “And you had nothing to do with it?” Phasma asks, and you shake your head from side to side. “Oh really? Then why did Ren make me swear to give my life for you, if the event ever called for it, at least three times over this morning?” You open your mouth in surprise but say nothing as Phasma keeps going. “Why did he tell me to obey every order that you gave, no matter how small or inconsequential? He said that whatever you asked, I was to see it done.” You flush in embarrassment as Phasma stares at you incredulously. “What are you _doing_ to that man?”

               “Nothing,” you say shyly, although you can’t help but gnaw on your lower lip in embarrassment. “He, um, he, well, I guess you could say he proposed to me recently, and-“

               “Come now, that’s no surprise,” Phasma says with a dismissive wave of her hand. Your eyebrows knit together in a mixture of hurt and confusion, and Phasma has the decency to look surprised. “Since he laid eyes on you, that man has spoken of nothing and no one but you. You have a child together. Surely this did not come as a surprise to you.”

               “It was a surprise that he would admit how he felt, verbally,” you say after a few moments of quiet reflection, and Phasma considers this for no more than a brief moment before she nods her head in understanding. “Anyway, we had a long talk about the Republic and the First Order last night, and I think it cleared a few things up for him.”

               “Oh really?” Phasma asks, giving you her full attention, and you know she is not going to drop this line of inquiry until she hears what happened last night.

               “Well,” you say evenly. “Kylo and I started talking about the Republic, and you know how he’s told me all about the bounty on my head-“ Phasma nods. “Well, I’ve had my own experiences with the Republic, and granted, it was just the once, but even his mother, the _General_ of the Resistance, won’t visit the Republic home worlds because she fears for her life. There are powerful people in the Republic, and I would venture to say that more than just a small handful of them are corrupt, and I don’t think they will let anyone stand in the way of what they hope to accomplish.” You shrug your shoulders absent-mindedly. “In that case, they’re no better than the First Order. The Republic tries to put on a solid front, but they scheme from the shadows. At least the First Order is upfront with their goals and ambitions and what they hope to see accomplished. You don’t show any pretenses, or hold anything back, you just go in there and see what you want and you take it by force, if necessary.” You shake your head. “And I think it’s about time I do that too. I keep ending up in the worst possible situations because I refuse to pick a side and I keep bouncing between both ends of the spectrum until I end up in the worst possible position, but I don’t want to do that anymore. I want my decisions to have weight, and I want what I say to actually matter, and so I told Kylo that I will help do anything I can for the First Order. I will help him make the First Order so powerful that they cannot be stopped, by anyone, and then we will have nothing to fear from the Republic or the Resistance or greedy little sycophants that try to destroy my life and reputation as part of a personal vendetta against a certain Resistance pilot.”

               “Well done,” Phasma says at length, once she was sure you were done talking. “I always knew you had that strength inside you, and I expect Ren saw it too. It’s good to see you finally coming around to the side where you can make the most difference.”

               “I don’t know if it’s for the good of the galaxy,” you admit. “But I can’t view things as right or wrong anymore. The Republic-“

               “-looks after their own interests,” Phasma finishes for you. “So must we all.”

               You shake your head from side to side, suddenly troubled. “So I obviously can’t talk to Kylo about this,” you begin cautiously. “But what does this mean, exactly? Does this mean I’m against the Resistance? So I’m, like, enemies now with everyone there?” You can imagine the troubled look on Poe’s face if you ever told him that you were joining in with the First Order, and you quickly push it away. That was something that you didn’t want to think about, not ever, not if you could help it. And it wasn’t just Poe. Finn too, and Rey. Finn had grown up in the First Order, had hated it, and Rey had been thrust into their affairs as roughly and violently as you had, although she seemed to have more or less moved on from it and created a life for herself. Your life, however, was staunchly wrapped up in Kylo Ren, and there was nothing you could do to stop that, even if you wanted to. Regardless, the three of them had done so much for you, and you hated to think that you were turning your back on them, or Leia. She had done so much for you by simply sending Poe to extend the invitation for you to come to the Resistance, by offering to let the others train you. Even though her motives seemed to be wrapped up in protecting Ani more than anything else, you still knew that she _could_ have just left you there on your old academia, and then you truly may never have seen Kylo again. That was not something you wanted to think about, not now, not ever.

               “It’s not that simple,” Phasma tells you. “This is the real world. Think of it this way, when you were with the Resistance, did you consider me your enemy?”

               You tilt your head to the side in consideration. “Maybe?” you offer. “But then again, I did defend you more than once. I kept saying how not everyone in the First Order is all bad, that not everyone there is totally evil like some people kept suggesting. You were kind to me when you didn’t have to be; evil people don’t do kind acts for others when they know it won’t benefit them in return.”

               “They’re trying to vilify us,” Phasma explains. “In part, I suppose, because they feel that they need to. They feel that they need to put us down and equate what we want to do with violent barbarism in order to help bolster their own cause, when in reality they are no better than us. I have watched too many troops die at the hands of the Resistance. They can pretend that they’re better than us, that their cause is more noble, but at the end of the day all they are seeking to do is preserve the quiescent order. We are trying to change it, and the more they want to resist that change, the worse they see us.”

               “Is there anything I can do?” you ask her. “Now, while Kylo’s gone? I mean, I want to help, but I just don’t see exactly how I’m in a position to really do much of anything.”

               “You’re not,” Phasma says as she chuckles lightly. “Ren ordered me to do whatever you commanded, but he didn’t tell me to reveal any strategy to you. Not that we exactly have a solid one right now, but we at least have a plan.”

               “What about Hux?” you press. “I mean, what is he doing right now?”

               “Hux deems this only a minor setback,” Phasma muses. “Although I can hardly blame him, really. This is the life he was bred for, the only life he’s ever known. To give up on it now would be to give up on his father’s legacy, and he has known nothing else.” Phasma sees the look of confusion on your face and continues. “His father worked for the Imperial army. Very devoted to the Empire, very firm. He was the Commandant of Arkanis Academy and created a secret society within its walls to help provide service to the Empire.”

               “So what you’re trying to say is that Hux was essentially raised with a stick up his ass?” you ask, and Phasma laughs as she cracks a grin. “I mean, it suddenly makes sense why he’s so uptight as he is if he was literally raised in that kind of life.” You tilt your head to the side in consideration. “Actually, it makes a _lot_ of sense. I was raised on a planet that didn’t have any political affiliations one way or the other so it was not something I ever really cared much about; nothing that ever happened to me ever pushed me in that direction until I met Kylo. Hux was raised hearing about how great the Empire was, and he was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. It makes sense that he went down that path and didn’t try to deviate from it, especially with his father probably looking down over his shoulder his whole life.” You look at her suddenly. “Does he know about me? Does he know I’m here? Would he even want me to be involved?”

               Phasma lets out another chuckle. “He doesn’t know anything about Ren except for what I tell him. I am obligated to follow Ren’s orders here, but Hux is the General of the First Order and you know I have my obligations to the First Order more so than to any one person.”

               Her indirect answer puzzles you for a moment, and then all of a sudden it snaps into place. “You mean the only reason you’re here is because Hux ordered you to keep a close eye on Kylo?” Phasma nods her head. “I mean, I knew he didn’t trust him but-“ You pause as a sudden thought occurs to you. “Does Kylo know?”

               “I’m sure he suspects,” Phasma admits. “I do give Hux the occasional briefing. He knows that you’re here, with Anakin, and he wants your son trained in the Force, so he could take over in the event that anything happened to Ren. The more personal nature of your time together, I do not divulge.”

               “Well, thanks for that,” you say as the corners of your lips tug into an embarrassed smirk. “Honestly though, I really did start to believe that Kylo wanted to be here because of Ani, because he wanted to train him himself, not due to orders from Hux.” You had no idea what to make of this, your brain seemed to be frozen in literal shock as you tried to process exactly what this meant.

               Phasma looks confused for a moment, as if she hadn’t made herself clear. “He did,” she says. “Hux wanted Ren to send both you and the child back to the Resistance, or the Republic, and let them deal with you. Ren wouldn’t hear of it and so I played mediator between the two parties, and this was deemed a more… _acceptable_ solution. Ren stays here with you and helps train Ani, and Hux will gain a stronger Force-wielding fighter when the time calls for it.”

               “Wow,” you say, because that’s all you can say. “Glad to see Kylo would just offer up his son’s future like that.” In the back of your mind, you felt like this was just something that Kylo had said to Hux to keep him placated, but you were still not pleased with the thought of your son’s future being used as a bargaining chip.

               “To be fair, I don’t think he ever had any intention of going through with it,” Phasma admits. “He seemed all but done with the First Order, and it wasn’t until this morning that I saw that spark again.” She takes a delicate sip from her mug. “Whatever you did or said to him last night, please, continue. Hux will be more than pleased to hear it, and if Hux is pleased, that’s all the less pressure I have to face between those two.”

               You can’t help but giggle. “It’s almost like you’re their mom or something.”

               “Yes, well,” Phasma says with a shrug. “It does quite seem that I have taken on that role, haven’t I?”

               You roll your shoulders and at first are apprehensive about asking her something so personal, but you can’t help yourself. “Would you ever want to be a mom someday? Have kids of your own?”

               You almost expect her to be mildly offended by a question of such a personal nature, but to her credit, Phasma just laughs. “Honestly, I quite expect that I’ll die in combat.”

               You blink for a moment, caught completely off guard by her candor. You had always been daunted by the prospect of what your future might hold, but you couldn’t imagine living day in and day out just _expecting_ that you would inevitably die in battle someday. “That sounds vaguely depressing,” you admit, which earns you a small chuckle from Phasma again.

               “It’s really not,” she tells you. “I’ve devoted my life to the First Order, not to any one person. The First Order will always require my services, and I will serve them in whatever way I can for however long I’m alive.”

               “But how do you get out of bed in the morning?” you ask her. “If you’re living just expecting everything you’re doing to lead to an early death?”

               Phasma shakes her head. “I don’t see it that way at all,” she says. “But if that’s the way you want to look at it, then I suppose you could say that I’m making the most of each day to help benefit the First Order in any way I can.”

               “Wow,” you say softly, almost in awe of her commitment. “I honestly don’t know if I could do that, to devote myself to something that would demand so much of me, and then to know it would inevitably be the cause of my downfall in the end? I don’t think I could do it.”

               Now it’s Phasma’s turn to look surprised. “But isn’t that the very nature of your devotion to Ren?”

               You blink at her and think for a moment. She had a point. The same words Phasma used to describe her allegiance to the First Order were also the same words you could use to describe your relationship to Kylo Ren. “Okay, yeah,” you say quickly. “But that’s different.” You fail to mention how exactly it’s different, but thankfully she doesn’t ask as Ani makes his way downstairs to see you sitting together at the breakfast bar.

               “Has dad left yet?” he asks softly, and you nod your head.

               “It’s okay, though,” you tell him. “Because me and Phasma are going to keep you company while he’s gone. We’re going to spar and train you on the blasters until you become an indomitable fighting machine so that you can take over the First Order and rule the galaxy with your dad.” Ani cheers as he races into the kitchen to get breakfast, while Phasma just raises an eyebrow at you.

               You had always known Ani was destined for great things, and while you hadn’t really thought a future with the First Order would have been part of it, you certainly didn’t see how it could hurt. Kylo was following his grandfather’s legacy, and so Ani would have the option of following his father in his, if he wanted to do so. The truth was that right now Ani was too young to be worried about any of this, and so you wouldn’t push it on him. He had plenty of time to figure things out when he was older, and besides, you had since learned to stop trying to predict or plan for the future. You would just do as Phasma did, taking each day as it came, doing the best you could, until death finally came and dragged you into your grave once and for all.

               As Ani runs around the kitchen gathering up his breakfast, you realize that you never did ask Phasma about the blaster packs, and now was as good a time as any, especially with Ani so close by. You didn’t know if he could actually learn something from your conversation, but you could only hope that his fledgling ears would pick up something useful if it seemed as though he was just happening to pick up on the information instead of being lectured outright.

               “Hey, last time you were out, I was downstairs training Ani on the blasters,” you begin. “While we were down there, I had to refill his charge pack and when I did it glowed _red_.” You hesitate before you continue on. “That, and it should have been impossible to fire as many shots as he did on so little plasma. Back when I was training on D’Qar, I was lucky to get maybe a dozen shots out of that much plasma, but Ani had to fire at least a hundred rounds before I had to refill it again. How is that possible?”

               Phasma sets her mug down on the countertop, and if you’re not mistaken, she looks quite proud of herself as the corner of her lip tugs upwards in a lopsided grin. “One of my personal projects,” she explains. “And I’m rather proud of it. I’ll answer your question with another question. When you constructed your lightsaber, did you include a plasma reservoir?”

               “No,” you say slowly, and out of the corner of your eye you can see that Ani is at least listening in on your conversation. “It draws its energy from the Force.”

               “And that’s your answer,” Phasma replies, and she chuckles at the bewildered expression that crosses your features. “Even though your lightsaber draws its energy from the Force, I suspect you would find trace amounts of plasma within the blade, generated from the air, otherwise the blade would never be stable. Years ago, I had the opportunity to study the inner workings of a captured lightsaber, and given our scant resources at the time, I had hoped to find some technology beneficial to our soldiers.” She sighs as she shakes her head and takes another sip of her mug. “But the lack of plasma reservoir frustrated all our efforts at developing blaster improvements, as I did not understand the role of the Force at the time. All we received from that project was a lightsaber-resistant melee weapon as a hedge against the revival of the Jedi Order. Only later, during the construction of the Starkiller Base, did I put the pieces together and apply it to blaster technology. I overheard two of our scientists arguing about their theories on dark matter and the critical role of Kyber crystals in harnessing and stabilizing vast amounts of dark energy, and something clicked. I revisited my notes on the topic, and realized there was a glaring flaw in my assumptions.” She sets her mug back down on the counter. “Tell me, when you consider a blaster bolt, would you say that it is a slug of plasma, a pocket of energy, or both?”

               She was teaching you through questions, trying to get you to come around to her conclusion on your own without explaining it outright, and for a moment you appreciated that this was the same way that Poe had taught you how to fly. You gave the same little nervous start to her as you used to give to him as your mind raced through what you have learned, trying to recall months of education into a single, organized channel in your brain. “Well, I mean, you’ve seen what a lightsaber does to blaster bolts, so it couldn’t just be plasma or else the lightsaber would just cut right through them instead of deflecting them.” You think it over, finding more confidence in your answer. “Besides, you’d need a lot more plasma to be able to do that. The plasma _can_ deplete, though, so I guess that means it’s both?”

               “That’s the same truth that Merr-Sonn, BlasTech, and DevTech have built multi-trillion industries on,” Phasma says with a nod. “They never looked beyond the concept of the energized particle beam, however, since the Jedi controlled all supplies of Kyber crystals during the rule of the Galactic Republic, and the Empire destroyed vast quantities of crystals after the reorganization.”           

               “Why?” you ask, without really thinking it through.

               “The destruction of the Jedi Order,” Phasma says simply. “No crystals, no lightsabers, no access to weaponry.”

               “Right,” you say with a quick shake of your head, almost embarrassed with yourself for asking a question that you already had the answer to. Fortunately, Phasma just dismisses your flushed cheeks as she continues.

               “During our surveys of the Unknown Regions, we encountered a planet with vast stores of Kyber crystals, and I was able to continue my work, eventually creating a prototype blaster emitter boosted by a Kyber crystal. Unfortunately, the weapon was entirely erratic and unreliable, and the cause eluded all explanation until your group and the alien specialists showed up. Tortutaru, that was their race, correct?”

               “Yes, uh, yeah,” you reply, nodding your head. You had thought that you had learned everything there was to know about what happened on the Starkiller Base while you were there, but apparently the effect of the Tortuaru’s presence was larger than you had initially imagined.

               “Pity they chose the wrong side,” Phasma says with a sigh. “We could have used their insight. After we eventually cracked their communications, I cross-referenced their list with my test data and noticed that the weapon seemed to work particularly well for those Storm Troopers singled out by your instructor and the Tortutaru captain in their reports. Force-sensitivity finally explained the emitter’s erratic behavior and allowed me to continue refining the technology in private. Obviously it wouldn’t do to develop and distribute a weapon that depended so heavily on something as random as the Force-sensitivity of each individual soldiers, so I had to find a way to get the same consistent boost regardless of the soldier’s Force-sensitivity, and we finally found a curious Force-sensitive material deep in the Unknown Regions just before that business on Jakku.”

               “The blaster Ani trains with was my first success, built while I was on the run and had long stretches of simply laying low. The emitter now no longer consumes plasma to generate the energy of a blaster bolt; it simply encases the energy drawn from the Force with a minuscule amount of plasma, essentially generating a tiny portion of a lightsaber blade with every shot. Now my troops need never worry about running out of plasma in the midst of a pitched battle, an advantage that is the envy of the New Republic. Even now, the New Republic’s scientists must be desperate to reverse-engineer my work, but I doubt they’ll be able to, considering how little respect they seem to have for the Force. I do not claim to understand it, but I respect its place in the natural order.” 

               You gape at her, almost unable to believe how Phasma had seemingly harnessed the power of the Force and applied it to a weapon. You have so many questions, but no idea how to ask any of them. The only one that eventually escapes your lips is, “Why the red glow, though?”

               Phasma just smiles good-naturedly as she tilts her head to one side. “That part, as I said, I don’t fully understand,” she admits. “But I pieced together a theory from what little Ren would tell me. It seems the channeling material couples with the plasma in such a way that somehow briefly gives it a natural affinity for the dark side of the Force. All Ren would tell me is that the plasma turned red for the same reason his lightsaber was red, but he didn’t seem to care to elaborate any further than that.”

               “Kylo’s not happy that you created that?” you ask her, almost surprised. You’d think that Kylo would want to have such a weapon for himself, but then again, you remembered what Phasma had told you before about Kylo’s apparent disdain for blasters.

               “In a word, no,” Phasma says slowly, and you immediately purse your lips together as you look down at Ani, who seemed to have given up on trying to understand your conversation and was happily eating his breakfast.

               “Well, at least Ani’s not really paying much attention so Kylo will never know we were discussing it,” you say simply, and you sense Ani’s attention shift back into focus at the mention of his name.

               “Wait, what?”

               The next week passed by quickly, and while you were anxious for Kylo to return, you liked spending time with Phasma. After you had opened up with her about wanting to do more to help the First Order, she seemed to open up to you in turn, and you were pleased that you both could develop this mutual friendship with each other. As much as Phasma touted the fact that Ren didn’t have any friends, you figured that she probably didn’t either. Most people were probably intimidated by either her rank or her size, and although she was around people all day, looking after them and taking on a certain sense of responsibility for their care, you could tell that she could use something beyond that, a friend, and that was what you wanted to be.

               Truth be told, you could use some friends of your own. It was almost strange how you didn’t think much about Ladson or anyone else while you were with Kylo Ren. It was like just being around him had a numbing effect on your brain that made you completely apathetic towards anyone or anything that had to do with the world outside Naboo. Regardless, you knew that wasn’t healthy, and while you knew that Phasma was reporting everything back to Hux, you hoped that your little chats would at least be private. You didn’t know for sure, though, and didn’t want to insult her by asking, and so you just made sure to check whatever information you told her about Kylo, just in case.

               Either way, with Kylo gone, you were free to help Phasma and Ani cook, and while you thought you could learn by watching, Phasma turned the tables and insisted the only way you were going to learn was by _doing_ and so she happily sat back and instructed you on how to make every meal while she and Ani looked on from the counter. At first you thought it was fun, but you soon found it to be cruel, laborious work, and insisted that while you had at first thought cooking to be a necessary survival skill, you soon decided that you would rather starve, or just deal with whatever meager portions you could scrap together yourself.

               Nights, of course, were the hardest, and you found yourself hating being alone more than you usually did. Even when you tried to meditate in the mornings, it was offset by the friendly chatter of Phasma and Ani downstairs, and you couldn’t help but almost feel as though you were missing out on something, which caused you to rush through your meditation so that you could spend more time with them. At nights though, there was nothing going on. The house was asleep, and dark, and quiet, and you laid in bed and hoped that Kylo would return soon, so you could aid him in whatever way that meant. You had made your decision now, and had done so separately of Kylo’s influence. It had been a week, and yet you were sure that you wanted to join the First Order and help support Kylo in whatever way you could in order to guarantee your family a safer future. In truth, you knew that eventually there would probably come a time when your words would have to be met with action, but you weren’t all that concerned. That would happen when it happened, and there was no sense worrying about it until it did. Besides, you could always talk about the possibilities of what could happen when Kylo returned. Your affiliation with the First Order was still directly linked through him, and so if all you had to do to assist them was support him, then you didn’t mind in the slightest.

               Honestly, you could barely believe the change that had occurred in Kylo Ren since you had met him on the Starkiller Base. Of course, years had a habit of changing people, for better or for worse, but Kylo had seemed to change drastically ever since you had met him again on the _Resolute._ He had tried to kill you, to end your life, and while you knew that he couldn’t have actually gone through with it, _you_ , yourself, had not been so sure. You had gotten involved with Poe again after that, giving up on any thought of being with Kylo again, and now, months later, Kylo had essentially proposed to you, had asked you to be his, and while there wasn’t anything you wanted more, you still couldn’t believe how attached he seemed to be to you. You could still barely believe the look on his face when he had told you he needed you, as if you were a physical, tangible thing that he needed to hold in order to just survive. It wasn’t that you doubted how much he cared about you because you felt it through the Force bond, but it seemed almost impossible to believe that one of the most powerful men in the galaxy had fallen so far in love with you that he would dedicate himself to you completely, and yet, that was exactly what had happened. Kylo was yours as much as you were his, and he would do absolutely anything for you, you were sure of that now. You weren’t quite sure what exactly you had done to warrant his affections so fervently, but you supposed Kylo loved you with the same reckless passion that he applied to everything else. He either loved you with his entire being, or not at all.

               Not that the Force bond really gave him a choice in that regard, but that wasn’t really quite fair to say, either. The Force bond bound him to you, but it was his choice to care for you as deeply, if not more so, than you had loved him. It wasn’t just love though, and it was hard to put your finger on just how to describe it. It was like he had found a new appreciation for you, one that he hadn’t quite had before. Honestly, he should have appreciated you more considering that you had raised his son for five years without him, and while you knew he was _thankful_ for that, he really wasn’t able to fully understand exactly what you had been through when he wasn’t there. Still, he couldn’t take back the past, and you were glad that at least now he was starting to make amends and trying to do right by you in ways that he had been unable to before.

               The night that Kylo came back, it was raining. Earlier that day, Ani had run around outside, splashing in puddles and generally making a mess of himself while you and Phasma chased after him, sliding and slipping around in the puddles of mud until the three of you were drenched, tired, and filthy. Unfortunately, a mastery of the Force didn’t help much with sopping clothes as you trudged upstairs, leaving a muddy trail behind you, as you coaxed Ani into a bath. Fortunately, he had tuckered himself out and bathed quickly and went straight to bed, allowing you to have a longer bath for yourself, letting your body relax as you allowed yourself to meditate in the steaming water. Eventually, though, you scrubbed the mud out of your hair and rinsed off, heading straight into bed, snuggling under the blankets as you listened to the rain trickle down outside.

               You had been in bed for not even an hour when the door opened, and you caught a glimpse of a darkly clothed helmeted figure standing in the doorway. You couldn’t help but grin as he entered, and you waited for him to get closer so that the dim natural light of the room could illuminate his mask. You saw the gleam of the familiar silver plate get closer, and you couldn’t help but smirk up at him as you took it in. It looked incredibly similar to his old helmet, complete with the signature wavy lines that covered the eye slit on his old helmet. “It looks good,” you tell him as you bite your bottom lip. “Does it still have the same voice distortion?”

               “It might.” You only grin wider as you hear that familiar rumble from under the mask, and as you take him in it reminds you of the Kylo Ren who you had come to know back on the Starkiller Base, and for a moment you were actually there with him again, before Ani had been born, just happy to be with him, fucking him, sparring with him, before you were pulled into any of the drama between the First Order and the Resistance.

               You push the blankets back to allow yourself room to sit on your knees as you grin at him, running your fingertips down across the cool metal of the mask as he stands by your bedside. You can’t see his expression underneath it, but you can feel his lust through the Force bond. You can feel how much he missed you over the past week, and while you hadn’t been pining for him as much as you had previously, you were still happy that he was back, happy that he was home safe, happy that he was here with you again. You run one hand down the side of his helmet, caressing it gently, gnawing on your lower lip as you do so. “It looks really good. Very intimidating. You’re just like the old Kylo Ren again.”

               He tilts his head to the side ever so slightly and you can feel yourself blushing under his intense gaze. He had been able to conceal his emotions with his eyes before, but it was almost some kind of thrill to have him watching you beneath the helmet, not knowing what he was thinking, the expression on his face hidden by the mask. It almost made you remember what it felt like the first time you had ever met him, when you were standing side by side with Ladson, completely intimidated and slightly frightened by the creature beneath the mask, but a bit enthralled nonetheless, although, to be fair, that last emotion might have been one that you added in reminiscence.

               “Do I intimidate you now?” Kylo asks, but you’re not sure if it’s in response to what you said or what you were thinking about. Either way, your answer is the same.

               “Do you want me to be?” you ask, letting your voice drip as low as it can, and Kylo responds by grabbing your waist roughly with his gloved hands, his thumbs gliding over your smooth skin. You stare into the slit of the mask, unable to see his face, unable to kiss him, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t do other things. Hands planted on both of his shoulders, you hover your lips just above the part of his mask that you imagined covered his cheek, gliding your tongue in and out of the dips in the polished metal. You work around the side of his face, eventually finding your way to one of the wavy lines as you let your tongue follow the groove in his mask, all the way around his face. Kylo’s heavy breath crackles through the voice distortion, and you sit back on your heels as you observe him, waiting for him to make the next move.

               You hadn’t bothered dressing after your bath as you slipped into bed, and so you’re already naked as he places one hand around the nape of your neck, holding you in place, while the other hand travels the length of your body, the leather of his glove closing around your nipple as he pinches it between his thumb and index finger. You whimper slightly as his hand grabs your breast, kneading it for a few moments, before his fingertips trail down your abdomen, so lightly you can barely feel it, until he touches your clit. The burst of sensation makes you moan softly as you buck your hips towards his hand, staring at the helmet that concealed the face of your lover.

               “Is this what you want?” The voice distortion makes anything he says hotter than it needs to be, and you don’t even have time to wonder when you had stopped hating that metallic grumbling sound and started getting turned on by it instead.

               “I want you to take me however you want to take me,” you say lightly before you add, “Master Ren.”

               You could imagine Kylo’s eyes flashing, and although the helmet emits no intimation of a change of expression, Kylo rips off his glove with one hand as he sticks his middle finger inside of you, his thumb fondling your clit. You whimper as you press your body forward, moving aside his scarf and his collar so that you can just, just barely get to the sensitive bit of exposed flesh that revealed that there really was a person buried beneath the layers of armor. You run your tongue along the area, enjoying the feeling of Kylo shivering beneath you before he grabs your shoulders roughly and pushes you backwards onto the bed.

               You let out a breathless moan as you land on your elbows and Kylo struggles to strip himself as quickly as he can, leaving the helmet and most of his clothes on, freeing only as much of himself as necessary to expose his length. He reaches forward and grabs both of your thighs, using the Force to pull you closer to him. You don’t expect it and can’t help but giggle as he uses his strength to literally drag you across the bed, sliding you over the ripples in the blanket that gives you an unexpected rush as they brush against your skin.

               Kylo pushes into you without preamble, and you welcome him eagerly, wrapping your legs around his waist as he closes his bare hands around your sides, pumping into you at a strong, steady rhythm. Honestly, you want to cuddle up with him, want to kiss him, want to feel his warm body against yours more than anything right now, but you couldn’t deny that you liked the submissive feeling that floated over you as he fucked you with his helmet on, leaving you unable to see his expression. You could feel him through the Force bond, feel his familiar rush of excited energy, and you closed your eyes as you allowed yourself to feel him as much as you could.

               “Look at me,” Kylo commands, and you do as you’re told as you prop yourself up on your elbows and stare him down through the slit in his mask. For some reason, it’s even hotter this way, and the more intensely you focus your gaze, the more you can feel yourself building as you stare him down, not trying to focus on his expression underneath the mask but just accepting him as he was, mask and all. Your eyes trace the mask, every dip and every groove, and as they scrape over the untarnished metal a small part of you can’t help but wonder what will be the first nick, the first scratch on the helmet, and how he’ll get it. A part of you doesn’t want to see Kylo get hurt, doesn’t want him to put himself in danger, but you couldn’t deny that Kylo thrived in battle, he was made for it, and the thought of him exerting even a fraction of his raw power helped you climb even higher.

               You can feel Kylo probing your thoughts now, and you let him. His mask was a symbol of his power, a symbol of the legendary status of Kylo Ren, and you were not ashamed to say that you were at least a little turned on by it.

               That last part was a lie. You were turned on by it _a lot_ and you can feel Kylo’s curiosity as your thoughts shift into pride as he continued to fuck you, letting your back arch off the bed as he thrust into you again and again, his rhythm increasing the more you fed his ego. Eventually, though, there’s only so much you can take and you can’t help but let out a tiny cry as you let your arms go limp and let your shoulders drop into the bed as you twitch, relishing the feeling of his fingertips squeezing into your sides as he finds his own release. His breath, which had been tapered through the voice distortion, suddenly comes out in a crackled rush and you can’t help but let your eyes shut as you recline back into the blankets, waiting for him to join you.

               Only he doesn’t. Instead, Kylo gently eases out of you and sets you down. You can feel his warm fingertips travelling the length of your thigh before he turns and heads into the bathroom. You can’t help but pout as you sit up and stare after him, but as you hear the sound of the shower water starting, you quickly plop back down as you cuddle up under the blankets. You had no idea when was the last time he had taken a shower, and if it was the first time that he had taken one all week, you honestly preferred that he would shower before coming into bed with you. You had just washed the mud and the dirt out of your own hair, and you didn’t want him to dirty up the pillows with his.

               It doesn’t take him all that long to shower while you lay your head back on the pillow and wait for him, and when the bathroom door opens up again, he walks out still slightly wet and gloriously naked. You can’t help but blush as you look over every muscular line and curve in his body, every scar from his abdomen down to his legs, and it almost surprises you how well you know not just Kylo Ren, but his body as well. It was as if his skin was a map that you had ran your hands over so many times that you had just learned to familiarize yourself with every scar or bump or blemish on his skin, and you were sure that there wasn’t a stain on his pale flesh that you weren’t aware of.

               Your side of the bed is closest to the door and Kylo sits down on your side of the bed before he throws his legs over you and literally _rolls_ over you in order to get to his side, capturing your face in his hands and kissing you as he lands. The whole motion is too smooth, too cute, too playful, and you can’t help but chuckle against his lips as you kiss him. He pulls back a little ways and your eyes meet his, which seem almost expectant in the dim light. He’s waiting for you to say something, waiting for you to make your next move, and you just cup his cheek in one hand as you lean forward to kiss him again, placating him with a series of soft, tender kisses. Even still, Kylo seems to grow impatient, and while your kisses seem to grow harder and more fervent, so does his frustration. You’re doing something wrong, and you don’t have a clue what it is.

               “What is it?” You settle back on the pillows as Kylo bristles, and your eyes sweep his face, trying to figure out why he’s so upset. “What’s wrong? What did I do wrong?”

               You’re staring at him as if waiting for whatever is wrong to just be made visible on his face, but you can’t see it. Kylo’s ire quickly tapers off to confusion as his eyebrows knit together, and his lips part as he stares at you in incredulous shock. “You really don’t see it?”

               “See what?” Your voice is flat, and you’re staring at him intently now, trying to figure out what the hell you weren’t seeing that was apparently so obvious. His dark hair looked the same as ever, his dark eyes, his sharp nose, his full lips – what the hell weren’t you seeing that was apparently so obvious? As the moments tick by so does your anxiety, but your emotions quickly turn to confusion as Kylo emits a surprised chuckle.

               “You really don’t see it,” Kylo murmurs, and now it’s your turn to let that bubble of frustration rise inside of you.

               “Enough games,” you say, trying not to snap at him. “What is going on? What are you even talking…” The realization flickers across your face as you suddenly look at him again. “…about.” Without saying anything, you reach up with your fingertips and touch the smooth skin of his forehead, trailing them delicately down the bridge of his nose, across his cheek. You had so often ignored it, pretended it wasn’t there, that you had failed to realize that it had actually disappeared. “Your scar is gone.” Kylo’s lips quirk upwards in a small smile as he appraises you, waiting for your reaction, but you’re more confused than ever. “But how is that possible?”

               “Even a lightsaber burn is still just a burn,” Kylo tells you, although his voice is soft.

               You shake your head back and forth, as if you still don’t understand it. “But how?”

               “Advanced bacta regeneration,” Kylo tells you. “They used a laser to burn away the scar tissue so that the wound couldn’t cauterize again, and when the raw tissue was exposed they applied regenerative bacta to stitch the skin back together.”

               “Did it hurt?” You pause for a moment as you think of them burning open Kylo’s face with a laser. It hurt enough to just have them install an implant in your thigh, and you couldn’t imagine the amount of pain it would cause to actually have a laser ripping open the delicate scar tissue in his face, especially so close to his eyes. “They knocked you out for that, right?”

               “Do you honestly think I would allow that?” Kylo asks as he raises an eyebrow, and you bite your lip as you stare at him.

               “So you mean to tell me that you were awake while you let some people literally cut your face open?” you ask as Kylo nods. “I know you like pain, but Kylo, that’s-“ You shake your head again. “That’s on a whole different level.” Kylo just shrugs, as if that hardly matters to him. “Who did you find who was able to do that anyway?”

               “Not a concern,” Kylo says simply, and you puzzle this over for a moment but decide to let it go.

               “Okay then,” you say softly. “But will you at least tell me why you decided to do this now? I mean, you got that scar years ago. Why did you decide to get rid of it now?”

               “I needed to,” Kylo says, and you wait for him to continue. He seems to wrestle with himself for a moment before his eyes finally flick back upwards to you. “I was already too identifiable with this scar,” he says after a moment. “In case we ever need to go into hiding somewhere else, they’re going to be looking for someone with a large gash across their face. It’s something people notice immediately, and if I don’t have it, the greater chance that our presence will go unnoticed.”

               “Okay, fair,” you admit. “But you have the helmet back now, and even if you weren’t wearing it, you’re still tall and imposing. People around you can _feel_ your power, that’s how strong you are. People will notice you with or without the scar.” You prop yourself up on one elbow as you look him over. “Come on, Kylo, what’s the real reason?”

               “I didn’t want you to see a monster every time you looked at me,” Kylo admits softly, and you can’t help but let your jaw drop open in shock. You had never thought that when you looked at him, not once, and yet Kylo had undergone all of this pain for you? “Anakin has never seen what I looked like before I got this scar. I don’t want him growing up seeing a constant reminder of the things that I’ve done whenever he looks at my face.”

               “He doesn’t see a monster when he looks at you, he sees his father,” you tell him. “And the same goes for me. I have never, not once, seen a monster when I looked at you. You haven’t done good things, we all know this, but you were honest with him about what you’ve done, and that’s all he asks of you. That’s all I ask of you. I just want you to be honest with me. I just want you in my life. I don’t care about the kind of person that you were, I care about the person that you are.”

               “And what kind of person am I?” Kylo asks. “Do you honestly believe I’m a good person?”

               “To be honest?” you ask as you reach forward to kiss him. “I really don’t care.”

               The truth was, you didn’t think Kylo could really be defined as a good person, especially not after all of the terrible things that he had done, and if you had allowed Kylo the time to answer before you pressed your lips against his, he probably would have agreed with you. Kylo knew he wasn’t a good person, but in a way you liked that about him. He admitted his mistakes and didn’t try to pretend to be someone that he wasn’t, which was more than you could say about the Republic.

               In the end, you supposed that there were really three different types of people. Some people were naturally good, like Poe, who saw the good and the potential to do good in everyone around them. Those people were hard to find in the galaxy, but they were there, trying to do the best they could for themselves and for others in whatever situation they found themselves in. Other people, like yourself, tried their damn hardest to be good, to be truly, honestly good, without ever being able to achieve that spark that truly good people had. It was a struggle, albeit a pointless one, but a struggle nonetheless. You yourself had tried to embrace the light inside of you completely, but you still couldn’t get there, still couldn’t bring yourself to banish the darkness inside of you. Other people, like Kylo, were deeply flawed and bordered on the point of being nonredeemable, but he still had the potential to try to make things better. He still had the drive to make things work, and not because of something as menial as love or affections or Force bonds, but by choice, and you couldn’t overstate how important that was.

               Whether you were naturally predisposed towards good, or evil, or found yourself struggling somewhere in the middle between the two extremes, the power to choose was the only power that really mattered. You couldn’t fight your natural inclinations, but you could still claim authority over your actions, still choose whether to do right or wrong in any situation. The power to choose was the only power that mattered, the power to simply be, to let you define yourself, to live your life the way you wanted to live it: that was the only choice that mattered, and you knew without a doubt in your mind that you would spend the rest of your life fighting to protect your, and Ani’s, ability to choose. You couldn’t control the people around you, or the situation that you happened to find yourself in, but you could always find solace in the fact that you would become a product of your own choices, whether for good or for ill, and it would be those choices that would govern the rest of your future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boom. If this feels almost like an ending, then you're right, because while this is a trilogy divided up into three parts, this part has three acts, or, to phrase it a different way, three distinct chapters. Kylo and the Reader are finally together and ready to display a unified front, so if you've been waiting for the other shoe to drop, now's the time to get scared...although, I'll give you fair warning, the shoe is going to drop slowly... Basically what I mean to say is I've planned this final part of the trilogy out like a play, and I guess you'll just have to see what that means as we enter act two. ;) 
> 
> Also, I was talking to JAM the other day who was talking to me about how the _Finalizer_ used Kyber crystals inside their turbolasers (which usually depended on huge capacitor banks to recharge but if they could draw some of their power through the Force, they can keep firing without a full charge...and yes, that is canon!) so what if you were able to harness the power of the Force through a blaster? It would just function like a normal blaster to people with low Force-sensitivity, but with high Force-sensitivity, you could get a lot more plasma out of the charge pack. I don't know, I guess I'm just a giant nerd because all this tech stuff is super interesting to me, but this whole chapter just made me super happy because:
> 
> 1\. I have a headcanon that Phasma isn't just Captain of the First Order because she's strong and powerful and a tactical genius but also because she's super smart, especially with military technology, and loves to tinker with them to try to make the latest and greatest weaponry for her troops.
> 
> 2\. _"All we received from that project was a lightsaber-resistant melee weapon as a hedge against the revival of the Jedi Order."_ Obligatory shoutout to FN-2199/Nines/TR-8R because Liang Yang is awesome (and, fun fact, he was the stunt double for Oberyn Martell in Game of Thrones, since I know I got a bunch of you Thronies out there. ;) )
> 
> 3\. Throwback to Flare!! Obviously there's more to the Tortutaru's presence that Reader was unaware of, so it's always fun to learn more about that in small drips without writing a whole big exposition. I know I've been asked several times to write an accompanying story for Taro's perspective, (and from Kylo's, and Poe's, and Rey's, ect.) so whenever I eventually get done writing the actual story, I do have a few one-shots planned, not a whole story from one characters perspective, but, like, the highlights: Kylo and Phasma talking about Reader after he sends her away after Flare, what Poe was doing the night the Reader was taken, and after, (which I may have already written >.>), Rey/Finn/Poe/Leia talking about Reader before/after she comes to the Resistance...there's basically an endless resource there, so for the people who don't want this story to end as much as I don't, don't worry, I got your back. ;) We have 586 days to go until the next Star Wars movie, so we got plenty of time to kill. xD
> 
> 4\. Oh, and Kylo doesn't have his scar anymore!! Apparently it _is_ possible to heal it over, although the whole process would be really, really, really freaking painful. For the movies, I can imagine they'll want to keep it to keep Kylo with a more sinister vibe (and I couldn't really imagine Kylo wanting to get rid of it either) but this story takes place years later, in an alternate timeline, and so...the scar is gone. Cheers or jeers, that's up to you, I'm still not sure how I feel about it either, but it made sense for where the story was going. xD 
> 
> Okay, and that's enough out of me. Enjoy your weekend, go see Captain America: Civil War if that's what you're into (it's actually really good, and I'm not the biggest fan of Marvel but Tom Holland is amazing) and I will see you all back here on Tuesday. Until then, cheers!!


	15. Chapter 15

               It at least pleased you a little bit to know that Ani hadn’t picked up on the fact that Kylo’s scar had healed either. He didn’t look at Kylo any differently, he didn’t say anything about it, and you were glad that Kylo didn’t push the topic of conversation with him. It was just gone, like it had never been there at all, and that was that, at least as far as Ani was concerned. Apparently Phasma had already known that he had been planning to get rid of it, and while you were at first hurt that he hadn’t been up front in revealing this information to you, a part of you knew that it had been a surprise intended for your benefit, and you didn’t hold that against him.

               After that, things carried on as normal for a few months. You helped train Ani in the Force with Kylo, whether that meant he was trying to channel his Force abilities through telekinesis, or practicing with a staff to prepare him for wielding his own lightsaber someday, or meditation, which Ani still had not grown particularly fond of. Kylo was not fond of it either, and so you took it as time that you got to spend with Ani yourself, while Kylo was off doing other things. You supposed Kylo could benefit from meditation to channel his anger and frustration, but you supposed that was why he had you there, and besides, there wasn’t all that much for him to be angry about nowadays. While Phasma trained Ani with a blaster, you and Kylo would slip back up to the bedroom and make up for the years that he had been away, although not all of these encounters were sexually charged. Sometimes you would just sit there and talk to each other about different things that you had each missed out on while the other had been away, and sometimes you just cuddled and appreciated the fact that you were back together again, when you didn’t have to worry about ever being truly separated from him ever again.

               As the days passed into weeks and the weeks became months, you almost let yourself believe that this would be your future now, and while you at times grew bored under the sheer monotony of it, you couldn’t deny that you honestly liked spending time with Kylo. You were bored on occasion, sure, but things just seemed to be better when Kylo was around, as if his presence was a panacea to everything that you feared could go wrong. Granted, there was a lot that could. It took you some time before you realized that Phasma was doing secret exchanges with people late at night, long after everyone else was asleep, exchanging weaponry and resources only found on Naboo for secret bits of correspondence and supplies and who knew what else.

               After a while, these deliveries started to become more and more frequent, and Kylo was growing concerned that someone was going to catch on and start looking into these clandestine First Order dealings. He didn’t talk to you about it directly, but you could feel his concern building through the Force bond until you couldn’t take it anymore and decided to broach the subject with him yourself. You had spent enough time around him in order to control what sort of impressions you picked up from him, but you couldn’t quell the uneasy feeling you had in your chest when you thought about it, either. You wanted to continue living here, and yet with it being necessary to continue the operations of the First Order, you were starting to feel less and less secure about your life on Naboo as the days passed. You felt it, Kylo felt it, and although Ani was probably too young to understand it, you deemed that he could probably feel your concern growing as well.

               “We should go then,” you tell him one night. You had just put Ani off to bed and Phasma was off running an errand, which she seemed to be doing an increasing amount of as of late. “We should leave Naboo.”

               Kylo just lets out a brief snort as he tucks a strand of hair behind your ear and slips his arm around you, running his fingertips up and down your bare side in an eager attempt to console you. “But you love it here.”

               “I do,” you admit. “But I also love you, and Ani, and spending time with both of you. If the Republic or the Resistance starts looking into the increased traffic in and out of Naboo lately, it could get dangerous for us here. We should travel somewhere and lay low for a while. You said yourself that there are First Order bases scattered throughout the galaxy-“

               “And I wouldn’t risk bringing Ani to any of them,” Kylo tells you firmly.

               “And I don’t want to risk staying here and getting caught,” you tell him. “It’s not just you I have to worry about now. It’s me too, and that means we both have to do whatever we can in order to look out for each other so that we can keep Ani safe.”

               Kylo grumbles something under his breath as he runs a hand through your long hair before he tucks you protectively beneath his chin, cradling you back and forth in his arms. “We are safe here.”

               You appreciate the gesture, but at the moment, you don’t want to feel comforted. You want to feel heard. “And I’m telling you that I would feel better if we went away for a while. We’re so close to D’Qar, and all the Resistance needs to do is so much as glance in this direction and they’ll already be on our doorstep before we can do anything about it.” You can’t help but sigh as you cuddle into him nonetheless. “Please hear me when I tell you that I have a bad feeling about staying here.”

               “What kind of feeling?” Kylo asks, pulling away from you slightly so as to get a good look at your face, and you know he’s trying to figure out whether this was just something you were unhappy about, or whether this was something that you were picking up through the Force.

               “A feeling,” you tell him. “I know you’re concerned with what’s going on just as much as I am, and I don’t want to risk our lives together by falling into a false sense of security. We don’t have to go away forever, maybe just for a little while so if anyone comes looking for us here they won’t find anything, and then we’re in the clear to come back.”

               “And where do you expect us to go?” Kylo asks. “Your academia? The Republic has spies-“

               “No,” you say flatly. “Although I’d love to see Sadie again, I know what you mean about spies, and I don’t trust anyone there. Hell, Poe and his friends could have already visited her and asked her to keep an eye out for me.”

               “I should have killed her when I had the chance,” Kylo remarks bitterly, and you slap his arm lightly.

               “If you had I wouldn’t be here,” you tell him firmly, and as his eyes meet yours, he knows that you’re not lying. While Kylo had helped wipe out the entire Hosnian system, while he had tortured and tried to kill most of your friends on several different occasions, he had never gone through with actually hurting you or Ani. You knew that, implicitly, he would never bring himself to hurt you, and you took comfort in this notion as you cuddled up in bed beside him every night. You couldn’t forgive him for his transgressions against the others, only because it was not your place to do so. Kylo wouldn’t hurt you, or your child, and that was what truly mattered to you.

               “Where would we go?” Kylo asks, not without a hint of reserve in his voice. He had at least gotten to know you well enough that when you decided that you wanted something done, that it was going to happen, one way or another, and if you didn’t feel safe here, he knew that you were not going to drop the line of inquiry until he actually helped you do something about it.

               “We’ll talk to Ani first,” you tell him. “Ask if he’s comfortable with leaving, and then approach Phasma with the idea and we can work it out together. Like you said, there are First Order bases throughout the galaxy but you also have other hiding places where you can just hide out and lie low, right?”

               “A few,” Kylo replies with a brief snort. “Although believe me when I tell you that as far as accommodations go, this is by far the best.”

               “Which is why you brought me here,” you agree. “But we need to lie low in a place that no one will ever think to look for us, at least for a while. Remember how long I spent with the Resistance. If I feel like they’re getting close, they probably are.”

               Kylo looks you up and down, as if trying to make a sudden decision about something. “And do you really think your… _pilot_ would so willingly hand you over to the Republic?”

               He’s not being sarcastic. He’s honestly asking you whether he thinks Poe’s sense of duty would rise above his feelings for you, and while you could see him trying to defend you all he could, you honestly weren’t one hundred percent sure. If the situation had been reversed and Kylo was in his place, you knew implicitly that he would have kept you hidden on the Resistance base and made sure the Republic never found you, but as it so happened, Kylo was here with you, and you were intent on keeping things that way. “I’m not sure what he would do, but he would probably put his loyalties to the Resistance over anything he felt for me,” you tell him, and Kylo looks almost a bit taken aback by your candor. “But it doesn’t matter. I want to stay with you. We’re in this together, so let’s figure out a plan.”

               Kylo presses his lips to your temple and kisses you firmly as he wraps his arms around you and rests his head back down on the pillow. “If you think we are in danger, then we will of course go. I will not risk your life or Ani’s for the sake of our comfort here.”

               “Just for a little while,” you remind him. “Do you have any places in mind of where we could go?”

               “I know one place they would never look for me,” Kylo says quietly, and you immediately perk up despite his despondent tone.

               “Who cares what it looks like as long as it’s safe,” you tell him. “Where do you think we should go?”

               And that’s how you ended up travelling to Tatooine within the next week. Phasma had agreed that she also felt that you were overstaying your welcome on Naboo, and while she travelled elsewhere to meet with Hux and help organize platoons of soldiers for whatever offensive the First Order was planning next, you, Kylo, and Ani headed onwards to Tatooine. Apparently Kylo had arranged for plenty of supplies to be delivered ahead of your arrival, considering Tatooine was a dry planet in the Outer Rim that was covered in a harsh desert. Considering there was no water due to the twin suns, people who lived there had to painstakingly draw moisture from the dry air, and while Kylo was explaining this to you and Ani on the journey there, you suddenly developed second thoughts as to whether or not you really wanted to leave Naboo.

               Regardless, by the time you felt ready to voice your concerns it was already too late, and as you stepped off the ship, you had to blink a few times in order to allow your eyes to adjust to the harsh sun. “I hate sand,” Kylo murmured under his breath as he stepped out of the ship behind you. The wind blew rough particles of sand into your eyes, and you coughed into your sleeve as Ani held onto your pants leg, burying his face into the seam. _I don’t like this_ , you call to him, afraid to open your mouth lest sand fly in and get lodged in your throat. Kylo simply walks over to you, his face protected by his helmet, as he takes off his scarf and adjusts it around your face, making a small pocket to protect your nose and mouth so that you could still breathe. You cast a grateful smile in his direction, knowing he couldn’t really see it with the thick fabric in the way, while Kylo picked up Ani and held his face close to his chest to protect him from the harsh sand.

               Looking up at the high desert walls all around you, it looked as though Kylo had set the ship down in the middle of a narrow crack in Tatooine’s crust that slowly expanded outwards to form a giant crater, almost like an upside-down funnel. While the tall red and brown walls looked like nothing you had ever seen before, Kylo seemed staunchly unimpressed by his surroundings as he made his way away from the small clearing he had parked the ship in and disappeared through a small crack in the canyon walls that you hadn’t noticed previously. The crack bled into a long, narrow tunnel that was just a little wider than Kylo’s broad shoulders, and you could be sure that this place was probably as well-hidden and easy to defend as they could come. Looking up, the walls seemed to stretch so tall that you couldn’t even see the sky above you, and it made you feel quite small, as if the walls could come crashing together and destroy you at any second.

               Nevertheless, the tunnel wasn’t extremely long, and you soon arrived in a small circular clearing, with the clear outline of a door sticking out of a slope against the far wall of the canyon. At least this area was devoid of sand, with a motley combination of colored stones lining the ground instead, and you eased the scarf away from your face and took in your new surroundings as Kylo opened the door and set Ani down inside. You turned around and stared back the way you had come, looking at the dry red and orange walls that towered around you. It wasn’t as pretty as Naboo, nor had you expected it to be, but you were starting to miss the temperate climate that Naboo had to offer. You had expected to sweat under Tatooine’s hot twin suns, but instead you found yourself feeling oddly dry, as though all the moisture on your skin was being sucked away into an invisible vacuum.

               Kylo places his hand on your shoulder and you lean into his touch, comforted by his presence. You didn’t necessarily mind where you were as long as he and Ani were with you, and if you had to stay here in order to spend the rest of your lives together, then so be it. As you turn around to face him, you’re not even bothered by the fact that you can’t see his expression underneath his mask as you follow him inside, letting him lead you by the arm.

               The furnishings inside were simplistic and rustic, but it was nice. The room opened up into a small seated area down two steps on your immediate left, and there was a small kitchen area immediately off to your right. Beyond it, on your left hand side, you could see some sort of work bench set up with a variety of mechanical parts scattered about. There looked to be some sort of small hallway off to the right of the kitchen, and you quickly stepped inside to peer down the hallway to see three doors all within close proximity to each other, and you assumed it probably held two bedrooms and a small bathroom. It all seemed very small, especially compared to Phasma’s spacious home, but the effect was probably enhanced by the ceiling, which seemed exceptionally low to you, and if it seemed low to _you_ , then you knew Kylo must have been enjoying it less than you were.  

               “It’s not bad here,” you tell him as you turn to face him. “Although I could see why you would think that no one would come looking for us here. I didn’t see any settlements nearby where we landed. It almost seems deserted.”

               “It’s not,” Kylo assures you as he slides off his helmet. “But most of the people that reside on this planet tend to live together in settlements for their own protection. Tatooine is dangerous, and the Sand People are fiercely protective over their lands-“

               “Sand people?” you echo as you raise your eyebrows.

               “Tuskens,” Kylo informs you. “Tusken Raiders.”

               “Well that sounds ominous,” you say with a sigh. “But don’t Jawas live here too?”

               “They do,” he replies. “But I doubt we’re going to find any around these parts. They’re scavengers, and this alcove is extremely hidden. I wouldn’t have left the ship where I did if I felt they were a threat.”

               “Okay,” you say as you nod your head and look around your dwellings. “You know, that’s honestly too bad because considering how I grew up, I had to be pretty fluent in Jawa Trade Talk.” Kylo raises his eyebrows and you continue. “Well, because, you know, you can’t learn Jawaese if you’re not a Jawa because a part of the language component is based primarily off of smells, so they invented Jawa Trade Talk in order to communicate with droids and outsiders.” You rack your mind for whatever words you can think of. “Like, _Mombay m’bwa_ is used to show your possession over an object, and _Omu’sata_ is a not-very-nice way to tell someone to stop talking.”

               “Interesting,” Kylo murmurs, his voice low in his throat. You can see a dark glint in his eyes as he appraises you, and you blush as he looks you over.

               “What?” you ask, unable to conceal your embarrassment any further.

               “Nothing,” Kylo replies. “I had simply forgotten how astute you were with other languages and cultures.”

               “Ironic, considering that’s exactly how you met me,” you point out as you take a few steps closer to him. “But I’ll forgive it. I think it might come in handy, especially considering what we’re facing now.” You can’t help but smile as you remember how Kylo Ren had personally interviewed you himself and demanded to know your history when you had first entered the Starkiller Base, oh so many years ago. “I don’t know if I ever asked you why you conducted that interview,” you tell him. “Instead of just sending one of your lackeys to do it.” 

               “I wanted to be around you,” Kylo says simply. “Remember, thanks to that Tortutaru, it took me a while to ascertain if you were really Force sensitive. I wanted to find out as much as I could about your history. If you had been lying, I was sure I would have been able to detect it one way or the other.”

               You can’t help but smirk. “Like I could ever have lied to you,” you tease gently. “You may not have been able to sense my nature, but I could sense yours, even if I wasn’t able to fully understand what that meant at the time.”

               “It was intimidation,” Kylo says, his voice lightly teasing. “Not trust.”

               “And who’s to say that I was intimidated by you?” you ask, crossing your arms over your chest. “Maybe I was just playing the role B wanted me to play.”

               “Fair,” Kylo relents as he tucks a loose strand of hair behind your ear. “But I do remember the first time I showed you my face. You were exceedingly bold, and you surpassed all my expectations as to how you might react around me.”

               You just bite your lip as you look away, unable to meet his eyes. Honestly, recalling the tale of how you had fallen in love with him was hardly the picturesque romance you had envisioned for yourself. He had choked you, almost killed you, and yet you had forgiven him for it as you slowly began to crave his presence more and more until you had become his captive there after the Resistance’s plot against him and the rest of the First Order had been discovered. Even still, you never considered yourself his captive, not really, not when he had done so much to make your stay there as hospitable as it could have possibly been considered under the circumstances. Even before you found out about your clandestine mission, you had still been attracted to him, still wanted him, and you knew deep down, “Once I saw you, once I sensed you, there was never any way that I could have resisted you. Once the Force bond started to develop between us-“

               “Was it the Force bond?” Kylo asks, but there’s a note of good humor in his voice. “Is that all it was?”

               “You know it wasn’t,” you tell him as you lean forward and press your lips against his, and you hear the scampering of Ani’s small feet across the floor as he runs out of his bedroom and into the kitchen. You pull away from Kylo and rest your back against him while he wraps one arm protectively around your waist, resting his chin on your shoulder as you look down at Ani. “So how do you like it here?”

               “It’s okay,” Ani says with a childish shrug as he looks around the room. “It’s kind of small, and we can’t really go outside, can we?”

               “No,” Kylo says firmly before you even have time to respond. “No, it’s dangerous for you to go outside alone. Due to the Tusken presence in this area, I have set up patrols for extra protection, to guard both us and the ship from any unforeseen attacks. It’s auspicious for us that the Republic does not operate in these far reaches of the galaxy, and there is no reason for the Resistance to travel out this way, but there are still many dangers that we could face here.”

               “Maybe it was safer back on Naboo,” you mutter petulantly, and Kylo gives you a firm squeeze around your middle. “No, I know, I know, we’re safer here, but I just wish it wasn’t necessary, that’s all. I mean, now we have the elements and native species here to contend with. I don’t want to be on the run from the Resistance and get shot or stabbed to death by something that thinks we’re invading on its territory.”

               “Do you honestly think I would let anything happen to you?” Kylo asks, and he almost sounds annoyed by the insinuation.

               “Accidents can happen,” you say with a slight shrug of your shoulders. You look back down at Ani, who seems to be squirming uncomfortably. “Hey, Ani, what’s wrong? You heard your dad, nothing is going to happen to us here.”

               “Are you sure we’re safe?” Ani asks. “From the people that are trying to find us?”

               “Yes,” Kylo answers simply, and you nod your head in agreement.

               “No one is going to find us out here, Ani,” you tell him softly. “What are you worried about?”

               “Well, what if Luke decides to go back to Ben’s house?” Ani asks. “What if it’s nearby and he’s able to sense us?”

               “That’s at the southwestern edge of the Dune Sea,” Kylo says dismissively. “Besides, the place has been all but destroyed. It’s since been ransacked and the roof has caved in. There is nothing left of the place now.”

               Affiliations to Luke aside, that wasn’t the part that concerned you the most. “Ani, how did you know that Ben Kenobi used to live on Tatooine?” you ask quietly. Ani looks down and Kylo takes a step away from you as he crosses his arms over his chest and stares down at Ani.

               “Answer her,” he says firmly, and that’s when you realize that apparently Kylo hadn’t told him either. “Did Phasma tell you?”

               “No, sir,” Ani says quietly, and he shuffles under the intense weight of Kylo’s stare. “He told me himself.”

               “I thought you said you weren’t seeing the Force ghosts anymore,” you say as you drop to one knee beside him. “I told you I wouldn’t get mad, but I told you that I wanted you to be honest with us if they ever started speaking to you again so that we can figure out how to protect you.”

               “It only started again recently,” Ani says softly. “When you said we were going to Tatooine. I had a dream that night.”

               “Why?” you press. “Did they say why? Was it just because Ben Kenobi lived here or did they want to warn us about some danger here?”

               “Have you talked to my grandfather?” Kylo asks, and you can sense something in his voice, almost as though he’s afraid to hear the answer.

               “No,” Ani says. “I mean, not really, although-“ He pauses as he looks up at Kylo. “He was born here, though, wasn’t he?”

               Your eyes widen in surprise and you immediately whirl around to face Kylo. “Seriously?” Kylo raises his eyebrows and shoots you a blank look. “Everyone at the Resistance knows how much you idolized Darth Vader, of course they would probably keep a patrol out here in case you ever returned.”

               “I have only been here twice,” Kylo says indignantly. “And I have made my sentiments known each time. I absolutely despise it here. I hate sand, and Anakin Skywalker was but a child when he left this planet and became a padawan of the Jedi Council. He returned only the once, when his mother died after she was kidnapped and tortured by a Tusken camp, and once he left, he never returned.” He pauses for the briefest of moments. “I do know that Luke was raised here, though. Obi-Wan stayed close to watch out for him, in case my grandfather ever returned.”

               “Thanks for the history lesson,” you say bitterly. “But you didn’t think that it was important for me to know this before we arrived here?” Kylo looks down and says nothing. “We’re supposed to be a team. How can I trust you when you’re purposely withholding information from me?”

               “That was not my intention,” Kylo declares firmly. “If I thought that it had any bearing on my decision to bring us here-“

               “Next time, tell us,” you say firmly, and you stand up as you look down at Ani. “And you too, tell us.” You look back at Kylo as you glance between them in exasperation. “You’ve got your family history, and you have your Force Ghosts, and I’m the one out of the loop here, trying to keep everyone together. I can’t protect you both as well as I’d like to if you both are keeping things from me. From now on, full honesty and transparency with each other, all right?”

               “I’m sorry,” Ani says quietly, scuffing the toe of his boot into the floor. You look at Kylo expectantly, who simply rolls his eyes.

               “I apologize,” Kylo says bitterly. He looks like he’s about to say something more, about to say something that would render his apology useless, and so you just hold up your hand to stop him from talking.

               “It honestly doesn’t matter how we got here,” you tell him. “Or why you chose this place over other places. As long as it’s well hidden from both the Resistance and the Republic, and Ani can continue his Force-training, then we can make do here, at least for a short while.”

               And you did, at least for a short while. After the first week, though, tempers had started to run high from the close proximity and the general heat of the planet compared to Naboo’s temperate climate. Before, Kylo and Ani had always gone outside in the mornings, allowing you to meditate in peace, but even when they were in the next room, the walls were so thin that you could hear every word of their conversation, and that frustrated you to no end. That, and the fact that you couldn’t really go outside, and so you were basically stuck moving from one room to the next, where there wasn’t space enough to do much of anything, not even your usual calisthenics. Ani complained about this, loudly, and often, and while you were smart enough to keep your mouth shut, you still couldn’t avoid giving Kylo pointed glares whenever he turned his back. Yes, you were the one who had wanted to leave Naboo, but surely there were other First Order hideouts in the galaxy that were just as safe but a little more pleasant?

               Either way, one day, Kylo finally gave into Ani’s constant begging and let the three of you walk into town, your faces heavily concealed by scarves. In truth, you had a much lower chance of being recognized than Kylo did, but you didn’t want to chance things regardless. The Republic had recorded that holo of you fighting Rey, and while it was still just a holo, you didn’t want to chance anything if people happened to catch a glimpse of the lightsaber on your belt and put two and two together. Besides, the scarves at least yielded some protection from the hot sun and the sand, which seemed to constantly find its way into every open orifice.

               Ani, however, seemed to love it there. Seeing all of the different people and aliens alike, interacting and bartering and trading, reminded him of the Market back on your academia, although this was on a much larger scale and the area had an implicit hint of danger to it. Both you and Kylo both secretly carried your lightsabers with you in the event that you needed to use them, but you seriously hoped that you wouldn’t need to. Kylo’s lightsaber was, for all intents and purposes, a crackling red sword, and yours was a glowing amber staff. Lightsabers were already a rarity in the galaxy thanks to Palpatine’s Purge, and both of your lightsabers were so exceptionally distinctive that you doubted anyone would have trouble placing them. So, instead, you kept it tucked away under your robes and hoped that if trouble did indeed find you, that you would be able to use the Force to protect yourself and escape without drawing unnecessary suspicion to yourself.

               Fortunately, luck was on your side and nothing happened. The day that you were in town happened to coincide with the Boonta Eve Classic podrace, the largest podrace in the galaxy, celebrating the deification of Boonta the Hutt after the deposition of some human dictator named Xim long ago, at least according to a display outside the arena, and so there were people visiting from all over the galaxy who had travelled to see the commemorative race. While a part of you was concerned that it might attract people from either the Republic or the Resistance, Kylo assured you again that no one of significance in the Republic would dare come out this far, and it was unlikely that the Resistance would be looking for you there. Nevertheless, Ani wanted to see a podrace, and although you thought it was still way too dangerous and would only increase the likelihood of getting noticed, Kylo decided to entertain Ani, so long as he stayed close.

               In truth, you were bored by the whole affair, and while Kylo himself seemed indifferent to it, Ani was completely engrossed by the way the pods raced around the track. It was hardly anything special to you, just small hovercarriages attached to overpowered starship engines travelling three circuits of an intentionally perilous course. It seemed ridiculously dangerous, and senseless, to risk your life just on the gamble of ending the day with a little more money than you had started with, but you supposed it was better than the old Hutt tradition of racing slaves to the death. You also had to stop and force yourself to remember that these planets didn’t have abundant resources like some other ones in the galaxy, and so they had to make do with the best that they could manage, even if it came down to trading human cargo and gambling. You had already learned that lesson in your own youth, although you didn’t want to dwell on that now. Your days aboard a cargo ship happened so long ago that it almost felt as though it happened in a different lifetime.

               “That was awesome,” Ani exclaimed as the three of you walked back to your dwelling that night. “I want to be a podracer someday. I want to make my own pod and it’ll be the fastest there ever was.”

               “Not a chance,” you say firmly, but Kylo ignores you.

               “My grandfather won his freedom in this very race when he was only a small boy,” Kylo tells him. “He built a pod all on his own and using his strength in the Force, he was able to win his first race in that pod. I have no doubt that you would be able to-“

               “Don’t encourage him,” you say as you smack his arm lightly. “He may share his name, but he is _not_ your grandfather. He may be strong in the Force too, but he didn’t grow up around the races. It’s still dangerous.”

               “But I want to,” Ani says as he looks up at Kylo. “Please, dad, can I please try?”

               “Not here,” Kylo tells him, and you can’t help but breathe out a sigh of relief. “There’s too much chance that you can be noticed here, but they do still have podracing on Malastare.”

               “Like hell we’re going to Malastare,” you say stiffly as Kylo turns to you. “I may not know everything about the galaxy, but Malastare is in the Mid Rim, right? Homeworld to the Dugs and the Grans?” Kylo nods his head. “Grans have their own language, sure, but you know what they predominantly speak? Basic. And you want to know why they primarily speak Basic?”

               “Why?” Ani asks as he looks up at you.

               “Because the Malastarian Council had signed a treaty with the Republic granting them access to their fuel reserves,” Kylo tells him before he looks back at you. “But times are changing. If you know anything about them, you should know that the Grans especially look out for their own self-interests, and if the First Order can serve them better than the Republic-“

               “It’s still risky,” you say with some finality.

               “We have a base there,” Kylo tells you, and you raise an eyebrow as you turn to look at him. Kylo didn’t often tell you where the First Order strongholds were, so if he was telling you now, it was probably important. “Considering how scattered we are throughout the galaxy, the First Order has been looking into potentially expanding our control with the cooperation of alien species.”

               “Oh yeah?” you ask with a slight laugh. “And who’s idea was that? Not Hux’s, I bet.”

               “No,” Kylo agrees. “Hux is still firm on maintaining a strictly human policy from within the First Order in order to secure maximum control over his troops. He is especially wary of any additional involvement from alien species, thanks to you and those Tortuaru.”

               You wrinkle your nose as you look over at him. “I thought _you_ were the only one who had opposed their presence on board.”

               Kylo can’t help but smile softly at that. “It appears that Hux and I were somewhat in agreement on that,” he admits. “Although Hux had ultimately decided that their abilities would prove to be advantageous for the First Order and entertained their presence while I merely tolerated it. After certain details of their affairs with the Resistance came to light, however, he soon realized he had been made a fool of.” He glances aside at you and quirks one eyebrow while you merely roll your eyes and shake your head from side to side.

               “Is that what you think, though?” you ask him curiously, suddenly eagerly awaiting his answer. “Do you think that the First Order would be better off with or without the involvement of non-human lifeforms in the galaxy?”  

               Kylo just shrugs his shoulders. “That’s not my concern,” he says firmly. “That is something that Hux and Phasma will have to figure out when the time comes.”

               You tilt your head to the side. “Then what exactly are you doing with the First Order?” you ask. “I mean, if you’re not involved with any of this troop planning business, or helping control the galaxy, then what exactly are you doing?”

               Kylo narrows his eyes at you, as if you were implying that he wasn’t doing as much as he could to help the Order. It suddenly occurred to you that this was something that Hux had probably accused him of at some point or another, and if there was something you knew for certain was that you did not want to be repeating Hux’s words back to Kylo. That seemed almost like a sin in itself.

               “I restore order,” Kylo tells you firmly. “If there is dissent, I crush it. I am necessary in conflicts where Phasma does not want to risk many of her troops and Hux doesn’t want to get his hands bloody.”

               “Fair enough,” you say with a light sigh. You knew that you probably wouldn’t have wanted to hear the answer anyway, but you were glad Kylo was at least being honest with you about what he was doing with the First Order. Even if he wasn’t giving you specifics, you knew what he had to do, and you were at least comforted by the notion that he was never going to leave you alone for long stretches of time, especially not on Tatooine. Although you were safer from the Resistance and the Republic, it was more physically dangerous than it had been on Naboo, and he was not about to leave you and Ani there to fend for yourself.

               In fact, Kylo never left your side the entire time you stayed on Tatooine. You stayed only for about six or seven weeks, up until which point neither you nor Kylo could take the extreme heat or the close proximity. Your shared bedroom had been small, with an extra low ceiling, and you couldn’t help but feel as though you were constantly in each other’s way. As soon as Kylo’s temper started to flare, yours ignited right along with it, thanks to the Force bond, and you had since given up on trying to be the dogmatic one. At first you had tried to ground Kylo’s anger and cancel it out with your own positive emotions, but it soon grew tiring, and you were glad when Kylo suggested that you finally return to Naboo, not just for the sake of comfort, but because of the concern of how your snippiness towards each other could possibly affect Ani.

               You were around each other all the time, with no reprieve, and with it either too dangerous or unpleasant to go outside, you couldn’t help but start to resent Kylo for putting you in this position to begin with. You were constantly thirsty, constantly too hot, constantly _dry,_ as if the air itself was sucking all the moisture out of your skin on a daily basis, and Kylo was the only reason you were going through this torment. If he had just left you and Ani on the Resistance base, then you would never have had to go through this situation to begin with. While this was something you never verbally threw back in his face, Kylo could sense it, you knew he could, and if he could sense it, you were sure Ani could probably sense it as well. He had started to grow quiet, and you couldn’t tell if it was just because of the surroundings or because of the constant threat of igniting tempers, but either way, it wasn’t a good place to raise Ani, and so one night you quietly packed your things and headed back to Naboo.

               It was night time when you arrived, and you had immediately put Ani back into his familiar bed as you and Kylo headed back up to your bedroom. “It’s good to be back,” you tell him. “Just like old times.” Kylo didn’t say anything as he started to strip down, throwing his clothes on the couch where he had once slept when you had first arrived. “Is Phasma going to be returning soon?”

               “Possibly,” was all that Kylo said, and you couldn’t help but let your heart sink. He was in a mood, again, and while a part of you didn’t feel like challenging him, you just wanted things to go back to the way they were before you had arrived on Tatooine.

               “I want to take a bath,” you tell him. “Will you join me?”

               Kylo’s shoulders stiffen, almost imperceptibly. “I thought you wanted some time away from me.” You open your mouth to speak, but he continues. “I could sense your thoughts on Tatooine. You were starting to resent me.”

               “Which is why we came back,” you tell him. “We’re here now, and everything is going to be fine again. We can be more of a family here than we ever were there. We have our space here, and we can go outside and lie on the grass without the air sucking all the moisture out of our skin.”

               “Is that what you still want?” Kylo asks as he turns around, almost daring you to say that you wanted to go back to the Resistance, and you can’t help but smile as you hold out your arm and extend your hand towards him, waiting for him to take it.

               “It’s what I always wanted since you first kissed me,” you tell him with as much sincerity as you can muster, and Kylo takes your hand in his as you lead him into the bathroom, where you immediately start the bath. The water is warm, and comforting, and as you sit on Kylo’s lap in the tub, letting your long legs drape over his, you can’t help but curl into his chest and relax there, taking in his warmth as he wraps his arms around you.

               “See, I missed this,” you tell him. “It’s like everything makes sense again. I don’t know why things couldn’t be this simple between us on Tatooine.”

               “Because you hated it there,” Kylo replies. “For all of your strengths, you want things to be a certain way, and you can quickly become irritable when they’re not.”

               “Don’t project yourself on me,” you say teasingly, but as Kylo shifts awkwardly beneath you, you realize that he’s not. Somewhere along the line, you had become just as quick to anger as he had. “When did that start to happen?”

               “It’s the Force bond,” Kylo assures you. “You are starting to pick up some of my traits, as I am starting to pick up some of yours.”

               “That seems bad,” you tell him flatly. “I mean, I know I have a lot of flaws, but I would like to think that they’re not as terrible as yours.” You roll onto your stomach to kiss him. “I mean, Ani only needs one raging homicidal parent, and he already has you.”

               “I’m not concerned with you killing anyone just yet,” Kylo says as he brushes your damp hair out of your face with one hand.

               “Maybe you should be,” you say with a light shrug of your shoulders. “If anyone from the Resistance or the Republic comes around, I’m going to take them out, no questions asked. I’m going to do whatever I have to in order to protect you and Ani, and I don’t care who I have to hurt in order to do that.” There’s a bit of a reckless edge that embodies your tone, and you know what Kylo is going to say even before he says it.

               “And who does that sound like?” he asks, but for some reason this irritates you more than anything.

               “I don’t need to be influenced by the Force bond in order to want to protect my family,” you tell him. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a strength, not a flaw.”

               “Hey.” Kylo cups your face in both hands as he forces your eyes to meet his, and you can’t help but let your heart sink in your chest as you feel a wave of guilt float through you for snapping at him. You tried to tell yourself that it was just leftover crankiness from being on Tatooine, but you could no longer be so sure. “I love you.”

               He presses his lips against yours and you allow yourself to smile as you run your fingers through his thick, damp hair. “I love you too,” you tell him. Before you had always been satisfied just knowing, but lately you seemed to need to hear it from him more and more, especially as things had gotten rocky between you. Even still, Kylo eases himself up on the edge of the bath, and you just smirk as you stand up, letting the water run down your body in small rivulets as you place your legs on the outside of the tub and ease yourself down onto his lap, relishing the feeling of him stretching inside of you. It had been too hot to do anything on Tatooine, much less cuddle, and you couldn’t deny that the brush of cold air from stepping out of the bath felt amazing on your skin, especially compared to the warmth from Kylo’s hands moving across your back.

               “Did you miss this?” he asks you softly. He’s not going as fast as he usually is, instead, he seems to just be enjoying the feeling of being inside of you again. You kiss him gently before you relax your forehead against his, wrapping your arms around his neck.

               “I missed you,” you tell him, because quite honestly, you did. Even though he had never left your side, you had started to feel distant from him in a way that you never quite had before. “I’m sorry for all the nastiness that came between us while we were there. I don’t like snapping at you. I don’t like feeling angry for no reason. I don’t like Ani having to see it, or feel it, when I’m not sure how to make sure he’s closing himself off from it.”

               “He’ll understand when he’s older,” Kylo tells you. “But we’re back here now, and we can make it up to him.”

               “Together?” you ask as you press your nose against his, and your grip on his shoulders tightens as Kylo starts to increase his pace.  

               “Together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this chapter seems incomplete in a way, it's probably because this can be likened to part one of a two part chapter, so to avoid spoilers, I'm not going to say anything more on that front. xD 
> 
> PS: I am still getting in a load of packages from my Star Wars day shopping spree and while I haven't unboxed a lot of things yet, I can say that I finally got my Sphero BB-8 droid in yesterday and he is _adorable_. I haven't watched the movie with him yet but he is super cute so if you're debating on whether or not you should get him, you totally should. He's a little on the small side, but one of my other summer project is to perhaps build a life-size BB-8 robot, which is actually not THAT hard to do if you cut a few corners with the frame. I haven't looked into it all that much yet since I'm still not finished with move-stress, but I'll keep you guys posted. ;)
> 
> Until Thursday, cheers!!


	16. Chapter 16

               Nevertheless, you were not on Naboo again for long. Phasma notified Kylo that there was Resistance activity in the airspace above Theed, and while you dismissed this as probably just one of Wedge’s training exercises with the Royal Starfighter Corps, Kylo didn’t want to take the chance and so you quickly packed up and left the planet within two weeks of arriving. You couldn’t hide your disappointment, not even through the Force, as it was so clearly written all over your face. In truth, it had been Phasma’s house, not yours, but it had started to feel like home to you. It was the place where Kylo had started raising Ani, the place where you and Kylo had started to feel like an actual couple that could just stay together and lie on the grass and be _happy_ together, without having to worry about all the nastiness of war that raged on in the galaxy outside of Naboo’s atmosphere.

               Fortunately, though, you didn’t head back to Tatooine. This time Kylo decided to stay on one of the First Order’s military outposts in the Outer Rim, temporarily, until he could figure out where else to go. Unfortunately, Hux was adamant that Kylo start pulling his weight within the First Order again, and so it became just like old times, with Kylo heading out to do whatever it was with the First Order during the day and returning at night. He didn’t tell you exactly what he was doing, but you didn’t ask either, mostly for Ani’s sake. The apartment that you were given on base had been a lot similar in style to the one you had shared together back on the Starkiller Base, which meant that it had its own kitchen, and instead of having meals delivered to you every so often by Storm Troopers, they actually came by and brought you food, real food, for you to cook yourself.

               Ani had his own room again on the other side of the apartment, which you were thankful for, as it allowed you to have more private time with Kylo again. You had scarcely been intimate with him on Tatooine, not just because of the heat and the dry climate of the planet, but also because you were distinctly aware that Ani was literally less than ten feet away from you at all times. Here, though, the walls were much thicker than they had been there, and the door actually had a lock, which you were thankful for. You were pretty sure that the lack of sex had been at least part of what fueled your hostilities towards each other, but considering you couldn’t really send Ani out of the apartment or leave him alone for any extended period of time, you hadn’t really had a choice.

               Luckily, those days were behind you, for a long while. While Kylo had originally said that you would only be here for a month, maximum, within the first two weeks you learned that you would be staying for as long as two to three months, to take care of whatever Hux needed him to take care of. You missed the warm sun of Naboo, missed taking walks, missed lying outside on the grass, but you tried to make the most of your time there. In truth, it was extremely similar to the time you had spent on the Starkiller Base, spending your days in idle monotony while waiting for Kylo Ren to return to you, idly reaching out to him at periods during the day in order to help vent his frustration just like you used to.

               Phasma stopped by to visit you two to three times out of the week, and while her visits were never extensive, Ani was extremely glad to see her, and she him. Whenever she would walk through the door, Ani would run right up to her and she would take off her chrome helmet and place it on the floor beside her as she dropped to one knee and scooped him up in her arms. You were glad that she often made time to come visit; not just to help break up the monotony of your days, but also because you were worried about Ani. You didn’t know the first thing about how to raise a functional child, but you were sure that his limited social exposure wouldn’t bode well for him.

               At least on the Resistance base, he had started to meet new people, started to make friends, but now he was basically stuck between you, Kylo, and Phasma on any given day. There was no one else to talk to, and while Ani didn’t seem to mind, you couldn’t help but wonder. If anything, Ani had started to get quiet. It was easier to get him to sit with you and meditate and you were surprised one day when he sat there with you for over an hour, just quietly sitting and reflecting on the nature of the Force. Phasma had brought you a second staff, similar to the first one you had given to Ani, so that you could spar with him, and he started to take to it very seriously, asking questions about his footing and about form before he wanted to jump into a fight.

               You weren’t sure what exactly had prompted the change in Ani, whether it was the circumstances surrounding your clandestine departure and subsequent hiding from the Resistance and the Republic, or if it was simply boredom, given that there was nothing else to really do in this small room. Kylo had made it absolutely clear that he didn’t want you venturing outside the apartment, and it was almost funny to see the way he kept saying this to _you_ , specifically, while he had mentioned it once to Ani and left the matter alone. You almost wondered if Kylo and Ani had started communicating with each other silently, in each other’s heads, as they would sometimes share long looks over dinner that you didn’t quite catch the meaning of.

               It didn’t really concern you, though. You had spoken to Ani mentally only a handful of times, mostly just to check in, and he hadn’t really seemed fond of that method of communication, and so you let it go. The fact was that you could communicate with him that way if you ever really needed to, and that was good enough for you. Besides, you had been there with Ani all his life, and you noticed that he was a lot more open and expressive around you than when Kylo was around. It wasn’t that his attitude changed completely, but he seemed to stand up just a little bit straighter and when Kylo asked him about what he had learned or what skills he had trained that day, Ani always made an extra effort to sound as articulate as possible, as if he was trying to impress him. You supposed it was only natural for sons to want to impress their fathers, Kylo’s own relationship with Han Solo notwithstanding, and so you let it go.

               In truth, you felt that you were doing the best that you could, considering the circumstances. Ani was still being trained, during the day with you and a little bit at night with Kylo, he was being fed at least three times a day, and aside from his lack of social involvement, you hoped he was growing up the best he could. He hadn’t mentioned anything more about the Force ghosts that occasionally came to him, and if he had and that was something that he wanted to discuss privately with Kylo, then you figured it was best left between them. You still weren’t quite sure how to feel about the ghosts of Kylo’s dead family members talking to your son in his dreams, but at least they didn’t seem to be talking to him during the day anymore, and you were grateful for that.

               You could distinctly remember on the Resistance base when Ani would have conversations with them, looking up at an invisible specter and conversing with them, although you could see nothing but the empty air in front of you. You had not really known how to handle it then, and you still didn’t know how to handle it now, even though you had spoken to Obi-Wan and Anakin once yourself, when they tried to warn you about Kylo Ren. Even still, thinking it over, it seemed less like a warning about Kylo himself and more of a warning of things to come, and you wondered silently if they had maybe been trying to warn you about the Republic instead of the First Order. You honestly hadn’t a clue, and you decided it was best not to dwell on it any further than you already had.

               One thing that you were grateful for, however, was that you and Kylo seemed to once again establish yourself as a cohesive unit, working together to do what was best for Ani. You didn’t fight, at all. You didn’t snap at each other. You didn’t get angry at each other. Part of you felt that it was probably because you didn’t see each other enough to actually give each other reason to be angry at each other, but you knew deep down that that wasn’t all it was. Kylo was doing his best to protect you and keep you safe, and you were doing your best to keep this little family together like you had always wanted to do. You had your own separate roles to play, but in the end, you hoped that you could make two decent parents for Ani while still finding time for each other.

               And that wasn’t really a concern for you. While you and Kylo seemed to talk less overall, the relationship itself felt more comfortable despite the silence. Sometimes at night Kylo would curl up with you and rest his head on your chest as he wrapped his arms around you, so that you could gently run your fingers through his hair or down his back. Other times, he would sit up in bed with his back flat against the wall and just hold you in his arms, cradling you as if he was afraid that if he let you go, that you would slip away forever. You could tell by these moments whether he wanted to be comforted, or whether he wanted you to know that he was there for you, without actually having to say anything. You had gotten close enough that you sometimes felt that it was easier communicating with him without words, just communicating by thought and touch and feeling alone.

               And you needed that, you needed that reassurance in the worst way, because you weren’t exactly quite sure how to describe the situation that you found yourself in. You had wanted to do something for the First Order, to be of some value, and yet you couldn’t help but feel like you weren’t needed and that your skills were going to waste. They weren’t, of course, as you were using them to help train Ani, but you wanted to do something other than train him and help Kylo in whatever way you could. Even still, you couldn’t exactly just leave Ani in the room by himself, in case something happened, and Kylo wanted to leave you out of First Order affairs as much as possible for as long as he could.

               Not only that, but you learned from Phasma that Hux was not happy with Kylo yet again, although she believed that it had more to do with their ongoing rivalry than any specific animosity towards you or Ani. Even still, that was an extra reason for you to stay on your guard and protect Ani just in case Hux decided to throw you off the base one day while Kylo was gone. You had no idea if he would go that far to prove that he held the ultimate authority over Kylo or not, but this was Hux, and you didn’t want to take the chance. You still remembered what he had done to Sadie, and although that had been years ago, Hux was still a villain, and you were not going to let yourself forget what he was capable of.

               Kylo, himself, was a different story. You knew implicitly that Kylo hadn’t killed anyone as of late, although if he had to Force choke a few people in order to prove his authority, then that didn’t really bother you all that much. Kylo using his power to intimidate was one thing, and as long as it helped serve a practical goal for your protection, then it didn’t bother you. You knew that Kylo hadn’t been holding anything back when he told you that he was prepared to protect you and Ani by any means necessary, and you didn’t hold it against him. You had never killed anyone, yet, but if anyone came to capture or attack you and your son, you would be ready, and you would hold nothing back.

               Kylo knew that, and that was probably one of the reasons why you had left the base so soon after you had told him what Phasma had told you about Hux. You had spent years missing each other, and neither of you were about to let Hux of all people ruin what you had worked so hard to build. Kylo’s leverage in the First Order was about the only means of protection that you had left, and you couldn’t risk Hux turning on you as well. You had no idea how you would manage evading the Republic, the Resistance, _and_ The First Order, but luckily Phasma was able to work out some sort of deal with Hux and you spent the next few months travelling from base to base before you finally returned home to Naboo.

               But even then, that stay was much shorter than you would have liked it to be. While you had been secretly hoping that you were going to get to stay on Naboo for good this time, after a few short months, Hux had called Kylo back to active service yet again, and while he promised it was only going to be a short trip, you somehow talked him into letting you and Ani come with him yet again. For all its aesthetic beauty, Naboo no longer felt as safe as it once did, although you weren’t quite sure if it was Naboo that had changed or if you had. You felt more nervous, more on edge, as if your nerves were fraying at the ends, and while Kylo did his best to comfort you and reassure you that everything was fine, you knew implicitly this comfortable period between you had gone on for far too long.  

               Just when you had gotten comfortable on the Starkiller Base, Kylo had sent you away. Just when you had gotten comfortable on the Resistance base, Kylo had taken you away. You didn’t know what could possibly happen next, but you lived in constant fear of capture, plagued by incessant thoughts that you were going to lose whatever amount of happiness that you had achieved by being with him.

               That was probably when the nightmares started. At first you didn’t know you had been having nightmares, until Kylo told you that you had been crying out in your sleep. In truth, you had felt different when you awoke in the mornings, more tired, more sluggish, but you just convinced yourself it was the stress of moving around so much in addition to the constant paranoia that things were going to take a turn for the worse at any possible moment. You trained harder, worked your body until your muscles ached and strained in your arms and legs, until not even Ani could keep up with your calisthenics.

               Fortunately or unfortunately, nothing happened. You didn’t get caught by the Resistance, or the Republic. Phasma kept Hux at bay, and as long as she assured him that Kylo was doing everything he could for the First Order, it was enough to keep Hux content enough not to bother with you and Ani. You knew that if Hux had any sense at all, hurting you and Ani would only cause Kylo to go into a rage, and while you didn’t exactly know where Hux was, the last thing he wanted was Kylo Ren holding a vendetta against him, especially when Kylo had literally nothing left to lose if he lost you both. If Kylo was capable of murdering his own father in cold blood, then he would have no problem taking out someone he didn’t even like that much in the first place.

               No, Hux knew better, and so he kept his distance from Kylo Ren and you were thankful for this for many reasons, not to mention the fact that you remembered what it had been like on the Starkiller Base, when Hux consistently made Kylo’s temper flare on an almost constant daily basis. Kylo’s temper had lessened considerably over the years, and while you knew for a fact that he was still capable of devolving into one of his signature rages, he did his best to control himself, not just for your sake, but for Ani’s as well. Ani was just as capable of picking up on his impressions through the Force as you were, and you were sure he didn’t want to frighten Ani by flying into a rage that Ani would feel the full strength of. You had tried teaching Ani how to create a Force shield, mentally, but it was up to him to figure out when to actually implement it and when it was better to use his abilities to pick up on the subtle cues emitted by those around him.

               Even still, as the months went by, you couldn’t deny that Ani was becoming more and more adept in the Force. You weren’t quite sure if it was a combination of his solitude and his increased meditation or his quiet nature, but he was becoming more powerful as the time passed, finally coming into his own. While Kylo would never let him into his thoughts for obvious reasons, you had sat on the floor with him and practiced, as Ladson had once done with you aboard the Starkiller Base. It was awkward at first, and painful, as Ani linked his hands with yours and tried to probe his way around your mind, but you made sure to be patient as absorbed the pain as well as you could, while making sure to envision the happiest memories that you could remember of your time spent with Kylo aboard the Starkiller Base so that he could see how much you had loved each other before Ani had been born. Considering all the negative things Ani had learned about Kylo, especially at such a young age, you deemed it important to flood his mind with as many happy memories of him as you could, to show him that Kylo wasn’t the fearsome monster that most people at the Resistance believed him to be.

               Not that you really needed to remind Ani of that, though. He seemed to have completely forgiven Kylo for everything that he had done, and although you supposed a large part of that was due to the fact that he was still a child, you were still glad to see that he wasn’t holding Kylo’s years of abandonment against him. Kylo truly seemed to be doing all that he could to make it up to both you and Ani, trying to atone for his years of abandonment with near constant attention as often as he could spare it. You supposed that was what Ani had wanted all along, and now that he was finally getting it, he could forget that Kylo hadn’t been there as he replaced the years of paternal absence with better memories.  

               And he had plenty of time to do just that. You spent so much time with Ani that you hardly realized that he was growing up in front of you, getting older, getting taller, and you had no idea when he stopped being that little boy that Ladson used to bounce on his knee and started becoming an actual person in his own right. His Force abilities were starting to grow strong enough to rival your own, and even though you were a bit jealous, you couldn’t help the fact that he had inherited his Force strength from both you and Kylo, not to mention that he had been trained by both of you since his youth. You had learned about the Force later on in life, and so you supposed there was probably a certain cap that was holding you back.

               Even still, you didn’t know if your own mother had been Force-sensitive, and while you presumed your father wasn’t, you couldn’t say so for sure. Either way, you knew who Ani’s father was, and you knew that Kylo Ren was probably the most powerful Force user in the universe, aside from Luke, and with experience you knew that he would rival him in even that regard. Either way, Ani had a head start on the Force that you hadn’t had, not that it really mattered. You wanted to protect him, but if it turned out that he was going to become more powerful and end up possibly protecting you instead, then you wouldn’t hold it against him. The important thing was that Ani was strong enough to defend himself, and while a certain part of you couldn’t wait for Ani to finally achieve independence, another part of you still held onto the idea that he was still a boy that had to be watched over and protected.

               In a way, he still needed to be. By the time Kylo told you that you were headed back to Naboo for a lengthy sojourn, years had gone by, and Ani was now a tall and lanky twelve-year-old boy that was quiet and exceptionally mature for his age, not only in terms of the Force abilities, but the way he spoke to Kylo with a quiet sense of respectful reverence, responding, “Yes, father” and “No, father” to the various questions that Kylo posed him. He had also insisted that you start calling him Anakin, although you weren’t quite sure if that was because it was something you noticed Kylo doing more of, or if he had simply wanted to separate himself from the boy that he had since grown out of. Either way, you were pleased to see that he was still carrying your staff around with him everywhere, treating it as his very own lightsaber. Kylo insisted he still wasn’t ready to build a real one, and in truth as you travelled from base to base without experiencing any kind of combat, he was never in any real danger of needing one.

               Over the years, you and Kylo had grown to be more of a team, silently trusting and relying on one another. You had simply gotten used to his presence and after a while you almost felt like he had never left you at all, like he had always been there. He may have abandoned you for five years, but he spent the last five years making things up to you, spending almost every night with you, and you honestly couldn’t imagine ever leaving him, ever living without him. This held especially true when he took you back to the lakeside in Naboo the day after you arrived, and while you were still tired from your travels, you were happy to lie out in the sun with him while Ani played in the water.

               “Remember when we were first here?” you ask him as you curl up against his shoulder.

               “As I recall, you didn’t want to touch me,” Kylo says lightly, although there’s a touch of humor in his voice as he leans down and kisses your temple.

               That was so long ago, so many _years_ ago, that you couldn’t help but laugh as you roll onto him, running a hand through his thick, dark hair as you lean down to press your lips against his. He wraps his arms around you, resting his hands against your lower back. “That was only because you took me away from the Resistance,” you remind him. “If I had known what I know now, I would have left with you in an instant and never looked back.”

               Kylo reaches up to brush your hair out of your face, running his hand down your cheek to brush the corner of your upper lip with his thumb. “You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say that,” he says, and you smile as you run the tip of your nose against his, smoothing back his hair as you kiss him. Eventually you lay back down on his chest, tilting your head to the side as you see Ani meditating under the waterfall, floating with his legs crossed underneath him as he redirects the water into two streams on either side of his body so it wasn’t pouring directly on his head.

               “He was just a little kid back then,” you say quietly. “He’s grown up so much since then, I almost can’t believe it. He’s smarter and he’s more in control of himself-“ You smirk as you turn back to Kylo. “And in a few years he’s probably going to be as tall as you.”

               “Perhaps,” Kylo says as he looks over at him, before he shifts his head so that he’s looking back at you. “He has your spark.”

               You raise your eyebrows in surprise as you look down at him. “I don’t know,” you admit. “Sometimes I feel like he has something all his own.” You plop your chin down on his chest, and Kylo’s hand finds the back of your head as he smooths down your hair. “Do you think he still sees the Force ghosts? Like, I still don’t know how big of a role they played in Ani’s development.”

               “I’m not sure,” Kylo admits. “You were always the one who was much more skilled at sensing things than I was.”

               You perk your head up at him, unable to conceal your grin. “Oh, so you’re actually admitting that I can do something better than you?” you ask teasingly, while Kylo just rolls his eyes to the side. “Boy, have you changed.”

               “I haven’t changed,” Kylo says, and there’s a bit of an edge to his voice that encourages you not to push him. Either way, you just lean down and kiss the fabric that’s covering his chest as you lay back down beside him, intertwining your legs together as you cuddle up next to him.

               “I like it here,” you tell him. “I almost forgot what the sun feels like. Please tell me we’re going to get to stay here for a while.”

               “We are,” Kylo tells you. “Your pilot is causing us a great deal of trouble in the Western Reaches, and he’s taken out a good number of our fighter wings. I don’t know how he’s managing it, but so far he’s been able to best all of Hux’s squadrons at every turn.”

               “Well, it’s not just Poe,” you remind him as you prop yourself up on one elbow. “I mean, he’s probably a large part of it, but there’s Wedge Antilles and Gial Ackbar, and you know, everyone else from the Republic and the Resistance working together against you. These are the same people that helped take down the Empire. With all of them combined, they have a lot more military training and experience than Hux and the First Order has.”

               “Well,” Kylo says as he tilts his head to the side in consideration. “Hux is furious. Apparently he’s at the end of his rope, and Phasma tells me that he is quickly unravelling. I don’t know what he’ll do if he hears that another battle group has been destroyed.”

               “Hux? Unravelling?” you ask, musing at the thought. Honestly, if Hux wanted to go mad and throw himself out an airlock, that was fine by you. “I mean, if he goes down though, what will become of the First Order? Since Snoke’s gone, isn’t he officially the top dog now?”

               “I don’t know,” Kylo admits. “But I know Phasma is taking him somewhere to lay low for a while. Apparently he’s taking this personally, something about his father, I don’t know.” Kylo waves his hand dismissively, and you can’t help but wonder. You honestly couldn’t imagine Hux having a father, or a mother, or even picture him as a young child. For some reason it just seemed to you that he had sprung out into the galaxy as a fully-formed adult, intent on causing as much destruction and mayhem and pain to those around him as he possibly could.

               “Would you think I’m a terrible person if I told you that I’m almost kind of glad that Hux is suffering?” you ask him.

               “Fuck no,” Kylo says bluntly, and you can’t help but laugh at his reaction. “You know I hate Hux just about as much as you do.”

               “Yeah,” you say as you tilt your head to the side. “But what if something happens and someone comes along that’s worse that Hux? What will we do about that?”

               “You mean, what will I do?” Kylo asks, and you pout as you trail your fingertips down his chest. “No one in the First Order is as powerful as I am. If anyone tries to usurp Hux’s authority, they won’t last very long.”

               “The enemy you know is better than the one you don’t,” you agree. “But I don’t know. Are you really the most powerful person here, even compared to me?”

               Kylo shifts lazily as he turns to look at you, raising one eyebrow as he does so. “Are you challenging me?”

               “I mean, we haven’t sparred in a while,” you tell him playfully. “I mean, anything’s possible, right? Maybe I’ve gotten so powerful when you’ve been off running your little errands for Hux that I’ve been able to surpass you.”

               Kylo’s dark eyes flash in the sunlight as he looks at you, but he soon reclines onto his back to look at the sky. “You haven’t.”

               “But I could.” You shift your position so that you can see Ani again, still meditating in silence. “Or maybe Ani could.” Kylo shifts underneath you restlessly, and you can’t help but let an unwelcome thought come to your mind. “You’re not worried about him becoming more powerful than you, are you?”

               “Of course not,” Kylo huffs, as if the thought itself was ridiculous.

               “Oh good,” you tell him. “I just mean, all things considered, I’ve heard that people in your family don’t exactly have good relationships with their fathers, that’s all. I mean, if you’re any indication-“

               “You think he would turn on me?” Kylo asks, his voice incredulous. “Ever?”

               You tilt your head to the side in consideration as you turn back to Kylo. “I mean, I doubt it,” you offer. “But then again, you don’t really know what’s going on inside a person’s head until you, well, you know, look.” You pause for a second. “But for the record, I’m not telling you to look, okay? I know you don’t exactly respect _my_ privacy, but-“

               Kylo twists and you have to ease yourself off of him as he sits up on both elbows. “And when is the last time I went into your thoughts without your permission?”

               You can’t exactly remember a time in the past few years when he had done it to simply extract information out of you, but there were plenty of times he had done it just to do it. “Two or three nights ago,” you remind him with a light smirk.

               Kylo looks confused before the recognition of the event flashes across his features, and if you’re not mistaken, he almost blushes as he looks away and lies back down. “That was different.”

               “Oh, really?” you ask as you lie back down on his chest and snuggle back into him. “How exactly was that different?”

               “Must I really explain?”

               “Nah.”

               You lie like that for quite a while, until the sun eventually disappears behind some clouds and the sky begins to get dark, threatening that rain was soon approaching. It had gotten considerably colder, with a light chill in the air, but Kylo had simply wrapped his arms around you, running his hands up and down the thin fabric of your sleeves in order to keep you warm. Eventually, though, you were disturbed by one giant plop of cold water against your cheek, and you blinked your eyes open as another one hit you just above your temple.

               “I think it’s starting to rain,” you tell him, but Kylo only quirks up an eyebrow as the rain starts to fall all around you, and you quickly jump to your feet. It was raining in earnest now, not just a sprinkle but a downpour, and you could feel your clothes sticking to your skin as you stood up. Looking down, you could see the dirt beneath the heavy grass and you knew that this whole place would turn to a thick layer of mud pretty soon. “We should get back,” you call to him, but your voice sounds small and drowned out by the sound of the rain water hitting against the lake.

               Kylo closes his eyes for a moment, and you’re about to ask what he’s doing before you look up to see Ani open his eyes as he starts to make his way towards you. As you wait for him to wade through the waist deep water, you spread out your arms and turn your face up to the sky, letting it drench every part of you. If you were going to get soaked to the skin anyway, it didn’t really make much difference one way or another. You twirled your feet to spin around in a slow circle as you felt the individual raindrops pelting against your face, and suddenly you stopped as you felt someone come up behind you.

               You turned sharply to see Kylo, and he wasted no time scooping you into his arms as he kissed you, and you couldn’t help but grin as you tasted the cold rain against his lips. He deepened the kiss, but you were in far too much of a playful mood as you hopped on your toes and into his arms, willing yourself to knock him over, but instead he just caught you by your thighs and held you steady so you could wrap your legs around his waist without so much as breaking the kiss. You wrapped both arms around his neck before one hand trailed up to his hair, brushing his damp locks out of his eyes as the rain seemed to come down even harder, the individual pellets hitting against the top of your head in a way that was almost, but just not, painful.

               You can sense Ani getting closer and you pull away, grasping his face in both hands as you press a final kiss against his lips. “I’m so glad we’re back here,” you say, your voice light as Kylo lets you down. You grasp his hand and start to walk over to the ship as Ani comes over to join you. “Did you have fun under the waterfall over there?”

               “It wasn’t fun, I was meditating,” Ani tells you, and you roll your eyes.

               “You can still have fun while you’re learning,” you tell him. “In fact, I always learned more while I thought I was having fun. You don’t have to be as serious as your father all the time.”

               Kylo squeezes your hand in his large one as he turns to face you. “Are you implying that I don’t know how to have fun?”

               “Well, I mean, I know we have fun,” you say, trying to keep the suggestive tone out of your voice for Ani’s sake. “But I don’t think you’re quite as playful as I am.”

               “You think I don’t know how to be playful?” Kylo asks, and suddenly you feel yourself being lifted into the air as Kylo hoists you onto his back, piggyback style. You shriek playfully, wiping your damp hair out of your face with the back of your wrist as you wrap your arms around his neck as he puts both hands on your thighs to keep you supported. Ani laughs good-naturedly, and to be honest, you had no problem with heights, but you didn’t exactly like seeing the world from so high up. It was insane to think that this is how he saw the world all the time, day in and day out, as if he was somehow above it all, and in a small way, you supposed that he was. He was tall, and he was strong and he was powerful, not just with the Force, but physically too, and it wasn’t lost on you that Kylo could possibly command the First Order himself if he really wanted to.

               Except that you didn’t know if he really wanted to. Kylo didn’t seem like the type to have a natural inclination for leadership. He wanted people to do what he said, sure, and he had the intimidation tactics and raw power necessary to make good on his threats, to make people fall in line with whatever he ordered, but you had never seen him actually _lead_ before. While Hux was vocal and engaging, Kylo was definitely more taciturn, supporting from the sidelines, and while his importance to the First Order could not be understated, you couldn’t honestly see him taking over leadership of the First Order if Hux ever decided to step down. Not that he would, but it wasn’t exactly something you ever really wanted to think about. If Kylo took over the First Order, he would probably have a lot less time for you and Ani, and you would probably be miserable, not to mention under the constant threat of danger.

               Besides, you were back on Naboo now, and it felt a lot safer than it had the last time, especially knowing that the Republic and the Resistance were off in the Western Reaches. As you board the ship, you can’t help but track water everywhere, and you laughed from the co-pilot’s chair as Kylo kept brushing the wet hair out of his face while he tried to start the ship. “Do you need a little help with that?” you ask him. “I can take off, you know, I’m an excellent pilot.”

               “I’m fine,” Kylo says tersely, and you simply cross your arms over your chest in a weak attempt to conserve body heat as you continue to watch him fumble over the controls.

               “Or maybe we should let Ani do it,” you offer. “It isn’t far.”

               “I can do it,” Ani offers excitedly, leaning forward from the back, and you smile to hide the sadness that had suddenly come over you. For the past few months, Ani spoke of nothing but learning how to fly, and while Kylo had taken him out himself a brief handful of times, you knew it wasn’t going to be the same sort of methodical instruction that you had received from Poe, and you almost wished that Ani had been older at the time so that Poe could have taught him as well.

               Kylo looks over as if sensing your thoughts, and immediately raises his hands in surrender. “Okay, fine,” he relents, but he points his finger at you. “But that means you have to ride in the back.”

               “Fine by me,” you say as you climb out of the co-pilot’s chair. Kylo slides into your seat, which was still wet from your dripping clothes, as Ani climbs into the pilot’s chair.

               “Talk through the sequence as you go,” Kylo instructs. “Remember, every step has a reason and I want to make sure you know why, especially with your mother on board.”

               “No pressure,” you add quickly, sending a positive boost of reassurance through the Force.

               “Well,” Ani hesitates as he looks down at the console, evaluating the state of the shuttle. You notice that the engine switch is out of place at the same time he does, and he raises an eyebrow as he flips it back to _Shutdown_ , and you glance at Kylo to gauge his reaction. If Ani hadn’t corrected this mistake, the shuttle would have gone skipping across the lake as soon as he engaged the repulsors. Kylo, however, looks simply indifferent, and you narrow your eyes suspiciously.

               _Did you do that on purpose?_ you ask, reaching out to him with your mind.

               _Not entirely,_ Kylo admits. _But it’s important that he recognize the proper startup conditions. Ships aren’t always shut down perfectly, and considering how this ship isn’t under constant surveillance, there’s always an element of sabotage to consider._

You purse your lips in consideration. _But, still, if he hadn’t caught it-_

 _I would have stopped him and made him do everything himself instead of letting him pick up where I left off,_ Kylo replies sternly, and you roll your eyes. In the back of your mind, you were almost grateful that Poe had taught you how to fly. You had a feeling that Kylo’s teaching style would have frustrated you to no end, and you had no idea how that would have affected your relationship.

               “The shuttle is ready to continue startup, Father,” Ani says, looking over at Kylo, and you sit back to watch.

               “Proceed,” Kylo tells him. “Every detail.”

               “Increasing main reactor power to forty percent,” Ani says, his voice clear and strong. “Ventral repulsors coming online. Thirty seconds to main engine warmup.” As you feel the gentle hum beneath your feet, Ani watches the console intently, counting down under his breath. “The reactor is hot. Secure aft stabilizers. Engaging main engines.”

               Kylo racks in the stabilizer control lever. “Stabilizers secure.”

               Ani looks back to you for reassurance, and you nod your head and give him the most positive smile you can manage. “Okay then,” he says as he turns back around to face front. “Here we go.”

               The engines roar to life as Ani raises the shuttle through the rain and takes off in a soaring circle around the lake before leveling out a few hundred meters up, cruising towards home. After a few minutes, Kylo reminds Ani to pay special attention to the navigation scopes in the rain, as it would be easy to overshoot the clearing due to the poor visibility and draw unnecessary attention by flying over Phasma’s house, which was not something you wanted to do now that you were finally back on Naboo again.

               Still, as you watched Kylo teach Ani how to pilot and land this ancient Kappa, you couldn’t help but feel that maybe things had worked out for the best after all. Ani had gotten limited blaster instruction from Phasma over the years, but he was powerful in the Force, and so he would naturally be a good shot regardless of how much he trained, now that he was older and actually applying himself with proper form and technique. He would never be as good as Phasma, nor would you be, but it was enough to at least defend himself in any combat situation. You and Kylo were able to teach him the power of the Force, together, ensuring an even balance of both the light side and the dark within him, and while you were able to teach him combat and sparring with his staff, Kylo was able to teach him how to be a pilot. Between the both of you, he had all of his bases covered in order to help him survive.

               “We’re about thirty seconds out,” Kylo tells him, turning his head from the crystalline glass to look at Ani.

               “Yes, Father,” Ani says obediently. “Reducing speed. Prepare to reengage aft stabilizers on my mark. Five…four…three…two…one…mark.”

               Kylo pulls the stabilizer control lever back out as Ani pulls the nose of the shuttle up, sending it coasting downward in an arc towards the trees below.

               “Nose down slightly to stay on target, Anakin,” Kylo tells him, and his fatherly tone tugs a smile to your lips. “Don’t forget the landing gear this time.”

 _Landing gear?_ you think towards Kylo as a rush of panic shoots through you. _He forgot the_ landing gear?

               Kylo barely tilts his head to the side to show that he had heard you, but had no intention of responding.

               “Yes, Father,” Ani replies. “Deploying landing gear.”

               As you sink down below the tree line, Ani engages all ventral thrusters, hard, and you see that he has coasted the shuttle down to a perfect soft landing without having to stop in midair first, something that you had never quite done yourself. “Good job, Anakin,” you tell him. “I’m proud of you.” As Ani grins and focuses on powering the shuttle down, you can’t help but notice another ship parked in the clearing. Its colors are a neutral grey, but for some reason, it seems off to you. “What’s that?” you ask Kylo, trying to keep the nervous edge out of your voice for Ani’s sake.

               “One of ours,” Kylo replies, as he runs the edge of his thumb along his lower lip. “Phasma must be back.”

               “Good of her to drop in,” you tell him. “Because, honestly, I really didn’t feel like cooking tonight. Hopefully she’s already started supper while we were out.”

               “Hopefully,” Ani agrees. “I’m really hungry.”

               “Oh, are you?” you ask teasingly. “Couldn’t have worked up that much of an appetite. It looked to me like you were just sitting there all day.”

               “No more so than you,” Ani offers with a playful smile, and you hit his arm lightly as you head back towards the house, towards your home. While a part of you was glad that Phasma was back, a part of you had been hoping for just a little more time alone with your tiny family unit, so you’d have more time to bond with each other without the First Order’s interference. While you had plenty of time to spend alone with each other while on the various bases and planets that you had visited, Kylo was always there on some assignment and you never really felt like you got the time to relax and unwind like you had today.

               Little did you know that you were never going to have that sense of peace that you craved ever, ever again. As you opened the back door with the Force and stepped inside the house, you couldn’t help but notice that Phasma was sitting at the counter, giving you a glimpse of her profile. “Hey there,” you call to her cheerfully. “Sorry for tracking rain in on the floor, it’s really…outside.” You stop talking as you see her turn her head to look at you, and that’s when you notice that there’s another figure at the counter behind her. You can tell by the way Kylo steps protectively in front of you, as if shielding you and Ani from his presence, that it’s someone you don’t like, but it’s not until he stands up that you see the face of someone who you knew you would never be able to call a friend.

               General Hux simply ignores the glares pointed in his direction as he stands up straighter and smooths down the front of his uniform, the corners of his lips quirking upwards in a self-satisfied smirk. “Greetings.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, not going to lie, not a super big fan of this chapter and I'm sorry about that. Usually I have super detailed notes for this chapter but this one was basically, "TL;DR, years go by, Ani's about twelve now, Hux shows up (finallllly)." To be honest, I'm not a big fan of having big time jumps in the middle of stories and I had this all written out before I finished Candle, but I thought it would be weird to tack an extra 100k pages on just for the sake of preserving the time jump, because I really liked where I ended things in Candle and I wanted that sense of suspense to carry over into part 3. But I didn't want Ani to stay a little kid forever, and the narrative demanded it for other, erm, reasons, so I kind of had to break my own rules and just go with it, which was not as easy as it sounds at all.
> 
> BUT *claps hands together* it is what it is, it's only one chapter, and I tried to add in a little Naboo lake fun to make up for it. Hux is back, and I honestly have a lot of fun writing him and the trouble that he can bring to the table, especially because we only see a small part of him in Flare, and he's not in Candle at all, so it's been quite a while since Hux and the Reader have come face to face. Last time she really saw him, he threw her in a cell and tried to starve her to death and was torturing Sadie, which the Reader felt helpless and powerless to defend against. Now she's in a _much_ different position, and it's going to be interesting/fun to see how that all plays out on Saturday and beyond. ;) Until then, cheers!!


	17. Chapter 17

               “Why is he here?” Kylo asks, his eyes immediately darting to Phasma. She just sighs as she drags herself into a standing position, as if this was not a conversation that she wanted to have sitting down.

               “Any questions you have you will address to me,” Hux snaps, gesturing to himself with one gloved hand.

               “Then answer him,” you respond, echoing Kylo’s same fierce tone. Hux just raises his eyebrows as he looks at you, letting your name escape his lips.

               “It’s so nice to see you again,” Hux replies, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “How is your friend? What was her name again? Does she still-?”

               You don’t even want to hear whatever pathetic jabs he might try to throw your way. Your face flushes with rage as you hold up one hand towards him. Hux looks amused for a moment, as if he thinks it’s cute that you’re trying to imitate Kylo’s abilities, but his eyes soon go wide as you call his bluff. Concentrating on the seemingly limitless amount of hatred you held for him, you lift him into the air and hover him a few inches off the ground, imagining your fingers closing around his throat as you choked him. This was the first time that you had ever truly been able to use the Force choke, the first time you had actually hated someone enough to use it, and while you liked the rush of adrenaline that was running through your veins and the raw sense of power that came with it, another part of you was afraid of it. You remembered that rush of exhilaration, that drive for power that you felt on the Starkiller Base, the overwhelming need, the necessity to be _strong_ , so that Hux could never threaten your life, or the life of anyone you cared about, ever again.  

               Hux is starting to squirm visibly now, his fingers clutching at his throat as if to pry your fingers away, but he grasps nothing but air. Phasma just sighs and rolls her eyes in your direction, as if this was an expected annoyance that she didn’t want to put up with as she says your name. “Just put him down.”

               “In a minute,” Kylo says, and you’re pleased to see that he’s looking on in quiet amusement, and, if you’re not mistaken, a touch of pride. You hold Hux in the air for a few more moments before Kylo holds out his hand in your direction and lowers it slowly, never taking his eyes off Hux. Obediently, you slowly lower Hux to the ground, making sure his heels touch the floor before releasing your Force choke. You give him a moment to regain his footing as he grabs at the counter for support, raking in deep gulps of air as he forces himself to remember how to breathe properly.

               “And I didn’t even leave a mark,” you tell him, your clear contempt for him written all over your countenance. “That’s more than I can say for Sadie.” You knew that Kylo’s lightsaber was what really had left that telltale scar on her neck, but he had simply cut away the collar that Hux had put on her to begin with. It was Hux’s fault that she had been in that helpless position, and you had to say that you were almost glad to see him look so helpless himself, his usual alabaster skin flushed red underneath his ginger hair. “Although I suppose that was for me too, considering the last time we really got a chance to chat you locked me in a cell and tried to starve me to death.”

               “I had my reasons,” Hux says crossly, but you just roll your eyes as you cross your arms over your chest. Even if he had simply been following Snoke’s orders, that had been so many years ago that you didn’t want to talk about it and force yourself to relive those awful memories. Kylo crosses his arms over his chest as he waits for Hux to compose himself, and it’s a few more moments before he straightens up again, glaring at Kylo with a new fire in his eyes. “Ren, we need to talk.”

               “Well?” Kylo asks. He makes no sign of moving, and a satisfied smirk rises to the corner of your lips as you realize that Hux was waiting for you and Ani to leave. If there was ever any sign that you and Kylo were a team, this was it, and you step up beside him now as you mimic his posture, crossing your arms over your chest while Ani hovers behind you.

               “Oh great,” Hux mutters under his breath as he rolls his eyes towards Phasma. “Now I don’t just have Ren’s antics to contend with, but I also have to deal with his whore and his brat as well?”

               “Take that back,” Ani snaps immediately, and you turn to the side as you stop to get a good look at him. There was something in his voice that you had never heard before, something dark and serious that reminded you of Kylo. His voice had _weight_ , as though he commanded Hux’s attention with his words. “Take back what you said about my mother.”

               Hux just laughs as he turns away from Phasma to face Ani directly. “Ren,” Hux says, unable to conceal his grin. “The boy thinks he has your abilities of intimidation. I-“

               Suddenly Ani throws his arm out and wipes it across his body in one fluid motion, and Hux’s hand clenches into a fist as he punches himself squarely across the face. You can’t help but let out an exhale of surprised laughter, and out of the corner of your eye you can see Ani wearing a self-satisfied smirk. Kylo is smiling in earnest, beaming, and the pride he had in his son could not have been more apparent.

               “Please,” Phasma says loudly, stepping between the three of you and Hux, and Ani looks down, almost guiltily, as he takes a step back. “I expected this from Ren, not from the two of you.”

               “Sorry,” Ani says quietly, but you put your hand on the side of his arm.

               “No, no apologizing,” you say firmly. “Maybe if Hux didn’t want to get hit, he would be better off watching what he said.”

               “I told you I should never have come here,” Hux snaps at Phasma, and as he pulls his hand away from his face you can see a small trickle of blood from underneath his nose that he smears against his upper lip.

               “Why did you come?” Kylo asks, cocking his head to the side as if he’s not sure of the answer himself.

               “It was safer here,” Phasma tells him, apparently not trusting Hux to speak. “The Resistance cornered the _Finalizer_ and destroyed it over Batorine. I’m pretty sure they believe him to be dead. We had our suspicions that there was a spy feeding the Resistance information, and so we told certain suspect platoons that Hux would be returning to his flagship immediately and taking off for the western Inner Rim. Apparently, our concerns were well-founded.”

               “So you have a spy in the First Order?” you ask, stretching the muscles in the side of your neck as you lull your head to one side. “Why is that not a surprise?”

               Hux just glares at you, making a small effort to compose himself. “Careful. How do I know that it wasn’t you who has been feeding our movements to the Resistance? After all, it was your boyfriend who shot down-“

               “My _what_?” you demand, taking a step forward as your hands clench into fists at your sides, and Hux visibly flinches as he takes a step back, preparing for the worst. Kylo holds out his arm to stop you, but you are blushing scarlet with the insinuation that you had ever taken things that far with Poe. It had been years since you had last seen him, and while you still wore the stone that he gave you, it was like a good luck charm that you didn’t want to take off. You didn’t want to think about Poe and the future you could have had if you hadn’t had met Kylo, if you could help it, and Hux calling him your boyfriend just added insult to injury, reminding you that that future was never meant to be.

               Regardless, Hux seems less intimidated by you when Kylo was obviously holding you back. “Oh please,” he scoffs. “Believe me when I’ve heard all the stories about how Ren was foolish enough to let himself be captured by you, only to find out that you were involved with the Commander of their fighter wing.” His lip quirks upwards into a smirk. “If I had known-“

               “Enough,” Kylo snaps, and you’re grateful for his intervention. You didn’t know what Hux was going to say next, but it probably would have resulted in you wanting to choke him to death nonetheless. “I believe it was you who wanted to keep her ignorant of our operations on each base for that very reason.”

               Hux raises his eyebrows in surprise. “Why, Ren, it appears that you are capable of following orders when it suits you,” he says with a smirk, and you roll your eyes in disgust. So that was why Kylo had always been reticent about telling you where you were going or what you were doing on each base? Because Hux told him not to? Because Hux thought you were a spy? You can’t help but scoff at the insinuation, and yet shouldn’t Kylo have known that you weren’t having any communication with the Resistance? A quick peek into your head was all it would have taken, and yet for all these years he still had never been fully up front with you. The real question was his reasoning as to why. Was it simply because Hux gave him an order and he didn’t feel like protesting it, or was it because Kylo himself really didn’t trust you?

               And why did it always come down to Hux who made you second guess Kylo the most?

               “Come on, Ani, let’s leave them to it,” you say crossly, and Kylo glances down at you in surprise while Hux just folds his arms over his chest, wearing a clearly satisfied smirk across his face. You look up and meet Kylo’s eyes, only to see him watching you cautiously, as if he can’t really tell what you’re thinking. Apparently, that feeling was mutual. You take Ani by the wrist as you pull him out of the living room, past Hux, who steps aside to let you pass. You glare at him as you walk by, unable to shake the feeling that you passed the devil himself as you headed up the stairs.

               You can hear voices from downstairs as soon as you ascend to the top of the staircase, but you don’t really care much for what they’re saying. Apparently you weren’t deemed trustworthy enough to be let in on their plans anyway, and you didn’t want to make things worse for yourself if they happened to be discussing you or Ani downstairs. You knew Kylo wouldn’t mind, but you had no idea how Phasma would react if you choked Hux to death right there in her kitchen. Then again, you could always have used your lightsaber, let your blades experience their first taste of blood, but that seemed like a considerably messier option, and you didn’t want to have to be the one who had to gather up and dispose of his severed limbs.

               “I can see why you and father never spoke highly of him,” Ani mutters as he stops outside the entrance to your bedroom in the hallway. “Must he really stay with us?”

               “That’s probably what Kylo’s going to find out,” you tell him. “He doesn’t want him here anymore than either of us do, although I don’t know how much of a choice we have.”

               “Phasma could always send him out to that little shack we stayed in on Tatooine,” Ani offers, and you can’t help but laugh as you shake your head.

               “I’ll bring that up,” you tell him as you put your hand on his shoulder. “But seriously, I’m impressed with you, and I know Kylo is too. The way you stood up for me and took on Hux with a single strike like that, it was very good.”

               Ani, however, looks troubled by your praise. “I shouldn’t have,” he says quickly. “I surrendered to my anger, I gave in to hatred, and acted in violence-“

               “Hey, sometimes violence is necessary,” you remind him. “The most important thing is defense, of yourself, and of others. Hux was attacking you and me, verbally, but it was a show of strength. He cannot think us weak. He should be afraid of us being here, not the other way around.”

               “Still,” Ani says, and you rub his arm comfortingly.

               “You have nothing to worry about,” you tell him softly. “Seriously, Ani, if you’re really worried about it, take a warm bath and then go into your room and meditate, but I’m telling you, seriously, it’s nothing to worry about. Everyone gives into their anger now and again. It doesn’t make you weak, it makes you human.”

               “What if I want to be above it?” Ani asks. “What if I want to follow the path of the Old Jedi and keep myself above that? To let go of my emotions, to detach myself from my anger-“

               You shake your head as you frown at him. “That’s not possible,” you tell him. “You’re human. You’re going to make mistakes, and the higher standards you hold yourself to, the harder you’re going to be on yourself when you don’t meet them. You are not perfect, Ani, no one is.” Ani looks like he is going to say something, before he shakes his head and turns aside. “No, Ani, what is it? You can always be open with me, you know that.”

               “You-“ Ani hesitates for a moment and looks down, not quite wanting to meet your eyes as he speaks. “I remember when I was little, and we were still on the Resistance base, and you were talking to Ladson. You kept talking about how perfect Poe was, how he was basically infallible…”

               You blush at the insinuation, but have nothing really to say in your defense. “I was trying to convince myself that he was,” you tell him, struggling to be honest with him when it was still difficult to be honest with yourself. True, you hadn’t seen Poe for years and you doubted you were ever going to see him again, but a part of you still reacted to the mention of his name as if someone was rubbing salt in an open wound. It still _hurt_ , and you supposed that that was one sore that time itself was incapable of mending. “It’s difficult to understand, but Poe had a lot of really good qualities that I wanted to emulate and so I thought if I could be with him, I could be like him, and I could reach that state of near perfection too. But that wasn’t healthy, and I see that now. I don’t know if I ever would have seen it if I stayed on base, or if I would have ended up just hating myself for not being as good as him, or hating him, for not living up to the impossible ideal I made him out to be, but I guess we’ll never know.”

               “He was a good guy,” Ani says in a weak attempt to comfort you, and you force a smile to your face as you look up at him.

               “Yeah, he is,” you echo. “He’s doing what he thinks is right, and I’m doing what I think is right. Remember what I told you before about respecting other people’s perspectives?” Ani nods his head solemnly. “I’m honestly tired of fighting. I feel like I’m constantly wrapped up in this war and yet I have no idea where I stand in any of it. I’m just being pulled back and forth by all the conflict and the drama and I don’t want to be. I just want to keep my family together, that’s all I want.”

               Ani offers you a small smile. “That’s all dad wants too.”

               You force a smile to your lips, happy to hear Ani call him _dad_ instead of _father_. “Okay,” you tell him. “Wash up and meditate, and I’ll let you know what Phasma’s doing about food.”

               “Thanks,” Ani says as he heads off towards his room, and you walk into yours, shutting the door behind you. You immediately lean back against the doorway as you cover your face with both hands and massage the area just above your eyebrows with your fingertips. Why did things have to get even more stressful than they already were? Why did Hux have to be here? Why now, when you were looking forward to just being a family again?

               And why did he seem to have such a hold on you? You couldn’t explain it, but everything Hux said seemed to get under your skin in the worst way, and you had absolutely no idea why. You didn’t value his opinion, you didn’t care what he had to say; for all intents and purposes you hated the man, and yet whenever he commented on anything, you couldn’t help but let the words squirm their way into your brain so that you could repeat them back to yourself over and over again. Was it because you hated him so much that a part of you clung to that sense of anger to feed your power? If so, maybe that was the same concern Ani had when he forced Hux to strike himself. You hadn’t been able to feel any particularly strong sweep of emotion through him, but maybe Ani actually _liked_ it, liked the fact that he had the power, the control, in that situation. It may have been only a one-time thing, but at least Ani seemed to have a good grasp on controlling himself. At least that way, you knew he would never stoop to the lows that Kylo had in his youth, although there was still plenty of time for Ani to make mistakes of his own.

               Regardless, you strip down as you step into the bathroom and turn on the shower, letting the water warm up before you stepped inside. The water felt good, and for some reason it reminded you of when you had been back at the Resistance base, when you had tried desperately to use it as a panacea to wipe the stink and the stench of all those Republic officials off of you. Poe had come to visit you that night, and that had been the first night you had slept side by side together…

               The thought causes a pang of something to go through your heart, and you refused to entertain it. Even still, you peek out of the shower to make sure that dark blue stone held together with his boot lace was still on the sink counter, making sure that it hadn’t disappeared while you were bathing, and it occurred to you that you should really throw it out. It was a symbol of Poe, and the Resistance, of everything they stood for. It was a symbol of a life you could have had, or maybe did have, in another universe, and maybe that was the exact reason as to why you couldn’t throw it away. No matter how happy you were with Kylo, some small part of you would always wonder, would always dream, of what another future could have been like. It was simply in your nature to think, to ponder on these endless sequences of hypotheticals, even if you knew that they would get you nowhere. They were a pleasant distraction from your thoughts of how much you hated Hux, at any rate, but you’d be lying if you said that was the only reason.

               They were a pleasant distraction to keep you from thinking about if Poe missed you too, or if he ever thought about you at all. He probably didn’t. He had probably moved on with someone else from the Resistance, and while you felt that you should have been happy that Poe had probably found someone else whose goodness matched his own, you couldn’t be happy about it, not really. It was a sick double standard that you wanted to be happy with Kylo, wanted to move on from the Resistance base, but didn’t want Poe to move on in turn. Maybe you felt that if he did move on, that if he stopped searching the galaxy for you, that it would prove that he never really cared about you at all, if he was willing to give up on you after a few measly years. You hadn’t given up on Kylo in that span of time, and granted, he had given you a son that he had promised to come back for, but you had still refused to give up your firm resolution that you and Kylo would be reunited someday, and the galaxy, for whatever reason, had answered your call.

               Fortunately, you didn’t have more time to dwell on these unpleasant thoughts as you heard the bathroom door open and shut. You hesitated for a moment, knowing that Kylo could sense your melancholy, and waited stiffly under the water for a few moments before Kylo got in behind you. You brushed your hair out of your face as you turned to look at him, and he looked troubled as he ran his hands down your upper arms. “Are you mad at me?” he asks softly, and you can’t help but let a small smile pull at the corner of your lips.

               “No,” you tell him, your voice quiet as you reach up to press a quick kiss against his lips. They’re still slightly cool and chapped from the rain, and you smile as you pull him underneath the warm water of the shower with you.

               “Why did you leave?” Kylo asks, as if he truly didn’t understand your motivations for doing so. “Hux-“

               “-has a way of getting under my skin,” you tell him simply. “Seriously, I don’t ever want you to think that I’m doubting you or anything like that, because I’m not.” Hux had already done that to you once when he trapped you in that cell back on the Starkiller Base, leading you to believe that it was Kylo who had ordered you to be sent there, and you were not about to make the same mistake of giving in to Hux’s subtle manipulations again.

               “I didn’t tell you what I was doing because I thought it would be safer for you,” Kylo says softly, wasting no time in getting to the heart of the matter. “If it was dangerous I would have, but it was all mindless, strategic busywork that I didn’t think you would be all that interested in. We repeatedly shuffled our troops to keep the Republic guessing as to our real location, and I was occasionally required to make a show of force on a Republic border world to erode faith in the Republic. The waves of anti-Republic sentiment Hux expected never surfaced, so my energies were mostly wasted on monotonous troop movements and guarding supply convoys, nothing that would have interested you or drawn your concern.”

               “It’s fine,” you assure him, resting your head against his chest, and you do honestly feel a bit better with Kylo’s arms around you. “Although I was wondering about one thing.” Kylo says nothing as he waits for you to go on, and so you continue. “Why did Hux call Poe my boyfriend? Like, how does he even about what happened between me and Poe?”

               Kylo lets out a heavy sigh, and you can’t help but pull away from him slightly. “You? Really? _You?_ ”

               “I’m sorry,” Kylo says quickly. His fingers trail the length of your upper arm, and you can’t help but think that the gesture served not only to comfort you, but to grab you in case you decided to rush away in anger. Fortunately, your surprise wiped out any other emotions that you could have had regarding this revelation. “It was back when we first arrived on Naboo and I didn’t think you wanted anything to do with me,” Kylo explains. “After Phasma and I left, a part of me was still concerned that you would head back to him at the earliest opportunity, and I certainly gave you one.”

               “But I didn’t,” you say quickly, almost insistently. “I love you, and I stayed by you-“

               “I know,” Kylo says quickly. “I know, I’m sorry. I don’t know why he brought it up. I’m surprised he even remembers-“

               “He brought it up because it’s leverage,” you tell him hastily. “Because Hux will do anything and everything in order to try to drive a wedge between us, just like he did before.”              

               Kylo lets out a small snort of laughter at this. “You think he cares enough about us to try to turn you against me? I think I have done enough on my own in order to discourage your affections, and yet you’re still here.”

               “It’s not us,” you tell him. “Hux is just the sort of person to sow discord and cause chaos wherever he goes. I’m surprised the First Order has even made it this far with him in charge.” You just shake your head. “But that doesn’t matter. Does he have to stay _here_?”

               “He does,” Kylo confirms, and you roll your eyes. “I’m not happy about it either, but he’ll stay out of our way, especially yours and Ani’s if he knows what’s good for him.” 

               “On a scale of one to ten, how proud of Ani are you right now?” you ask teasingly, happy to see Kylo’s face relax in a gentle smile.               

               “Depends which way the scale is going,” Kylo responds, and you can’t help but let out a snort of laughter as you throw your arms around his neck, pressing your body into his.

               “It’s going to be weird fucking with Hux so close by,” you tell him in a soft voice, your lips close to his ear. “I mean, what if he hears us?”

               “So what if he does?” Kylo asks with a shrug. “Phasma has heard us and you didn’t seem to have a problem with that.”

               “Cause that’s just Phasma,” you reply with an errant shrug. “Hux is much more dangerous. What if he comes in here with a blaster while we’re, you know, distracted?”

               Kylo just laughs at you and holds up one hand. You tilt your head as you look at him in confusion, and that’s when you notice that the shower water has stopped hitting your back. You whirl around to watch him manipulating the water into a long strand that he snakes around your body twice before leading it back to the drain. “Okay, that’s impressive,” you admit, and Kylo drops his hand, letting all the water collapse back into the tub with a splash as the shower water continues to strike at your back in quick, sharp pelts. “I mean it, though. I don’t want to let our guard down around him. I don’t trust him.”

               “Neither do I,” Kylo replies, as if this should have been obvious. “But trust me when I say Hux has more to fear from you than you do from him.”

               You think about this, mulling over his words. “How do you figure?”

               “You haven’t sworn your fidelity to the First Order,” Kylo tells you simply. “He can give me orders and pretend to have the ultimate authority over what I do, but he has no such control over you.”

               “Then he would want to take it, I suspect,” you say, unable to mask the suspicion in your voice. “Hux needs control, he thrives on it, and I don’t think he’s too happy right now not being able to control Ani and I, especially knowing how powerful we are.”

               “I’ve warned him,” Kylo says simply, and you notice his shoulders tense a bit. “Should he say more than two words to you-“

               “Ani’s going to punch him in the face again?” you ask teasingly, and Kylo just shrugs.

               “I’ve advised Hux to stay out of your way,” he tells you. “If you can help it, don’t speak to him, and don’t goad him on. We may have to share a roof with him but we don’t have to acknowledge his presence. Just try to pretend that he’s not here.”

               “Not a chance,” you reply. “How are we even supposed to sleep here at night when he can just unlock the door or something and come barging in whenever he felt like it?”

               “What was stopping him from doing that on the Starkiller Base?” Kylo asks, and you pause as you consider his point.

               “The situation,” you say at length. “Because he’s desperate now. At least he was controlling everything there, but here, he’s hiding. You don’t know what he might do.”

               Kylo turns his head slightly to the side and looks away for a brief moment, as if struggling to decide how to pacify you. “If you think he’s starting to act erratically, let me know. I’ll try to intervene.”

               “I don’t really know him,” you tell him. “Honestly, I think it would probably be Phasma who has the best chance of figuring out what’s wrong with him and how to cool him down.”

               “Fair,” Kylo says as he turns his attention back to you. “Is that all you’re concerned about?”

               You bite your lip in consideration, and while you knew that he had sensed your earlier melancholy, you couldn’t figure out a way to really voice your concerns without upsetting him. There was no way you could tell him that you were wondering if there was a universe where you had stayed on the Resistance base with Poe and lived your life with him instead of Kylo. Kylo would take it personally, and in this case, you can hardly blame him. You liked being here with him, and you didn’t want to give him any reason to doubt that.

               “Not really,” you tell him as you force a smile to your lips. You reach up to kiss him, but Kylo looks less sure as he runs his hands up and down your arms again.

               “Is this about the pilot?” he asks, and you narrow your eyes at him as you try to figure out an answer.

               “Possibly,” you manage slowly. “I mean, I don’t have any feelings for him-“

               “And yet you never take off the stone he gave you,” Kylo muses, but at least he doesn’t seem angry about it, simply curious.

               “I don’t know why I do,” you confess, and quite honestly, as you had been puzzling over that yourself before he had even entered the room. “I really don’t, I don’t know, it just makes me feel better when I have it on. Like I’ve been wearing it for so long now my neck feels empty without it, if that makes any sense.”

               “I could get you something better,” Kylo offers, but you just smile as you shake your head.

               “It’s like the staff,” you tell him. “At first it was a symbol of Phasma and the First Order and everything, but then it became _my_ staff, and now it’s Ani’s staff. Just because Poe gave it to me doesn’t mean I associate it with him every time I look at it.”

               “Fair,” Kylo says as he kisses you again, and you just smile as you wrap your arms around him and relax into the warmth of his chest. You feel Kylo rest his chin against the top of your head and you can’t help but smile as you feel enveloped by his warmth. You felt safe, protected, even with Hux so close by.

               “I really do love you,” you tell him with a tone of quiet reassurance.

               Kylo lets out a small laugh of appreciation. “I know you do.”

               “I just wonder sometimes,” you venture out loud, before you shake your head, deciding against it. Even still, Kylo pauses, waiting for you to continue, and you realize you don’t have a choice now. “Do you think Poe, um, the pilot, do you think he ever, like, you know, thinks about me?” The question sounds incredibly stupid even to your own ears, and you can only imagine how stupid it sounded saying that to Kylo. To his credit, though, Kylo just nods his head in simple understanding.

               “He does,” Kylo says softly, and you pout into his chest as you look up at him.

               “How do you know?” you ask, tilting your head to one side.

               Kylo just smiles softly as he runs his hand through your wet hair, feeling your silky strands slide through his fingers, and that’s when you feel an emotion ebbing off of him, a sense of gratefulness, a silent appreciation for your very existence. He felt calmer when you were around, happier, as if he knew for a fact that his life was better simply for having you in it, and you supposed that he felt that if that was how you made him feel, then it wasn’t that far of a stretch to assume that Poe felt the same way.

               You just shake your head good-naturedly as you feel a blush creeping up your cheeks as you press your forehead into his chest. “Yeah, but he’s moved on by now,” you tell him as matter-of-factly as you can manage. “I mean, it’s been years, right? I’ve moved on and I’m almost sort of married to you, and he’s probably-“ You stop, and Kylo looks at you inquisitively as something registers across your face. “Since Hux is General of the First Order, that means he’s like a captain of a ship, right? Like it’s a similar sort of position? Does that mean that Hux could technically officiate us if we really wanted to get married here?”

               “No,” Kylo says loudly, and although you can’t tell if the answer really was no or if Kylo just didn’t want Hux to do it, you couldn’t help but giggle regardless. “Besides, Naboo is a sovereign system, so the union would never be recognized.”

               “It was worth a shot,” you say with a light shrug of your shoulders, but now Kylo looks troubled.

               “Does it really mean that much to you?” he asks nervously, and you shake your head from side to side rapidly as you look up at him, your eyes wide and innocent.

               “No,” you tell him, making your voice sound as sweet as you possibly can. “It was just a question. You’re here. You love me. We’re a family. That’s all I need. I just-“ You roll your shoulders absent-mindedly. “I just don’t want you to ever doubt that I’m committed to you, that’s all. I mean, you stayed faithful to me over the years and I, well-“

               “It doesn’t bother me,” Kylo says, although the line in his forehead is still creased, but for a different reason. “You were right. I left. I never tried to contact you, and I never came back. I should have expected that you would have moved on but for some reason I just…”

               “…didn’t,” you finish for him, and you bite your lip before you shake your wet hair out of your face. “It doesn’t matter,” you tell him firmly. “We’re here now, we’re together, let’s leave the past where it belongs.”

               Kylo kisses you then, softly, but the kisses become more and more passionate as he takes you under the hot water. As he carries you into the bedroom, you can’t help but notice that he leaves a trail of footprints along the floor behind him before he places you down on the bed and curls up beside you. “This is going to sound weird,” you tell him softly. “But I’m kind of really hungry.”

               “Mm,” Kylo says simply, noncommittally, his eyes shut as he lays beside you on the bed, his large hand resting possessively against your stomach.

               “So I’m going to go get some food,” you tell him, gently easing his hand off of you. Kylo stirs a bit, but he seems tired, and you let him rest as you stand up and get dressed quickly, wanting to make this as quick a trip as possible. Before you head down into the kitchen, however, you stop by Ani’s room to see him cross-legged on his bed, deep in meditation.

               _Ani_ , you call softly, reaching out to him with your mind, and his eyes immediately open. “Hey, kiddo, I was just going to get some food. You hungry?”

               Ani nods his head, but looks uncertain. “So is Hux really staying here?” You nod your head. “Is he – is he still down there?”

               You pause for a moment, listening, and although you can’t really hear the sound of talking from downstairs, you assumed both he and Phasma were probably still in the kitchen. “Probably,” you admit. “Tell you what, I’ll go down and get some food and bring it up to you? Sound good?”

               Ani nods, but the crease in his forehead does not disappear. “Will you be okay?”

               “He doesn’t want to show it, but Hux is petrified of me,” you say with a light smirk, and Ani laughs as you shut the door to his room again before you steady yourself and take a deep breath as you head down into the kitchen. Phasma is nowhere to be found, and you suspect that she is probably in the basement, as you hadn’t heard her come upstairs. Regardless, she’s not the one who you need to be worried about. Hux is still sitting in the kitchen, his back to you, sipping something out of a mug, although from the smell of it, you can guess it’s not caf.

               “Well, look who it is,” Hux says without turning around, calling you by your name this time.

               “Well since you’re actually calling me by my name, I’ll take it Kylo set you straight and told you I’m not his whore,” you say as evenly as you can manage, although you can’t help but bristle just from being around him. Honestly, it felt like you mentally and physically had to keep up a mental shield around your person to prevent yourself from being penetrated by his cynical aura.

               Hux just shrugs, and you notice that confident sneer of a smirk that he was so fond of wearing was back on his lips again, although he tried to disguise it as best he could by hovering the ceramic rim just above his lips. “Yes, Ren assures me that you have a few other uses as well.”

               You roll your eyes at the insinuation as you walk over to the stove and begin to heat up the food that had been left in the skillet. You may have only had to wait a few minutes for the food to heat up, but waiting there in uncomfortable silence with Hux felt like waiting hours. “You don’t like me,” Hux says at length, and there’s almost a touch of surprise in his voice, as if he couldn’t quite fathom why.

               “I hate you.” You try to snap at him, but your voice comes out as more incredulous than anything. “You tried to kill me-“

               “I made sure to give you enough to keep you weak, but nourished,” Hux tells you. “My orders were to see how far I could push you, and for that I needed you to remain alive.”

               “By keeping me just on the brink of starving me to death,” you say dryly. “Kudos, really, well done.” You shake your head in disbelief when a new thought occurs to you. “Okay, then, fine, say you were just following orders, as if that totally excuses what you did. What about what you did to my sister? Sadie? Do you really remember her?”

               “Fondly,” Hux replies, and suddenly you’re not hungry anymore as your stomach literally flops over, as if it were a browning pancake being turned over to the other side of the skillet. You can imagine your face is just about green with nausea, and as he catches the look on your face, you’re not sure how he manages it, but he actually manages to laugh, as if nothing bothered him in the slightest. The thought is enough to make you physically ill, but beyond that, it makes you angry. “What?” Hux asks you. “Honestly, it’s been so many years. Do you still hold that against me?”

               “Yes,” you tell him firmly, without a moment’s hesitation, and Hux actually manages to look somewhat surprised.

               “Really?” he asks. “So you’ll just forgive all of Ren’s transgressions but not mine?”

               “Kylo has apologized,” you snap. “You have not, and even if you did, I wouldn’t want to hear it anyway. You’re not sorry about what you’ve done.”

               “No,” Hux admits. “But then again, neither is Ren.”

               “Keep it up,” you warn him. “Keep trying to turn me and Ren against each other. It’s going to just make us more and more united in wanting to take you out of the picture for good, and believe me when I tell you it’d be so easy for me to kill you right now.”

               “But you won’t,” Hux replies, and you almost literally grind your teeth in frustration. You could see why he was constantly jumping on the ends of Kylo’s nerves, why Kylo constantly seemed so irate by just being in his presence. Truly, he had to be doing this on purpose, as you doubted he would have gotten very far in the First Order if his presence was as grating to everyone else as it was to you and Kylo.

               “Give me a reason to,” you snap at him. The food is finally done, and so you quickly spoon it out onto a plate for Ani, trying to get it done as quickly as possible. You had completely lost your appetite.

               Hux just smirks as he looks up at you. “You know, I think you and I are going to be friends,” he says, and you can’t help but let out a short laugh of disbelief as you shake your head. You? Friends with Hux? You had made friends with the people at the Resistance, and that had seemed like a far stretch at the time, but at least you were sane enough to know that nothing would ever, ever lead you to becoming friends with Hux. Was there the potential to be allies? Most definitely. But friends?

               Not a chance in the galaxy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTES: The authority of ship captains to solemnize marriages stems from the ancient tradition of deckplate sovereignty. When at sea, a warship that has left the territorial waters of a country effectively operates as a sovereign entity with the captain as its dictator. Since warships did not traditionally carry government clerks aboard, the highest solemnizing/ratifying authority on a ship at sea was the captain, as a commissioned extension of the national government. So, in Hux's case, as the highest authority of the First Order, his legal authority to marry humans would traditionally be respected in two cases: a First Order warship in interstellar space, or in a system under First Order sovereignty, like a developed colony world unarguably under First Order control. As for other species, well, we know Hux and the First Order doesn't seem to care much for other species, so that's not really a concern. xD


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And adreamemporium's done it again!! Click [here](http://adreamemporium.tumblr.com/post/144482088099) to check out the cover for A Glow in the Dawn with Kylo and Reader standing back to back. It's absolutely beautiful and I can't thank you enough!! <3

               “Not a chance in hell,” you shout at him from across the room, your hands balling into fists at your sides. You can feel anger boiling in your veins, and honestly, you didn’t even mind it in the least bit. What he was asking was so uncalled for it was almost nonsensical.

               “It’s only for a few days,” Kylo tells you, and to his credit, it seems he is at least trying to be patient with you in order to try to quell your mounting anger. It’s justified, he knows it is, but it still doesn’t help the situation.

               “You are not leaving Ani and I alone with Hux for a few days,” you snap. “Hell, there’d be blood lining the walls if you left us alone for anything more than sixteen hours.”

               “He has far more to fear from you than you do from him,” Kylo tells you, but you just roll your eyes.

               “The _General_ of the _First Order_ is sleeping in our _living room_ ,” you practically hiss at him. “It’s not just him I need to worry about. He can order his troops to kill us, or worse, tip off the Resistance as to our whereabouts and then run for the hills before I even realize what’s going on.”

               “He’s not going to do that,” Kylo says firmly. “He’s going to stay in the house and he knows better than to provoke you.”

               “Does he?” you ask, unable to keep the incredulous edge out of your voice. Honestly, Hux had been there a week, and you had limited your contact with him as much as you were able. You and Ani didn’t go down for food. Instead, _you_ would head into the kitchen, collect whatever it was that Phasma had made, and then return to Ani’s room so that the two of you could eat together while Kylo, Hux and Phasma ate and discussed strategies downstairs. It didn’t help that Kylo was particularly irritable afterwards, and the whole ordeal just made you hate Hux all the more. This was Phasma’s house, but after a while it had started to become your home, and you didn’t welcome Hux’s presence there, not in the least.

               “He does,” Kylo confirms. “Like I said, it’s only for a few days.”

               You sigh as you roll your shoulders and twist your arms by your sides, trying to think of any tangible excuse that you could use. “Can’t we just come with you?” you ask desperately. “We’ve gone to different bases with you before. Why should this time be any different?”

               “Because it’s only for a few days,” Kylo repeats. “If the Resistance thinks Hux really is dead, then we can use it to our advantage.”

               You narrow your eyes at him and content yourself by crossing your arms over your chest. “That sounds dangerous. If they think Hux is gone, they’re going to be aiming for both you and Phasma next.”

               “Exactly,” Kylo tells you, and your nostrils flare with indignation.

               “It’s _risky_ ,” you practically shout at him. “Seriously, what am I supposed to do if you and Phasma get captured and me and Ani are stuck here with him?”

               “I’m sure you’ll find a way to save me,” Kylo says, his voice alight with dry humor, and you clench your hands into fists at your sides as you stare at him incredulously. You appreciated that Kylo was trying to defuse the situation at least somewhat, but right now, calm was a state you were incapable of being. “We won’t get captured. Have faith in me.”

               “I don’t want anything to happen to you,” you tell him, your voice weakening slightly, and Kylo’s lip quirks upwards in the semblance of a smile as you rush over to him, wrapping your arms around him. He lifts you up so that your legs straddle his waist as he holds you close to him, while you wrap your arms around his neck so that you can bury your face in his shoulder. “Please, please take us with you.”

               “Someone has to look out for Hux,” Kylo says dryly. “He’s been getting into Phasma’s stores lately. I’m starting to understand what she means by _unraveling._ ”

               “Wait,” you say quickly as you untangle your legs so that you can stand up straight as you look up at him. “You mean he’s drinking? You mean I have to stay behind and babysit Hux because he’s becoming a giant drunk baby that needs to be looked after?” Kylo shifts from foot to foot uncomfortably as he looks away, and you shake your head in disbelief.

               “Oh no,” you tell him. “No, you tell me what you need to do and I’ll do it myself. You can stay behind and look after Hux. I’ve already been the parent to a whiny, angry child that puked and screamed and cried at all hours of the night, and I’m not doing it again.”

               Kylo opens his mouth to say something but then shuts it again. Considering that he hadn’t actually been there during Ani’s early years, he had no right to criticize you on any methods of your parenting. “I’m sure Anakin appreciates what you did for him,” Kylo says softly. “Just as I’m sure Hux will appreciate-“

               “Appreciate? So you mean I have to stay behind and try to get on his good side?” you ask dryly as you raise an eyebrow, and Kylo looks back towards the door before he drops his voice.

               “I’m encouraging you to stay away from each other,” Kylo says as he looks back towards you. “But if he’s drinking, he may let certain things _slip_.”

               “Like what?” you ask suspiciously, but Kylo just shrugs.

               “I’m not sure,” he admits. “Things that he’s probably told Phasma but would never tell me. If he’s in such a state, he may be more apt to divulge certain details to you that he would probably rather I wasn’t informed of.”

               You consider this a moment, thinking it over. “If you want me to try to play undercover spy, I guess I could get behind it,” you say after a moment’s pause, and Kylo’s face relaxes into a gentle smirk. “Is there anything you want me to ask about though? Specifically?”

               “Try to get him to open up about his past,” Kylo advises. “He loves talking about his father. He-“

               “He’s the guy who worked for the Empire, right?” you ask. “Um, that academy with the secret society on Arkanis? That’s the one his father started, right?” Kylo narrows his eyes and you just grin sheepishly as you shrug your shoulders. “Phasma told me.”

               “Don’t let him know that you know,” Kylo advises. “If he learns that you have spoken with Phasma about his past, he might be reticent to reveal anything else.”

               “I know how to be a spy,” you tell him, although your voice doesn’t sound anywhere near as venomous as it had before. “Although I can’t help but wonder, how much do _you_ know about his past?”

               “Same as anyone,” Kylo shrugs, but doesn’t seem willing to elaborate any more than that.

               “Same as anyone,” you repeat, tasting his words in your mouth. No, you still don’t like them. It sounds like he’s holding something back, and you’d like to have some idea as to what before you talked to Hux. “Would you say that Hux knows more about your family history or do you know more about his?” Kylo glances at you for a moment as though that was the stupidest question you could have asked, and it takes you a moment to register why. The Death Stars. The Empire. Darth Vader. The Galactic Civil War. The Jedi. Palpatine’s Purge. It seemed that Kylo’s family history wasn’t just the history of his family, but was directly tied to every major event that had happened in the galaxy since his grandfather had been a young child. Not for the first time, you almost regretted getting involved with someone who seemed to have so much family drama, especially considering how few of his family members were still alive.

               You just sigh and shake your head as you sweep your hair out of your face with one hand. “Looks like this means you’re going to have another talk with Ani about how you’re leaving him behind again,” you say, and Kylo only nods his head.

               “He’ll understand,” Kylo says as he presses a quick kiss to your lips before he turns and heads down the hall to talk to Ani. You turn around and head outside onto the balcony, resting your forearms on the ledge as you look out at the greenery that surrounded you. Honestly, you weren’t sure which you hated more, the thought of being alone with Hux or the thought of Kylo leaving again. He was Force-sensitive, which meant he was luckier than most, which should have meant that the chances of him actually getting captured were slim to none, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have to be careful. You were still concerned for him, would always be concerned for him; it was not something that you could truly actively help.

               The truth was, you didn’t like Hux, not only for what he had done, but for who he was. Phasma believed wholeheartedly in the First Order, put all of her life’s devotion into its cause, but she was still a nice person, both to you and Ani and to other people who you suspected needed her aid as well. Hux, however, was selfish, and while you didn’t doubt his commitment to the First Order, it was almost as though he wanted to see it carry on if for no other reason but to say that he was the one who had carried it throughout all its trials and tribulations, so that history would treat him as something better than an evanescent villain after his years of terrorizing the galaxy.

               Honestly, you didn’t even really feel that compelled to get to know him. Hux was a monster who had tried to starve you to death, who had abused Sadie, and who had gladly ordered the destruction of the Hosnian System, massacring trillions of innocent civilian lives. Sure, it was a war, and civilians were bound to get caught in the crossfire, but that was not what had happened here. Hux had full knowledge of just how many innocent people would die, and yet it still hadn’t stopped him. What was worse, it almost seemed as though all that death and destruction didn’t weigh on his conscience at all, or at least, he didn’t act like it did. Maybe that was why he was starting to turn to drink. You assumed it may have been out of a pitiful sense of personal failure, but maybe Hux was struggling to hold on to the fragile shreds of his humanity after he had killed so indiscriminately. You, who had never taken anyone’s life, thought it would be almost trivial to jump your death toll to a few trillion after the first few thousand, but maybe it wasn’t so easy for Hux, or at least, maybe not anymore.

               You can feel Kylo’s arms wrap around behind you, and while you are immediately comforted by his warmth in the seasonally chilly air of Naboo, you can’t help but feel a pulse of concern shoot out from him in all directions. “Oh no, what’s happened now?”

               “Anakin is coming with us,” Kylo says quietly, and you blink, as you keep your eyes focused on the greenery instead, unable to bring yourself to turn around and look at him. You can feel Kylo’s body stiffen behind yours as the moments pass without any reaction, and eventually he dares himself to speak. “Are you all right?”

               “Fine,” you say quickly. “I mean, you’re going on a risky mission and so you decided to take my son with you while you leave me here alone, basically defenseless, against my arch-nemesis. Why would I be anything but fine?”

               “You have your lightsaber,” Kylo reminds you. “And you have the Force. You-“

               “Why can’t Hux just stay here his own damn self?” you curse, and Kylo rubs his hands up and down your arms comfortingly. “Why, exactly, is Ani going? How did he talk you into it?”

               “He wants to be a pilot,” Kylo says with a shrug. “We’re not going that far, and I can teach him how to jump to hyperspace-“

               “No,” you say firmly as you whirl on him. “Oh no. The first time I practiced on the simulator, I’m pretty sure I jumped straight into Corellia’s star, and that was after a solid week of studying hyperdrive theory, including formulas written by _your father_.” Kylo glances away, but he looks almost more annoyed than ashamed. “No way Ani is going to jump to hyperspace without learning the basics and watching first.”

               “He needs to learn some time,” Kylo repeats, a bitter edge creeping into his voice. “And how, exactly, do you think I learned?”

               “Didn’t your father teach you?” you ask, but Kylo glances away quickly, and you know immediately that he did not. You want to say more, but Kylo’s childhood was still a sensitive topic, and it was not one that you knew he would open up about right now, not with everything else that was going on.

               “You are no longer on the Resistance base,” Kylo says coldly, and you know he’s thinking about your time with Poe. “We don’t have the benefit of manuals or simulators or technical instruction, not that they are even required. I am a far better pilot than anyone in the Resistance, and that includes your pilot.”  

               You smirk, mostly because you can’t help yourself. Sure, Kylo was Han Solo’s son by blood, and he had the Force, but Poe had the advantage of experience, and what’s more, he honestly loved being a pilot, not only because of his mother, but you could tell that he genuinely enjoyed flying and all the technical theory of spaceflight that came along with it. Even still, you knew that Kylo wouldn’t be happy to hear your thoughts of how you assumed Poe to be a better pilot than he was, and so you quickly back down and acquiesce to let Ani join him on the mission, so long as he promised not only his safety, but that he would only be gone for no longer than five days.

               Kylo gave you his word and two days later they slipped off during the night, with Ani hugging you fiercely before they left. You realized at that point that Ani had never really been away from you before, not truly, and you wondered if Kylo had subtly encouraged it so that Ani could get out from under your shadow. It would have to happen sooner or later, but you had just always sort of hoped that it would be later and later and later until it was never a true concern at all. Although if it had to happen regardless, you would have almost have preferred them to leave you alone completely instead of leaving Hux with you. You had stayed in your room to say your goodbyes to them so that you wouldn’t have to deal with seeing Hux downstairs, and quickly made sure to lock the door and put your lightsaber directly on Kylo’s pillow as you went to sleep that night, just in case.

               When you woke up the next morning, it took you a few moments to realize that Kylo wasn’t there, and it took you another few moments to realize why, and then yet a few moments more to realize that Ani was gone as well. You cursed inwardly to yourself and considered spending the next few days simply locked in your room until they returned, but ultimately decided against it. You were not going to let Hux intimidate you inside your own home. _You_ had absolutely nothing to fear from him. You were the one with the Force, the one with the power, and you hoped that Hux really knew to stay out of your way, lest he face your wrath. You had already Force choked him once, and you were not afraid to do it again.

               Regardless, you stayed in your room until mid-afternoon until you finally couldn’t take it anymore and decided to venture downstairs for some food. You had spent most of the morning sitting out on the balcony trying to meditate, but it was like Hux was an itch on your back that you were going to have to scratch sooner or later, and although it was driving you crazy and siphoning a great deal of your focus, you weren’t sure you were exactly ready to scratch it, either. But after a while you couldn’t take it anymore and decided to just go downstairs and get the awkwardness out of the way once and for all, secretly hoping that Hux wouldn’t even be there.

               But he was. He was sitting on the counter when you came downstairs, drinking something out of glass next to a slender dark bottle, and you immediately braced yourself as you walked into the kitchen. “About time,” Hux says as you walk in, and you place your hands on your hips as you look over at him.

               “Were you just sitting here expecting me to come down and cook for you?” you ask him, and when Hux doesn’t respond, you groan loudly in frustration. “Lucky for you, I’m a terrible cook.” You open the fridge and start preparing something to eat, and while you almost consider making it taste absolutely terrible on purpose so that Hux never asks you to cook for him again, you still had to put up with him for the next few days, and as much as you hated Hux, it wasn’t worth putting up with the antagonism or the tension.

               Hux just manages a laugh as he shakes his head, and for the first time you realize that he’s in a much more relaxed state of dress, not wearing his typical First Order uniform. Trying to sneak another peek without making it seem too obvious that you were checking him over, you also noticed that his hair was unkempt and not its usual styled self, and that he had some stubble growing in around his face. You weren’t quite sure what that meant. Was Hux not concerned about keeping up appearances around you, or did he deem your opinion of him so insignificant that he couldn’t bring himself to care?

               “So I take it you still haven’t forgiven me then?” Hux asks, his tone alight with good humor, and now you gaze at him openly in disgust.

               “I have no reason to forgive you,” you tell him harshly. “But I do feel necessitated to remind you of it every time that I see you, because you remind me of it every time I look at you.”

               Hux looks troubled as he looks up at you. “Do you frequently insist on taking things so personally?”

               “You tried to kill me,” you snort indignantly. “I’m pretty sure I have a right to take it personally.”

               “And Ren hasn’t?” Hux asks dryly, raising an eyebrow, and you just shake your head as you refuse to answer him, bending down to pull a pan from the cabinet so that you can start cooking. He watches you as you put it on the stove and brush your hair behind your ears as you try to figure it out what it is you’re doing. “Get me another glass.”

               You’re so mentally consumed by crossing off the list in your head of what you had to do next that you immediately get him a glass without thinking about it, setting it down in front of him. Hux seems surprised that you followed his order without sarcasm, and you immediately regretted it as soon as you turned your back on him, catching your mistake too late. Nevertheless, you pretended it didn’t bother you as you got back to cooking.

               “Here.” Hux fills the glass partially and pushes it towards you. You stare at it skeptically for a moment, idly wondering if it was poisoned. “Consider it a show of good faith,” Hux offers, and you take the glass and sniff at it tentatively. “Considering we are forced to make the most of each other’s company over the next few days-“

               “Or I can just make you food and then go back to ignoring you,” you say casually, but Hux just laughs again. It struck you that this is the second time Hux has laughed in such a short amount of time, and even though it was a bitter, dry sound, more akin to a snort, you were beginning to think that he may have been more affected by the alcohol than you had first thought. You had no idea how long he had been drinking for, at any rate, and while his speech seemed more or less normal, you were wondering if his overall proud demeanor had slipped a bit.

               “Just stay,” Hux says as he takes a sip from his own glass, and you purse your lips together as you decide to humor him.

               “Is that an order?” you ask, raising one eyebrow, and Hux smirks as you brush your hair behind your ears again out of nervous habit as you continue cooking. Hux watches you idly as you move around the kitchen, throwing things together, trying to make it seem like you knew what you were doing. You didn’t, you didn’t at all, but at least it _looked_ edible enough as you scooped the food onto a plate and handed it to him.

               “Now I already warned you that I’m a terrible cook so just eat it,” you tell him. “Don’t say it’s good. Don’t say it’s bad. Just eat it and let’s talk about something else, if you want to talk.”

               Hux just cracks a grin as you fill up your own plate and sit at the other end of the counter, making sure to leave a seat between you. “You don’t want me to tell you if I like it?”

               “No,” you tell him. “Because even if you say it and mean it, I’ll still think you’re being sarcastic anyway.” Hux opens his mouth to speak, but you don’t give him the chance. “Because you’re just that kind of person.”

               “I’m glad that you’re so honest with exactly what you think of me,” Hux says, and you’re not sure if he’s actually being honest or sarcastic. You could only imagine that, being the General of the First Order, he heard people tell him what they thought he wanted to hear all the time, and he probably had no way of knowing if they were being genuine with him either. “Would you like me to return the favor and tell you exactly what I think of you?”

               “Haven’t you already?” You finally rise the glass to your lips and take a quick sip of it. There’s an immediate sweetness on your tongue, but it bites the back of your mouth and burns the whole way down. You had no idea how Hux was gulping it down like water, but you didn’t question it. “You said that I was Kylo Ren’s whore, remember?”

               “Well, aren’t you?” Hux asks, and you narrow your eyes as you take a bite of your own food, silently thankful that it was a bit bland, but passable.

               “I’m his _wife_ ,” you say, emphasizing the last word as much as you can without making it sound too overbearing. “So, you know, sort of similar, but there’s that whole pesky equality thing you have to factor in, considering we’re a relationship of equals, and so on.”

               Hux looks surprised. “Ren never mentioned your marriage.”

               “He probably thought it was none of your concern,” you say lightly as you imbibe another forkful of food. “Though, I mean, to be fair, we’re not _technically_ married; it hasn’t been officiated or anything, but we’ve lived together for years, we have a son together, we love each other, so we may as well be.” Hux just snorts and mutters something under his breath that you don’t quite catch, but it rubs you the wrong way anyway. “Hey, just because you’ll never get married doesn’t mean-“

               “And who says I’ve never been married?” Hux asks, raising his eyebrows. The question takes you aback, and the surprise is visible on your face as he looks you over. “What? Ren hasn’t told you? I thought this was a relationship of equals.”

               “Sorry,” you say with a light shrug of your shoulders. “But we generally only talk about things of interest, hence why your name has never come up in a conversation.”

               “I doubt it hasn’t,” Hux says with a wicked smirk, and you just roll your eyes and physically turn away from him as you go back to your food.

               It’s silent for a few moments as you ponder over this new piece of information, if it was even a piece of information at all. Maybe he was just saying that to prove how much you didn’t know about him. In either case, the silence was stretching on for far too long, and you decided to take the bait. “So have you ever been married?”

               “Once,” Hux replies, and you’re silent for a moment as you consider this new piece of information. He was certainly old enough to be married, and yet you couldn’t really think of anyone possibly ever getting close to him, although there were probably plenty of people who were able to overlook the flaws in his personality in favor of the sort of power that he possessed. Then again, was that before you entered the Starkiller Base? Or after?

               “Was she also in the First Order?” you ask, trying to make small talk.

               “Yes,” Hux replies. “Yes, she was also enrolled in Arkanis Academy while I was there.”

               “Arkanis?” you ask, feigning ignorance.

               Hux just lets out a brief snort. “It was an Imperial Academy that specialized in training Imperial officers. My father was a Commandant there, and he ran a sort of secret society, if you will, to ensure the best and most capable were serving the Empire, before they signed the Galactic Concordance with the New Republic and forced us into the Unknown Regions.”

               You just nod your head as you pretend to be taking in this bit of information. To be honest, you weren’t really so much in the mood for a history lesson as you were about learning about Hux himself. “So you two broke up after that?”

               Hux glares at you, but you try to just look as ignorant as possible, which wasn’t that hard to do, considering the circumstances. “After that, it was no longer safe for us,” Hux explains. “I followed my father to the Unknown Regions to help establish the First Order, and I sent her away with my son, thinking it would be safer for her if she went into hiding.” The thought of Kylo sending you away from the Starkiller Base for your safety so that you could raise Ani in secret passes through your mind, but you push it away.

               “And what happened to her?” you ask, honestly a bit transfixed by his story. “What happened to her and your son?”

               “Killed,” Hux says simply. “Their lives were cut short in a retaliatory _sanitation_ strike by the fledgling New Republic, against a settlement they knew was sympathetic towards the First Order. Most of the town consisted of women and children, some of whom had husbands, fathers, and brothers in service to the Empire. They all burned when the New Republic glassed it from orbit. Nothing remains of them now, and I couldn’t even visit the site if I chose to, considering how the New Republic saw fit to bury their ashes in proton bombs.” You can’t help it. A small noise escapes the back of your throat. “I had told her it was dangerous for her to remain there, but she wanted to stay and serve the First Order as best she could from a distance, organizing and caring for the families in the town.” Hux shakes his head. “If I had known then what I know now, I would have insisted on bringing her to the Unknown Regions with me.”

               “I’m sorry,” you say softly, and suddenly it feels as though all the air had been sucked out of the room.

               “I like to think I’ve avenged them,” Hux says as he turns his glass in a slow circle on the countertop. “I destroyed Hosnian Prime. I destroyed the people responsible for the strike and their families, as they had destroyed mine.” You’re silent for a moment, and Hux turns to look at you, his icy blue eyes cold and yet furious by the same hand. “Would you not do the same?” he asks. “If our positions had been reversed and Ren and your son were killed by the Republic or the Resistance? Would you not take matters into your own hands and hold them accountable?”

               “I would,” you tell him, although your voice is quiet as you think it over. Something about his story sounded off to you, and although you couldn’t tell exactly what it was, a part of you couldn’t help but think he had made up the whole thing. Surely Kylo would have told you about it, wouldn’t he? Or Phasma? Revenge for destroying his family was certainly a good motive for destroying the Republic’s capital, but did Hux really need revenge in order to wipe out the Hosnian System? This was what he had been raised to do. He had been seeped in the ideals of the Empire since he was a child. It was all he was raised in and it was all he had ever known. He didn’t _need_ a revenge motive to destroy the system; you had always believed that he had done it because this was a war that he was trying to win, and even in light of this new piece of information, you still weren’t convinced that revenge was his only motive.

               Regardless, Hux is watching you closely now, and you decide to call him out on it. “Are you lying to me?” you ask him. “Were you really married? Did you really have a wife and a son?”

               Hux just laughs, but it’s a short, pathetic laugh, as he raises the glass to his lips and drinks. “Does it matter?” he asks at length. You make a small noise of agitation in the back of your throat, and he turns to you sharply. “No, tell me. Does it matter?”

               “It does,” you tell him. “It does matter, because only a really sick person would lie about having their wife and son killed just to make someone else feel sympathy for them.”

               Hux shakes his head back and forth. “You’re missing the point.”

               “The point?” you ask incredulously. “The point is you destroyed the Hosnian System because they killed your wife and son. What-“

               “No,” Hux says loudly, sharply, and the sound startles you. “Back when I had a family to protect, I should have done everything that I could have in order to protect them, but I clearly failed. Now you have that opportunity. Would you do everything in your power to defend them? To keep them safe?”

               “You know I would,” you tell him, and while your voice is much quieter than his, there’s a sense of firmness that cannot be overlooked. “Although I’m a bit curious why you’re giving this speech to me instead of Ren.”

               Hux just laughs openly at this. “Ren is powerful in his own right, but power without control is meaningless, surely you must know this.” You nod your head forward, stiffly, waiting to hear his reasoning. “Ren would already give his life for you, die for you, wouldn’t he?”

               “He would,” you admit. “And I’d do the same for him, and my son. What I don’t understand is what point you’re trying to make.”

               “Ren’s decisions are blinded by you,” Hux says firmly. “He doesn’t think objectively where you’re concerned. If you want to keep your family together, keep them safe, then you need to protect them with everything that you have.”

               You think back to what Hux had said earlier in the conversation, when you had first sat down. “Return the favor,” you say quietly. “Tell me what you think of me.”

               “I think you’re powerful,” Hux tells you, wasting no time in replying. “I think you’re just as powerful as Ren, but more in control of yourself. I think you and your son could be a valued addition to the First Order, should you wish to join us. That needs to be your choice. Once you swear your fidelity to the First Order, it is only rescinded by your death.”

               “Good to know,” you reply lightly. “But I think you’re mistaken. Kylo _is_ more powerful than me. I get the point that you’re trying to make, but pure strength alone, or strength in the Force, isn’t all that there is.”

               “Isn’t it?” Hux asks you. “Power _is_ all that matters. You may covet your family now, but you can’t love what you can’t protect. You can try, but eventually they will slip away and there will be nothing left of them to hold onto.”

               You just shake your head from side to side. “I’ll humor you. I’ll cook your food. I’ll even listen to all of your First Order propaganda, on occasion, but if I do decide to join the First Order, that’s a decision I have to talk to Kylo about first, and it’s also a decision that’s going to be made independently of Ani. Years ago, when we were taken in on the Resistance base, I often feared that he would pledge his allegiance to them out of a misplaced sense of loyalty simply because he had been raised there, and I don’t want to see the same thing happen with the First Order.”

               Hux’s eyebrows shoot up, as if he’s amused. “And here I thought you had such a nice time there.”

               You narrow your eyes. “If you are referencing my relationship with Commander Dameron, then I think you best reconsider speaking to me about that subject, as there are only so many ways that I can tell you that it’s none of your business.”

               “Isn’t it?” Hux asks. “You could have valuable information about the Resistance that you are withholding from us, information that Ren would never dare asking simply because he doesn’t want to-“

               “Yeah, that’s a bunch of bullshit,” you say idly. “Nice try, though. Kylo may have been angry at first, but it’s been so many years since I was there that he’s over it. He understands the situation and we’ve worked it out. That’s nothing you have to concern yourself with. I have no information about the Resistance, anyway. I don’t know what kind of relationship you had with _your_ wife, but generally I tend to keep my working and personal relationships separate. It’s just easier for everyone that way.”

               “And what do you consider this?” Hux asks, gesturing into the space between you. “A business or personal relationship?”

               “An alliance that seems to be undermined by mutual animosity,” you say harshly, and Hux’s face hardens again.

               “I am trying to offer you an opportunity,” he tells you, but you just shake your head.

               “It’s not an opportunity, it’s a trap,” you insist. “You want me to join the First Order so you can laud your control over me; just like you do with Kylo. I’m not going to give you that satisfaction. I am looking out for myself, and I am looking out for my family, and I put them above the First Order. In this situation, we seem to be in a mutually beneficial position, and that is the only time when I will ever consider you an ally. Otherwise, there will never come a time when I will do anything more than just tolerate your presence here.”

               Hux seems to consider this for a moment as he takes another sip of his drink. “I apologize for locking you in that cell and for the unpleasantness that surrounded the situation with your sister.”

               You frown, trying to figure out what, if anything, he could hope to gain by this less than sincere apology. Even still, it was better than nothing. “And Kylo,” you tell him. “And I want you to apologize for being insufferable to Kylo.”

               “Ren brings it on himself,” Hux says pointedly. “My relationship with Ren goes back many years, before he ever laid eyes on you.”

               “Fair enough,” you reply bitterly. “But when you have disagreements with him, please leave me and Ani out of it, especially Ani. I can handle things but he is still just a boy.”

               “And yet he seems to be exceptionally powerful for his age,” Hux says, and you roll your eyes. You didn’t want to talk about Ani with Hux, and he seems to sense this as he changes his tone. “Regardless, you both make for fabulous incentive. Now that Ren has you and has nothing to fear from the Supreme Leader, he is determined to do anything, and I mean anything, in his power to keep you by his side.”

               “And you are just so eager to take advantage of that,” you say coldly as you shake your head narrowly from side to side. “How does that feel?”

               “Everyone has a certain price, even you,” Hux tells you. “Things you’d be willing to suffer for, things you’d be willing to die for, things you’d be willing to give up everything for. I thought you would have jumped at a chance to make an alliance with me and the First Order in exchange for safety to protect you and your family.”

               “Considering that Ren has an alliance with you already, I would think a separate alliance with me might be considered overkill,” you say with another shrug, although you can already tell where this conversation is going, and you don’t like it, not one bit.

               “You didn’t let me finish,” Hux admonishes you gently. “I thought it was the safety of your family that you’d be so desperate to protect, but now I’m starting to wonder if you have something else in mind. If there’s something else that you want.”

               “I want you to go away,” you tell him. “Does that count?” Hux merely laughs quietly into the back of his hand and says nothing. “So do you want to clue me in?” you ask him. “What’s the big secret that I want to protect more than Kylo? More than my son?”

               “I don’t know,” Hux tells you as he looks up at you, and while the look on his face is genuine, you can’t help but make a noise of disgust as you stand up and storm past him, heading up to your room. He was playing games again, that was all that he was doing. He was trying to make you doubt your relationship with Kylo, he was trying to make you doubt yourself, and what’s worse, you were letting him. You were letting him control you by so much as entertaining the possibility that he wasn’t a scandalous liar, and that was something you could not afford to do.

               You threw yourself down backwards onto your bed, twirling your lightsaber hilt over and over again in your hands before you finally held it out in front of you in both hands, palms facing up, as you extended the blades. You could end him. You could end him right now and say it was in self-defense. It practically would be. Hux’s mere existence proved him to be a danger to himself and to everyone around him. Still, something he said had anchored itself in your mind, and you weren’t quite sure you knew how to be free of it. Had Hux really been married? Had he really had a wife and son that were killed by the Republic? And truly, did it even matter? No matter what sob story he threw at your feet, nothing was going to make him sympathetic…

               …but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a point. Hux had been right about at least one thing. You did have power, and you did have control, and you were determined to protect your family at all costs. You weren’t sure if Hux wanted you to do something ridiculous to prove your loyalties to him and the Order, but at this point, it hardly mattered. Your loyalty rested solely with Kylo and with your son, and you didn’t plan on that changing any time soon.

               Regardless, Hux had a point. If you wanted to keep your family, then you would have to do whatever it took to protect them, and Hux’s words come unbidden into your mind. _“Power_ is _all that matters.”_ You had felt the same way on the Starkiller Base when you felt defenseless and weak, incapable of saving Sadie, unable to find out what had happened to Ladson, ignorant of what had happened to Shayne and the whole Resistance conspiracy that had landed you there in the first place. Hux, unfortunately, was right. You can’t love what you can’t protect, for if you failed to protect them, there would be nothing left to love.

               Some people were unlucky enough to learn that lesson too late, and you were not going to allow that person to be you. But that didn’t mean you needed Hux’s help to do it. You had your own power, your own strength. As you had told Poe many years ago, you had yourself, and that was, and would always be, enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "There was no doubt now in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no one would save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you."  
> –Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game, Chapter 12
> 
> Just replace Peter with Hux and it’s perfect. ;) I'm not going to lie, I think Hux could be a really fascinating character if Disney wanted to explore him some more, and while I think he's been unfortunately reduced to the evil side character archetype (still waiting on that Pop, guys) I think it would be fantastic to look into and compare and contrast the relationship between Kylo and Hux some more, considering both of them were brainwashed and manipulated from a young age, Kylo by Snoke and Hux by his father and the ideologies for the Empire. Still, it brings up the interesting question of, if Hux did get more of a 'personality,' so to speak, would it be considered overkill? Does Hux really need a backstory to explain why he destroyed Hosnian Prime? (I mean, yes, we know _why_ he did it but does he have his own personal reasons beyond what we've been told?) Since he seems to be just a side character that serves as a foil for Kylo, I doubt we'll get it in the movies, but maybe in the form of a comic? I can only hope.  <3 
> 
> Okay, if I say anything more I'm going to spoil something, but if you enjoyed the snarky Hux and Reader banter as much as I enjoyed writing it, there's definitely more of that coming up. ;) Until Thursday, cheers!!


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW content ahead

               “I think you and I got off on the wrong foot,” Hux tells you as you prepare dinner for him the next night, but you just shake your head as you stir your meal around in a skillet.

               “Pretty sure you’ve already burned that bridge,” you tell him, keeping your tone light and straight to the point. “I still can’t forgive you for what you’ve done to Sadie.”

               Hux just laughs tersely as he shakes his head in disbelief. “And here I thought I had already apologized for that.”

               “Words are meaningless,” you say, keeping your tone firm, but lacking any real venom. “Besides, it’s not me you’d have to apologize to, it’s her, and I very much doubt you’ll ever be in the position to be in the same room again.”

               Hux seems to consider this a moment before he looks up at you. “Do you miss her?”

               You shrug your shoulders. In truth, you hadn’t really thought about it. You hadn’t seen Sadie since you had left for the Resistance Base, and so much had started to happen between your piloting lessons and your training that you had almost sort of forgotten about Sadie while everything else was going on. Even Ladson wasn’t in your thoughts as much as you would have suspected him to be as of late, but then again, you no longer thought about Poe as often as you once did either. “I try not to think about it,” you tell him truthfully. “I don’t know when I’ll ever get to see them again, if ever, so it’s best not to think about it.”

               “You know, I could always send one of my troops to relay a message,” Hux offers, but he stops talking when you fix him with a steely glare.

               “Yeah, and how exactly do you think she’ll react if one of your Storm Troopers walks through the door?” you ask him dryly. “She’ll probably have a panic attack or, I don’t know, but it’s not worth it.”

               Hux tilts his head to the side in consideration. “I am simply trying to be helpful.”

               “Yeah,” you say bitterly as you turn the flame off on the stove and start dishing your food out onto two separate plates. “You want to enlighten me exactly as to why? What are you trying to get out of me? I think it’s already pretty apparent that you have nothing that I want.”

               “Conversation,” Hux tells you, and you can’t help but make a face as you hand him a plate. “In case you haven’t noticed, this place is exceedingly dull.”

               “You’re bored?” you ask flatly as you come around to sit down with your own plate of food. “Seriously? Don’t you have other things that you can be doing? Like, First Order strategies and stuff you can be planning out?”

               Hux just shakes his head. “I need feedback,” he explains. “I work better when I have someone to relay my ideas to. As arrogant and conceited as you may think me to be, I do value feedback. Everyone has a specific skill set, and my job is knowing how to utilize the skills of everyone in my charge as effectively as possible.”

               “Okay,” you say after a moment. “I’ll indulge you and have a conversation with you, but first we need to set up a few ground rules.” Hux just gestures towards you with one hand as he starts to eat, and you watch him carefully. “First, we can’t talk about the First Order. That’s strictly off the table, as is anything about the Resistance or the Republic, unless you think it would be information that I would be very interested in hearing.”

               “Then what would you like to talk about?” Hux asks, and you shrug your shoulders as you turn back to your food.

               “Anything you want,” you reply simply. “It really doesn’t matter to me. I’m at least capable of keeping myself company.”

               Hux is silent for a few moments as he seems to think things over. “The First Order-“

               “Were you not-“

               “The First Order intercepted a holo of that battle you had against that Jedi girl from the Resistance,” Hux says, and you freeze, your fork hovering in midair in front of your face. “The one that General Organa staged for the Republic? I watched it over with Phasma. We were both quite impressed with your skills.”

               “Thank you,” you say, keeping a cautious air in your voice. You had no idea why Hux would want to watch a holo of your skills with a lightsaber with Phasma, unless he really was determined to recruit you to the First Order.

               “A lightsaber staff with two blades is a rare thing,” Hux goes on. “I have only heard of a few lightsabers in all of existence that have two blades. Did you design your staff with that in mind?”

               “Basically,” you tell him. “Although you really should thank Phasma for that. If she had never given me a staff on the Starkiller Base, I would never have gotten so skilled with it, and then Rey would never have helped me build a lightsaber staff.”             

               “Rey?” Hux repeats, and you suddenly flinch, fearing that you’ve said too much. “So she’s the one who taught you how to build a lightsaber?” You nod your head stiffly, and Hux hums, as if he figured as much. “Do they make a lot of them? At the Resistance?”

               “What?” you ask him, taken aback by his question. “No, she-“ You pause, looking him over. “You mean, do they have the materials to make a plethora of lightsabers? Are they making enough to furnish an army of Jedi? Is that what you’re really asking?”

               “I’m only trying to make polite conversation,” Hux tells you. “If you feel that I am encroaching on forbidden territory, then by all means, choose not to answer.”

               You stare him down. “I’m not sure,” you say at length. “I don’t think they build a lot of lightsabers, considering the last known natural source of Kyber crystals was the Starkiller Base, but I don’t know. I don’t know even know the Resistance base’s layout half as well as I did for the Starkiller Base, not that it’s still around.” You shake your head as you think it over. “And, anyway, I don’t even know for sure. Remember, it’s been years since I lived on the Resistance base. A lot can change in that time.”

               “Fair,” Hux relents. “You know, I was always of the opinion that you should have headed back to the Resistance after Ren brought you here.”

               “What?” you ask sharply as you turn to him, but Hux simply shrugs.

               “I thought you could have proved much more useful to us as a spy for the First Order, especially considering your relationship with Commander Dameron,” Hux continues. “Of course Ren wouldn’t hear of it, and once we learned that the Republic held you just as responsible for his escape as Phasma was, Ren insisted there was little point in sending you back, lest you be imprisoned by the Republic as well.”

               “There are so many things wrong with that,” you say as you shake your head. “For one, you’re right, Kylo would never just risk my life like that. It’d be a stupid gamble to take, and I can tell you right now that it wouldn’t have been worth it. And besides, whatever you think went on between me and their Commander is probably fabricated by your own imagination. We were friends first, and we barely spoke about the Resistance, and if we did, it was definitely not of military strategies or anything you’d be interested in knowing.”

               “Possibly,” Hux says with a shrug of his shoulders. “Although Phasma did seem to indicate that you had flown in his X-Wing with him at one time.”

               “Just as friends,” you insist. “I knew him as Poe Dameron, not Commander Dameron or Black Leader or whatever else you want to call him. He taught me how to pilot several ships and then, I don’t know.” You let your voice trail off, unsure of how to really continue from that point.

               “And then you became involved with him?” Hux asks, and you narrow your eyes at him.

               “I don’t know why you seem to be so concerned about my relationship with him,” you say, before letting the corners of your lips quirk upwards into a sneer. “Are you jealous?”

               Hux laughs openly at this, but you’re not quite sure if it makes you feel better or worse about the situation. Hux should have known that you belonged to Kylo quite implicitly, but you couldn’t help but wonder if there was another reason he kept bringing up Poe. “If you really must know,” Hux says after he takes a sip of his stiff drink. “I am simply trying to gauge how invested he would be in your rescue if we ever decided to use you as, ah, bait.”

               “Kylo would never allow it,” you tell him fiercely. “And in any case, Poe knows I am strong and he knows I would never ask for any help. If you’re looking for someone to play the damsel in distress so he can swoop in out of the sky and rescue them, it’s sure as hell not going to be me. He would never fall for it, Kylo would never allow it; it’s a stupid plan.”

               “As I said,” Hux says lightly, and if you’re not mistaken, an edge of gloat to his voice. “I am open to alternative suggestions.”

               “I’m not helping you with this,” you tell him firmly. “I’m not helping with anything.”

               “Unless Ren asks you to?” Hux asks, and you hesitate for a moment.

               “The point is, Ren wouldn’t actually ask me to do anything,” you tell him. “He’d want to take care of things himself. He doesn’t want to get me involved.”

               “Because he thinks you might get hurt?” Hux asks, as if he genuinely wants to know. “Does he think you’re not as powerful as he is?”

               “He knows I am more than capable of handling myself,” you retort firmly. “But that doesn’t mean he wants to risk it.”

               “But yet he would risk his son’s life?” Hux asks you. “After all, while the mission I’ve sent them on isn’t, in itself, that dangerous, there’s always the risk they can be captured or shot down by the Republic, and what would you do then?”

               “Kill you,” you snap angrily. “If Kylo is gone, if Ani is gone, then there is nothing left for me to care about, and I will kill you and then, I don’t know, probably myself, but not before I make sure I run the First Order into the ground and destroy as much of it as I possibly can.”

               “How noble,” Hux says, but there’s that cocky, superior sneer of good humor in his voice and you can’t believe that you have let Hux get under your skin once again.

               “You know what?” you say as you jump to your feet. “For the next few days, you’re on your own. I’m not going to keep you company, I’m not going to cook you dinner, because you insufferable, and you’re not even trying. The only thing you want to do is get on my nerves and it’s working.”

               Hux just lets out a small laugh. “If you are this easily frazzled, how on earth do you keep up with Ren?”

               “ _Ren_ doesn’t try to torment me or make me second guess myself or do whatever it is that you do,” you tell him sharply. “ _Ren_ is a much better person than you believe him to be, but I can understand why you wouldn’t see it.”

               “Fair enough,” Hux says, and he seems to relent his position. “I thought you could be a valuable asset to the First Order, but I am beginning to think that you are just as reckless and volatile as he is, and I believe I can only control one of you at a time.”

               “You do not control me,” you snap. “You will never control me, and when Kylo and Ani get back, please do everyone a favor and stay the hell away from my family. You may have to work with Kylo on whatever First Order business you’re attending to, but my son will remain out of this. Is that clear?”

               “As you wish,” Hux says delicately, so delicately, that it infuriates you all the more. You purse your lips together as you let a silent scream echo in your throat as you stride past him and march up the stairs to your room, slamming the door shut behind you with the Force as you throw yourself down on the bed like a toddler. You hated Hux, holy _fuck_ , you hated Hux, and you weren’t quite sure how exactly he had gotten such control over you until something literally clicked in your brain.

               The last time you remembered feeling this angry was when you were back on the Starkiller Base, in Kylo Ren’s private quarters, beating a chair against a wall until it came apart in your hands, and that’s when something clicks in your brain. You had never been sure whether it was Kylo’s anger that you had been feeling, or if it had been your anger towards the situation, and that’s when you realize that it had been both. Kylo had been livid with Hux for some reason or another at the time, and you had felt irate and powerless thinking about how Hux had been abusing Sadie without being able to do anything about it and the combined anger had thrown you into a rage that you had never before experienced in your life. Was that the moment when it had happened? You had assumed that the Force bond had slowly developed over time, but suddenly you were wondering if it had been steadily growing until something snapped together and cemented the connection forever...

               …but was your combined hatred for Hux really enough to do it? Did you really have Hux to thank for establishing the Force bond that tied you to Kylo Ren completely? It almost seemed unfathomable to believe, but that had been the first time you had felt Kylo’s power flowing through your veins. At that point, the bond between you was still fresh and you hadn’t really realized it for what it was, but maybe that had been the final seal that tied you both together. You were both bound not only for your connection through the Force and your feelings for each other, but because of your hatred for Hux?

               No.

               You couldn’t believe it.

               You would not.

               Nevertheless, the next two days passed inevitably slowly as you waited for Kylo Ren to return. You didn’t leave the room, didn’t venture outside, not even down to the kitchen to grab a small morsel of food. Your stomach growled, but your pride was worth much more to you than an empty stomach, and you would show Hux that you weren’t weak, even if that meant starving yourself to prove some stupid point. By the time Kylo finally returned home, you were sitting on the floor of the balcony with your arms crossed over your chest and your legs spread wide in front of you, hungry, a little bit cold, and all sorts of cranky.

               “Hux told me that you were quite insufferable,” Kylo tells you without any sort of preamble as he joins you on the balcony, and you turn your neck stiffly to the side as you look at him.

               “I would come over and kiss you but I think I’m too tired to move,” you tell him while Kylo chuckles. “Then again, that’s actually kind of strange, considering I haven’t really moved all day.”

               “Phasma is downstairs cooking you something as we speak,” Kylo says as he places his hand on your upper thigh. “Hux said he was quite concerned about you.”

               “Man, fuck Hux,” you say, and Kylo’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Not literally, I mean…” You let your voice trail off as Kylo kisses you firmly on the lips, brushing your hair out of your face, and you can’t help but smile as you close your eyes. Kylo comes to sit beside you and pulls you onto his lap, letting you bury your face in the side of his neck like a little kid. He’s warm, and it’s a solace against the cool breeze around you. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re finally back.”

               “I know,” Kylo says softly as he smooths back your hair. “And I think you’ll be pleased to know that I don’t plan on going anywhere for a while.”

               “Hooray,” you say lightly, but your voice cracks mid-word, and you wrinkle your nose up in confusion, surprised at how quickly your voice had deteriorated from disuse.

               “Do you want to talk about what happened?” Kylo asks you, genuine concern ebbing into his voice. “What did Hux say to you?”

               “Lots of stuff,” you reply as you idly pick your brain back through the conversations you had with him over the course of the past few days, trying to see what stood out in your mind. “Although I think it was mostly bullshit. Did Hux ever have a wife and son that were massacred by the Republic?” Kylo’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise and you slump back down into him. “I fucking knew it. He’s such a liar.”

               “I don’t know,” Kylo admits, and your entire body stiffens. “I doubt it, but I suppose it would technically be possible.”

               “Would you _know_ though?” you insist, and Kylo tilts his head to the one side so he can study you better.

               “How would I know?” he asks, as if he’s genuinely curious, and you let out a long sigh.

               “I don’t know,” you murmur after a moment. “I guess I just figured that if Hux was involved with someone, it would just be common knowledge, that’s all. Then again, I could see why he wouldn’t want to talk to you about it, of all people.”

               “Rumors spread quickly,” Kylo tells you. “But there’s often little truth to them, more often than not. There were rumors circulating that you betrayed me, that you ran back to the Resistance, rumors that I hunted you down and killed both you and my son in cold blood.”

               Something about this makes your blood run cold, and you involuntarily shudder as Kylo wraps his arms around you. “Did people really say that about you?” you ask quietly. “Do people really think you’d be able to do such a thing?”

               “It seems they do,” Kylo replies, and you think this over, silently ignoring the fact that Kylo had killed his own father and had committed probably hundreds to thousands of other atrocities.

               “What if those rumors make it back to the Resistance though?” you ask him. “What if the Resistance captures one of your Troopers and makes them talk and that’s what they tell them? That they heard that you had killed me and Ani?”

               Kylo just laughs quietly to himself as he shakes his head back and forth, but you fail to see what would be so funny to him. “And do you think anyone at the Resistance would believe them?” Kylo asks, and you contemplate this silently as you consider his point. “The Republic, perhaps, but my mother was able to sense how much you and our son meant to me. She knows I would not be capable of causing you any harm.”

               “You killed her husband, though,” you say quietly, immediately regretting the words as soon as they had left your lips. You didn’t want to remind Kylo of his malicious patricide, but the words had just sort of slipped out, carried off by the breeze as Kylo seems to consider what you said. The moments of silence stretch on longer and longer, and you cuddle closer into him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you of that. I know you would never cause harm to either Ani or myself; I know that, implicitly.”

               Kylo doesn’t say anything as he bows his head to kiss you again, and you adjust yourself on his lap so that you are straddling him. You push your lips together languidly, one hand resting in his thick dark hair as you take him in, glad that he was really back. You can’t help but press a small smile to your lips as you recline your cheek on his shoulder, burying your face into his neck. “I’m so glad you’re back,” you tell him quietly, and as he wraps both of his large arms around you, you shut your eyes and embrace the feeling of comfort that you were finally right where you belonged, that you were finally home.

               “Did anything else happen while we were gone?” Kylo asks, and you shrug your shoulders uncomfortably.

               “I don’t know,” you reply. “Hux wanted me to join the First Order. Apparently he intercepted a holo of the fight I had with Rey at the Resistance, the one Leia put on for the Republic?” Kylo nods his head, remembering your memory. “At first he said I was powerful, and then he said I’d be good bait to use if they ever wanted to lure Poe into a trap, and then he said I was as volatile as you were and that he could only control one of us at a time.”

               Kylo lets out a brief snort of laughter, brushing his hair back away from his face with one large hand. “He’s trying to manipulate you,” Kylo tells you. “Surely you must see that.” You don’t answer, and Kylo continues. “He told you that you were powerful to appeal to your pride, to see if that was a way he could manipulate you into doing what he asked. When you turned him down the first time, he reduced your level of usefulness to bait, and when you still weren’t interested, he rejected you completely, putting you in the position where you would be forced to defend your usefulness to him.”

               “But I didn’t,” you tell him. “I walked away.” 

               “And then you locked yourself in your room and didn’t eat for two days,” Kylo reminds you gently, and you just roll your eyes in exasperation.

               “I didn’t want to see him,” you say as you cross your arms over your chest. “He has a way of getting under my skin and messing with my head. It’s better if I just stay away from him.”

               “I won’t force you to have any contact with him that you don’t want to have,” Kylo agrees. “But you have nothing to fear from him. You are stronger than he is, in every sense of the word.”

               You think this over for a moment before you finally bring yourself to ask the question that you really wanted to ask. “Kylo, do you know how the Force bond connected? Like, did it just get stronger over time or was there a specific event that snapped it into place?”

               Kylo looks surprised for a moment before he seems to consider this for himself, and it’s a few minutes before he speaks again. “Why are you asking?”

               “Well.” You’re still embarrassed with the memory, but right now, answers were more important than your pride. “Remember when I got really angry with Hux for kidnapping Sadie and I destroyed that chair?” Kylo nods his head almost imperceptibly, but you continue all the same. “When that happened, I felt rage like I never had before, and I think that was you, your anger, uninhibited and uncontrolled and-“ You stop talking as you see the look on his face. “Okay, sorry, but I was angry at Hux, and you were angry at Hux, and that’s when I felt you, and your rage, and your power, and what it really felt like to be so weak for the first time, and I just, I don’t know, I don’t know how I’d feel if the Force bond only really cemented together because of our mutual hatred for Hux.”

               “That may be the first time you were influenced by the bond so strongly that you felt as if you lost all control,” Kylo explains patiently. “But for you to reach that level, it means that the Force bond had already connected us, and you were only then being made truly aware of it.”

               “I suppose,” you say with a shrug of your shoulders. Honestly, that had all happened so many years ago that you couldn’t ever really remember a time when you hadn’t had a mastery of the Force, when you hadn’t been able to peek into other people’s thoughts or move things with your mind. For some reason, this thought is sobering, and you clutch onto Kylo just a little tighter, your fingers closing around his signature scarf until the material forms a tight ball underneath your white knuckles. “I don’t ever want to go back to a time before I knew you,” you whisper quietly, more to yourself than anything, and Kylo seems troubled as he plants a kiss on your forehead.

               “I’ll never leave you,” he says, and while he doesn’t promise, he doesn’t have to. You can feel the Force flowing between you, connecting you, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that he had truly become your other half, that only by being with him could you ever truly be whole. You knew that, you supposed you had always known that, otherwise you wouldn’t have really ever forced yourself to wait five years for his return.

               You push yourself back onto him with sudden purpose, your hands fisting in his hair as you press your lips against his with a new sense of urgency. Kylo senses your desperation through your bond and he forces a small smile to his lips as his warm hands slip underneath your shirt. You can feel his fingertips stretching up your spine to your shoulder blades, and you feel yourself become alive under his touch as you wrap your arms around him greedily, deepening the kiss. “I need you,” you tell him, and while it had been true the other times that you had said these three small words to him, it couldn’t be overstated now. Your blood itched for him, and you needed to feel him, not just inside of you, but you needed his voice in your head, proving that you truly had become connected, not by hatred, but by love.

               _I’m yours_ , Kylo whispers, his thoughts floating around yours, and you can’t help but pull him closer to you as you let a pitiful whine escape your lips.

               _I need you, right now, right here,_ you tell him, and Kylo pulls back to break the kiss momentarily.

               _On the balcony?_ he muses, his eyes looking searchingly into your own, and you just nod your head in a quick up and down as Kylo grabs you by the forearms and stands up quickly, pulling you up with him. He turns you around and pushes you forward so that you have to lean forward to grab the balcony railing in both hands as you hear Kylo trying to free himself from his restrictive clothing behind you.

               You study the greenery all around you, and while the area around Phasma’s house had always seemed desolate and remote, you couldn’t help but wonder if someone was watching anyway. _We should make this quick_ , you tell Kylo, and he makes a small grunt of agreement as he jerks your pants down, letting them pool around your ankles.

               _Are you ready for me?_ Kylo asks, but he doesn’t wait for you to answer as he pushes a finger inside of you, testing to see how wet you are. You bite your bottom lip as you let out a whimper, arching your back as you feel him thrust in and out of you.

               “Oh, fuck, Kylo.” You grab the balcony tighter in both hands, holding on as if for dear life as the muscles in your upper arms tense. You roll your head back and off to the side dramatically as Kylo continues pumping one finger in and out of you, and you push your hips back in time to his movement, urging him to go faster as you push against his hand. Kylo keeps going until he’s satisfied before he puts a hand on your lower back and urges you to lower down before he removes his finger from your wet entrance. There’s a brief pause as he sticks his finger in his mouth to taste your sticky juices before he swiftly pushes into you, his large hands braced on either side of you for support.

               _Oh_ fuck _Kylo,_ you repeat as Kylo pushes his full, erect length inside of you, and he stills for a moment as you tremble, just embracing the full feeling of your body accommodating him. His right hand stretches around so that he can tease your clit with his fingertips, and you jerk your head forward so suddenly that you almost thought you would have bashed it straight into the railing. You prop yourself up against your forearms instead, letting your head rest in your hands as Kylo pushes in and out of you, his rhythm accelerating with every new thrust. You wanted to kiss him more than anything right now, wanted to taste your juices against his tongue, but at the same time you loved the way his fingers caressed and teased your clit as you felt yourself building, until you finally collapsed against him, pressing your full weight into his arms as you came around him.

               You wait until Kylo finds his own release and slowly pulls out of you before you spin around and kiss him as hard as you can, pushing all of your love and desperation for him into the small bit of contact between you. Kylo smirks as he kisses you back, his hand reaching up the nape of your neck to tangle his fingers in your thick hair before you feel the cool breeze brush against your bare thighs and suddenly feel extremely exposed, standing on the balcony where you had no idea who, if anyone, could potentially see you.   

               _We should get inside_ , you tell him, not wanting to break the kiss, but Kylo doesn’t respond. Instead, he just scoops you up, one arm behind the crease in your knees and the other supporting your upper back as he carries you bridal-style back inside, letting you drop unceremoniously onto the bed. You laugh as you pull the pants off from around your ankles and pull your shirt off, gesturing for him to do the same. He does, stripping as quickly as he is able, before he finally joins you naked on the bed, wrapping his arms around you as you cuddle into his chest and kiss him, softly, delicately, just savoring the taste of him.

               _No more going anywhere_ , you tell him. _Not without me. Next time you leave me alone with Hux, there will be bloodshed, I can promise you that._

 _You promise?_ Kylo responds, and he breaks the kiss as he looks at you in surprise. “I believe that’s a first.”

               “I mean it,” you tell him, pushing against his chest for emphasis. “I hate him as much as I love you. That should tell you something right there.”

               Kylo just shakes his head. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you or Ani,” he tells you. “Things have been fine so far. As I said, you have nothing to fear from him.”

               You trusted Kylo, implicitly, but in this regard, you just weren’t sure if you could believe him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus ends chapter 19. Hux is clearly wearing down the Reader, but to what end? Is he taunting her merely just to provoke her or is there something more that he's hoping to gain from her? Things really heat up next chapter in a big way so I'm not going to say anything more, lest I spoil it for everyone. Until Saturday, cheers!!
> 
> PS: To everyone who is finishing up with last minute projects and finals, good luck!! And to everyone who's graduating this year, congratulations!! <3


	20. Chapter 20

               It was dark, wherever you were, and there was a strange cloud of blackness that your vision couldn’t quite penetrate. You struggled about, trying to move your arms or legs, but they wouldn’t budge. If anything, you weren’t quite sure if you could feel them. You squeezed your fingers towards your palm, trying to make a fist, but you didn’t feel the familiar points of contact, didn’t feel the smooth skin of the back of your knuckles graze across the fleshy pad of your thumb while your short fingernails dug into the slightly hardened skin of your palm. You had no idea where you were, but wherever this place was, you couldn’t move your body, and the only more distressing thought than that was the current realization that you couldn’t quite remember how you had gotten into this predicament in the first place.

               You tried to think back, tried to remember where you had been last, but the only thing that stuck out in your mind was that you had been in bed with Kylo Ren, not that that was unusual in any way. You had gone to bed next to Kylo Ren almost every night for the past five years, and although there had been times when he had worked all night or was simply away, more often than not, you could simply roll over and feel his presence. Right now, though, you couldn’t feel anything. It almost felt like you were completely smothered in a cocoon, enveloped on all sides by some thick penetrating material that left your body completely frozen, suspended, although for what purpose, you had no idea.

               “You are so very afraid.” You can hear Kylo’s voice, suddenly, and although you can’t see him or feel him, you could hear him, although his voice was not exactly coming from inside your head. No, you could physically hear his voice, soft, and gentle, as if he was whispering the words into your ear. You let his voice come back to you again, _“You are so very afraid,”_ but you’re not quite sure what he means or why he had said them. You were confused as to how you had gotten into this situation, yes, but you didn’t exactly feel as though you were in enough danger to warrant fear.

               “Kylo, where are you?” you whisper quietly. Your voice comes out painful to your ears, like a burst of static, and you immediately grit your teeth and scrunch your eyes shut as you brace yourself against the sudden jolt of pain. Wherever you were, your voice was suddenly not your friend. _Kylo, what is going on? What is happening to me?_

“You are about to be tested.” This voice is different, much different, older, gentler, with some sort of relaxed authority, and you recognize it immediately even though you were sure you had only heard it once or twice before.

               _Ben Kenobi,_ you whisper inside your own head, not trusting your voice again. _What sort of test is this? Is this like the one you gave me before, because I think I failed that one. I couldn’t protect him and Kylo took us from the Resistance base._

“There are many paths that we may take in life, but much fewer destinies,” Ben tells you, and you puzzle over this for a moment, trying to figure out what the hell he means.

               _Okay,_ you say slowly, drawing out the syllables in your mind. _That doesn’t actually give me any answers, though._

Suddenly, a different voice pops into your mind. “He’s going to show you something.” You feel someone take a step towards you, and for a moment you think you can picture their cocky swagger as they stroll forward. You’re not sure how you know at once that this is Anakin Skywalker, but it is, you can _feel_ it. “These are things that have already happened, may happen, may come to pass. It’s a warning, possibly, if you choose to see it that way.”

               “Are these things that will happen if I let things carry on the way they are?” you ask, suddenly trusting your voice again. “Or is this something that’s going to require my influence in order to change?”

               “I can’t answer that,” Anakin tells you, but he doesn’t sound the least bit regretful. “It’s all about what you want. How far you’re prepared to go.”

               “In what way?” you ask. “Is this about Kylo? About Ani?”

               Anakin is silent for a moment before his voice comes to you, but it’s much fainter this time. “I guess you’ll see.”

               “Wait, Anakin-“ You call out, but suddenly it feels as though your body is being launched through hyperspace, and although you can’t physically see anything, suddenly it almost seems as though colors are swarming at the edge of your vision, although they disappear as you try to get a direct look at them. They twist around you until there’s something there, you’re sure of it, you’re sure that your vision is starting to take hold again, and as tiny pigments start to dot together to clear away the darkness in front of you, they link together like a mosaic until you see a scene playing out in front of you. Even still, you can’t help but feel detached from it somehow, like it’s something that you’re experiencing while you’re both there and not there by the same hand.

               There’s a door in front of you, but you don’t recognize it as a door until it eventually pulls open, and you see a figure standing in front of the open doorway. The room that you’re in is so dark and the light outside is so blinding that you can only make out a thicker shadow, although you can’t tell who exactly who it is. You think you can see a flash of orange, and you think you can make out the familiar outline of a flight suit accompanied with their signature white vest, but the figure is a bit taller and larger than Poe, unless he had put on a significant amount of weight while you were gone.

               “We’ve captured Kylo Ren.” The voice is male, and full of authority, and immediately your heart drops into your chest as you can feel sweat collecting on your palms. “We’re here to take you and Anakin back to the Resistance.”

               “No,” you tell him. “No, I’m not going anywhere. You don’t have Kylo, you can’t, this isn’t real.”

               But your words don’t matter, and as a brief wave of nausea rises out of the depths of your stomach, you close your eyes briefly to try to steady yourself against the sensation. When you open your eyes again, you find yourself suddenly standing in a room with grey walls, Ani in front of you. You’re not quite sure exactly where you are, as this doesn’t look like anything you’ve ever seen before on the Resistance Base or Naboo, or even one of the planets that you had visited. It almost looks like a military installation of some kind, and for a moment you think it almost looks like one of the rooms aboard the Starkiller Base before you push that notion away. “I want to go back, mother,” he tells you, and for a moment you’re surprised by how much older he looks, although he doesn’t physically look any different. “I want to go back to the Resistance. I want to help; I want to fight alongside them. I can use the Force to be a better man than my father ever was. I have friends there, and you did too, once, before you turned your back on them.”

               “What are you talking about?” you ask him, blinking as you shake your head in disbelief. “I didn’t turn my back on anyone. Kylo took me away and then I stayed because the Republic made sure to put a bounty on my head. They were the ones who wanted to make sure that I didn’t come back.”

               “That’s not what you told him,” Ani tells you, and for a brief second you’re momentarily dumbfounded, trying to figure out who he means or what you had said. You’re about to ask who he’s talking about when suddenly the scene changes again. This scene is quite different than the one before, in a few different ways. For one, you recognize this place immediately. This is the bedroom that you had on the Resistance base, but you’re not alone here. Poe is standing in front of you in his familiar leather jacket and white tee shirt, his expression somber. It’s the first time that you had physically seen him again in years, and you can feel your heart immediately lurch in your chest before you realize that you are standing almost behind yourself, and you can hear your own voice talking to him with words that you could never imagine actually speaking to him.  

               “It never would have worked out,” you tell him. “I love Kylo, and I’m not sorry for it. We have a bond that you couldn’t possibly understand, and I could never love anyone like I love him.”

               Poe just bows his head as he shakes it from side to side, as if this was something he had known all along but hadn’t really wanted to hear put to him so bluntly. “I figured as much,” he says at length. “I just want you to know that I don’t hold it against you.”

               You can feel yourself, the other version of yourself, push a smile to your lips as you watch yourself take a step towards him. “One last kiss, though? For old time’s sake?”

               He takes a step back, away from you, and you can feel the flare of confusion rise up in your chest on both accounts. “I’m involved with someone,” he tells you, and the flare of confusion immediately ebbs to a bitter wave of jealousy. You don’t say anything, don’t want to call attention to yourself, but you don’t know what you’re seeing and you don’t like it, not one bit. As true as they were, these weren’t words that you wanted to be saying to him, not even in a dreamscape. You loved Kylo, but to tell Poe that it definitely would never have worked between you when you both had never really given what you had a proper chance? That wasn’t something you wanted to think about now, or ever.

               The scene seems to hover there for a moment, as if waiting for your reaction, and as you lock on Poe’s face again, as your eyes sweep over his features, you can’t help but feel your heart go out to him. This was the first time you had seen him in years, and the last time you had seen him, you had been trying to save his life. At that point, you _had_ wanted to stay with him. You had wanted to stay on the Resistance base and have a life with him, and although you had no idea how differently your life would have been if you had, at this point, you were absolutely sure of only one thing. “I really miss you,” you whisper quietly. “I don’t regret how things played out with Kylo, but sometimes I just really wish you were here.” Suddenly you feel your stomach drop as the scene pulls away and Poe disappears yet again, disappearing from your vision for perhaps forever.

               “He’s gone,” Leia tells you, and there’s tears brimming in her eyes as she says it. She’s back in the command center, and it doesn’t surprise you in the least to see her there. “He’s already been extradited to the Republic and they’re not going to risk him escaping again. He’s going to be executed by the end of the day. I’ve pleaded my case to the Senate numerous times, I’ve tried to do everything in my power to save him, but it’s just not enough.”

               “Send me there,” you tell her. “Send me there and I’ll free him. I don’t care what it takes, I’ll save him or I’ll die trying.”

               Her expression freezes as she looks up at you. “Can’t you feel it? It’s already too late.”

               Suddenly time seems to fast forward and you see yourself leaving the base, heading back in a ship towards your old academia, by yourself. You knew implicitly that Ani wanted to stay behind with them, but now that Kylo was gone and Poe had moved on, it hardly seemed like the place for you, and with nowhere else to go, you went back to the only other place that you had ever truly considered to be a home.

               But as you arrived, you found yourself going through the motions as if on fast-forward, although you couldn’t tell if you were going through the motions or simply watching yourself go through the motions directly behind yourself, as if peering over your own shoulder. You walked up to the door to Sadie’s shop, and, finding it locked, you decided to walk over to your old house. Ladson lived there now, you could sense that, implicitly, he was living there with someone who had once also lived at the Resistance base with you, although you could never quite recall seeing him before. You couldn’t really see him now, he was nothing more than a shadow in your mind, and you wondered why you weren’t getting snippets of dialogue like you had been before. If anything, this vision seemed the haziest of them all.

               You could see them all outside, Ladson and this other person from the Resistance standing almost shoulder to shoulder as they talked to Sadie and some other person that was also like a shadow, presumably someone you had never met before. Sadie’s hair was slightly longer now, and if you weren’t mistaken, she looked like she had gained some weight, her stomach looked a bit rounder, and that’s when you realize that she’s pregnant. Your eyes immediately jump to the shadow that was now talking and gesturing with his hands, and you idly wonder if Sadie had found a husband and was now expecting. You had disappeared, and they had both moved on with their lives, finding other people and starting normal lives and families of their own.

               Suddenly everything clicks into place. You weren’t needed anymore. Kylo was gone. He didn’t need you anymore, simply because he wasn’t around anymore himself. Ani didn’t need you anymore, as he had decided to fight for the Resistance instead, something that you couldn’t bring yourself to do anymore, especially now that it was clear that Poe had moved on as well. Leia had needed you to stay before in order to help capture Kylo, but again, with him gone, you had served your purpose. And now that Ladson and Sadie were off living lives of their own, there was no one that needed you. You were alone. You were really truly alone.

               “I don’t want this,” you call out suddenly. “I don’t want this, I don’t want any of this, please make this stop. Please just make this stop.” You can feel hot tears brimming in your eyes and you shut them tightly as you feel your fists clench to your sides. “Please, stop, okay, I’ll admit it, I’m afraid of this happening, I’m weak and I’m afraid, just please don’t show me anymore, I don’t want to see anything like this.”

               “As you wish.” The voice sounds close, too close, and you blink as you open your eyes to see a man standing in front of you. He’s dressed all in black, with wavy light brown hair down to his shoulders, and he’s wearing a cocky grin on his face that looks almost boyish. There’s something familiar about his features, a familiar spark that you had seen in Kylo’s eyes only a handful of times before, and that’s when you suddenly realize who you’re looking at.

               “It’s good to finally have a face to put to the name,” you tell him quietly, and Anakin smiles as he looks down before he looks back at you.

               “You’re afraid you’re going to lose your family,” Anakin tells you, and his voice has a tender edge of vulnerability to it. “Believe me when I tell you that I know what that’s like. I would have done anything to protect my family.”

               “And that’s when you fell to the dark side,” you say, and Anakin nods his head stiffly. “I haven’t forgotten what you said. That I’m tempted by the dark side? That I won’t be able to protect Ani?”

               Anakin just shrugs as if this doesn’t make a difference to him. “The light cannot exist without the dark,” he explains. “Fear is not necessarily a weakness. It can be a motivator, if you so choose to see it that way. It’s all in the manner in which we choose to perceive things.”

               You tilt your head to the side, as if trying to understand him. “So what you just showed me, that wasn’t a vision of what will actually happen, is it? You’re using my fear to motivate me, to try to get me to…” Your voice trails off, as that part wasn’t exactly apparent to you.

               “To get what you want,” Anakin tells you, his voice suddenly rough and commanding. “If you want your family, you’re going to have to fight for it and protect it by any means necessary.”

               “Even if that means going over to the dark side?” you ask him, your voice soft and nervous. “I thought Kylo has already turned away from that path.”

               “Two paths can be intertwined but still be separate,” Anakin tells you. “You each will face your own trials, in turn. Some obstacles are already behind you, but others will always lie ahead, and you need to make sure you’re ready for them when they come.”

               “I’ll be ready,” you tell him, your voice taking on a firm note of resolution that you had never quite heard from yourself before. “With your guidance, I’ll be ready to do whatever it takes to protect them.”

               Anakin’s lip quirks upward into a smirk, almost the exact same way as Kylo’s usually did, and it’s this last thought that crosses through your mind before you open your eyes and find yourself on your bed back on Naboo, staring up at the alabaster ceiling above you. For a moment you try to place your surroundings, try to figure out if that had really been a vision or some kind of really bizarre dream, when you prop yourself up on your elbows to see a figure standing at the edge of your bed.

               You let out a strangled cry and then immediately sink your forehead into your palm as you see Ani standing there, watching you sleep. “Okay, do I need to tell you how creepy that is?”

“Sorry,” Ani says quickly. “I just felt something. I wanted to make sure that you were okay.”

               “I had a really weird dream, that’s all,” you tell him, but suddenly you put two and two together as you realize that there had to be a reason Ani was standing at the foot of your bed. “Did you know what happened in my dream?”

               “No,” Ani replies, and as his forehead creases in confusion, you’re thankful that he’s telling the truth. “Like I said, I felt as though something was _off_.”

               “I had a weird dream,” you repeat as you sit up, rubbing at the bridge of your nose with one hand. “Or a Force vision.” Ani seems to wait for you to continue. “I think I finally met Anakin Skywalker.”

               Ani smiles gently, and you’re glad to see that his lips didn’t quirk upwards in that signature smirk that was starting to appear to be a family trait. “If you saw him then it means he wants to help.”

               “It’d be a little easier if he gave me directions,” you tell him, not without a touch of irritation in your voice. “It’s a lot of talk about paths and destiny, but not exactly a lot of useful information to actually help me figure out what he wants me to do.”

               “It’s a warning,” Ani tells you. “He only opens himself up to you when things are about to change.”

               “Change?” you repeat, raising your eyebrows in surprise. “Good change or bad change?”

               “I don’t think he really knows,” Ani explains. “I think that’s for you to decide, like when father took us from the Resistance base. Something is going to happen beyond your control, and only you can decide where to go from there.”

               As you think it over in your head, you can’t deny that it made sense. This wasn’t a warning about anything that you, specifically, needed to do differently, but it was a warning that something was about to change, and you had to be ready for it. It was a reminder to figure out what you really cared about, what really mattered to you, a cruel lesson to help you reevaluate your priorities. You wanted to keep Ani close. You wanted to keep Kylo safe. You missed Poe, but overall, you didn’t really feel like there was a place for you back at the Resistance, or back on your old academia. No, you needed your family, and as always, you would do anything to protect them. Not that you would have done anything differently if you hadn’t been granted this vision, but you couldn’t deny that if Anakin was giving you his counsel, then you probably needed it, even if you weren’t quite sure what it was that you were supposed to do or not do.

               “Do you know where Kylo is?” you ask Ani as you look up at him. “I think I should talk to him about this.”

               “He’s downstairs in the back with Hux and Phasma,” Ani tells you. “They were having some sort of secret meeting that they didn’t want me to be in on. I went downstairs to see father about something, and Hux told me off.”

               You get a momentary flash of anger at Hux, but you can’t help but think that it’s a distraction from the question that you really need to be asking. “What did you want to see him about?” you ask him. “Anything important? Did you have a dream of your own?”

               “I dream a lot,” Ani says with a small laugh. “Sometimes I can’t tell if they are simply dreams or visions, but it wasn’t anything important. I would tell you if it was.”

               You can’t help but smile and shake your head in silent appreciation. Ani was your son, through and through, and while you figured you would eventually have to let him go off on his own and do his own thing, you weren’t ready to let him go for quite a few years yet. You weren’t quite sure if there was anything you had left that you could teach him, he seemed to be quite learned and capable and mature in his own right without you consciously remembering how he had gotten to be that way, but if nothing else, he was your son, and you weren’t about to let that go.

               “I don’t know when’s the last time I told you how proud of you I am, so this is me saying it again,” you tell him, and Ani rolls his eyes. “No, Ani, listen. I know things weren’t easy growing up without your father around, but you tried, I really saw you try, especially when we got to the Resistance base. You missed him, but you were determined not to let that hold you back from anything, didn’t let that hold you back from moving on and living your life, and that helped me to do the same.”

               “I was just a kid,” Ani says with a shrug of his shoulders. “Don’t read too much into it.”

               “Doesn’t matter,” you say, echoing his shrug. “Once Kylo came back for us and brought us here, it was you who wanted us to stay here and wanted us to give him a chance again. We wouldn’t still be here if it wasn’t because of you, I want you to know that. You helped keep this family together and I’m proud of you for that.”

               Ani rolls his shoulders uncomfortably again as he averts his eyes, and if you’re not mistaken, you can almost see a blush rising to his cheeks. “Dad’s downstairs if you want to talk to him,” he tells you. “Although Hux seemed pretty insistent that whatever they’re talking about is pretty top secret.”

               “It’s our house,” you tell him simply. “Hux is just a guest here, and he’d be wise to watch his words.”

               “Well, it’s Phasma’s house,” Ani corrects you, and you just shrug your shoulders.

               “It’s our house,” you repeat. “And I don’t know about you, but I’m sure as hell not going to let Hux think he can boss us around in our own home, right?”

               “Father told me it would be smart to humor him,” Ani tells you, and you can’t help but roll your eyes. You could understand why Kylo would want to avoid any unnecessary drama, but you were not going to let yourself live in fear of Hux, especially now that both Kylo and Ani were back. You may have locked yourself up in your room for two days to avoid him, but you were not about to look weak in front of your son, or Kylo, for that matter. You were not going to let Hux push you around.

               “Yes, well, your _father_ just doesn’t want to have to deal with his complaining night and day,” you tell him. “Fortunately, I have no such fear.”

               Ani seems to study you for a moment. “You and great-grandfather would have gotten along well,” he says after a moment, and you take a quick pause in order to consider this.

               “Don’t say that around Kylo,” you say with finality. “I have no idea how he would react if he were to hear you say that.”

               Ani just smiles good naturedly. “Good luck,” he tells you before he heads back down the hall to his own room, and you sit up with a start, throwing the blankets off of your legs as you swing them around and out of the bed. You pause for a moment, sitting on the edge, before you push yourself up onto the balls of your feet and scamper around the room, getting dressed as quickly as possible. You head into the bathroom and wash your face with cool water before you run your hair through your fingers, trying to get it under control before you faced them. If you were going to interrupt whatever sort of meeting they had going on, you didn’t want to look like you had literally just rolled out of bed.

               But as you stare at your reflection in the mirror, you can’t deny that you’re nervous. You didn’t want to face Hux again, if you could help it, and while Phasma was there to take at least some of the burden off, you were worried about Kylo. You didn’t think he would criticize you in front of Hux, or tell you off, but then again, you couldn’t rightly be sure how eager he would want to make it look like he was trying to fall back into Hux’s favor. Their animosity had always been quickly apparent, but at the same time, they still had a working relationship of sorts. It was required of them in order to guarantee a future for the First Order, and you guessed more often than not that Phasma’s sole purpose between them was to simply play peacekeeper.

               Regardless, you push all of your fears behind you as you head down the stairs, past the kitchen, into the small den that stood behind the dining room table, where three small loveseats were set up in a U-shape around a small coffee table, mimicking the design pattern of the living room. There was a holo of some section of the galaxy on the table, but you didn’t look too closely at it. Hux sat on the couch with his back against the wall, while Kylo sat at the corner with his back towards the glass doors leading outside, with Phasma sitting across from him. You try to keep your pace even as you approach them, not wanting to seem like you were rushing in, but not wanting to casually stroll into the room either.

               “Hi there,” you say genially, with a quick wave of your hand, and Kylo merely glances in your direction before he looks away again, as if he was not happy to see you there. You shrug it off as Hux turns to face you, all pleasantries from the last time you saw him gone.

               “Do you need something?” he barks, and it doesn’t take you long to figure out that Hux and Kylo have not been getting along.

               “I want to talk to Kylo,” you say evenly, crossing your arms over your chest to show that you could not, would not, be intimidated by him.

               “We’ll be done in a few minutes,” Kylo says quietly, waving his hand in an almost shooing gesture, and you narrow your eyes as you walk over and plop yourself decidedly onto the seat behind him, putting your feet up against the edge of the table as you cross your arms tightly across your chest.

               “That’s okay, I can wait then,” you say, ignoring the pointed look that Phasma gives you as you turn your head towards Hux. “Please, continue.”

               Hux narrows his eyes at you and gives you a long, piercing look before he finally turns back to the holo in front of him, zooming in on a planet in the Western Reaches. “This is Kimra-7,” he explains. “We’ve suffered heavy casualties here as well. Our soldiers are struggling to adapt to the heavy atmospheric conditions of the climate, and the species that live there are quite unlike anything we’ve ever had to deal with before. These creatures-“

               “Kimraya,” you interrupt him, and Hux turns to glare at you as Kylo puts a hand on your thigh, silently urging you to be quiet.

               “These _creatures_ ,” Hux continues. “Seem to be extremely agile, evading most attempts of slaughter or capture.” You tilt your head to the side in consideration, wondering why he was having so much trouble with them when he just admitted that he was trying to slaughter them. If he knew anything about their culture, he would know that the Kimraya were mostly a mostly peaceful species that didn’t care much for the affairs of the galaxy going on around them. Even still, that made them even more fiercely territorial over their own planet, and you could imagine that they were giving the First Order Storm Troopers all sorts of trouble as they tried to invade their homeland.

               You don’t voice your thoughts, instead taking delight in Hux’s frustrations, until you notice a troubling pattern. Hux goes through planet after planet in different systems of the galaxy, explaining how little progress they made on some, how they are currently suffering through a stalemate on others, and going through a list of bases they had to completely abandon after they had sustained heavy losses and could no longer supply troops to maintain an adequate defense. You can’t help but snicker as you listen to him profess total ignorance as to why they were losing so badly, why they had seemingly suffered defeat at every turn, when the answer was staring him right in the face. Hux’s face turns red as he turns to glare at you, and even Phasma looks on edge as you shrug your shoulders but continue to say nothing. Even still, your shoulders heave up and down with the giggles that you are trying to suppress, and although you bite your lip and say nothing, you can tell that you’re distracting even Kylo now by the way he drops his shoulders and lets out a weary sigh.

               “Ren,” Hux says warningly. “If you can’t get her to control herself-“

               “Control myself?” you demand. “Do you even have any idea-“

               Kylo says your name sharply, and you glare at him as you lower your feet down from the table as you push yourself into more of a seated position. “Maybe it would be best if you were to wait for me upstairs.”

               You hesitate for a moment, and while Kylo avoids your eyes, you can’t help but be incensed by the looks of fatigued annoyance that Phasma and Hux are throwing your way. “Fine,” you snap, and you stand up and take a few quick steps away from them before you pause, your back to them, as you think things over in your head. Something clicks into place, and as a new wave of anger burns through you, you spin around to face them as you march back over to the table.

               “No, not fine,” you exclaim, and Hux’s languid eye roll in front of you only serves to increase your ire.

               “Will you-?” Hux starts, but you don’t give him time to speak.

               “No,” you snap. “But _you_ will sit down and you will listen to what I have to say.” You can feel your anger suddenly pulsing off of you like a heat wave as all three of them stare at you in silent shock. You can see it on all their faces, even Kylo’s, and there is something raw and authoritative, something powerful in your voice that they had never quite heard before. “No, it’s not fine,” you say to them, although you primarily address Hux on the other side of the table. “Because you’re a bunch of idiots. All three of you. Honestly, it’s no wonder why the Republic treated you like such a joke and refused to take you seriously. The only reason that the Resistance did was because of this one-“ You gesture towards Kylo with one hand. “-because your mother knew what her father had done, what you would be capable of doing, if you weren’t so incompetent with your strategies. Seriously, when I was at the Resistance planning the details before I headed off to the _Resolute_ , Ackbar and the rest of generals were making jokes about you and your less than stellar fleet strategy left and right.” Hux can’t help but smirk as he lets his eyes drift towards Kylo, but Kylo himself just looks insulted as he refuses to meet your eyes.

               “You should go,” he says tersely, but you’re not going anywhere.

               “Rhaesheser,” you spit, pointing out the name of a planet and zooming in on its location on the holo. “You want to know why you’ve been defeated there so often, huh, do you? It’s because that planet is home to the Atthirarqoy tribe and do you know what they excel in? Huh? Combat. They speak Qoylekh, and do you know what their name means in their language? Blood life, because that’s all they care about.” You turn to look between Hux and Phasma. “Have your soldiers reported seeing them carry around thick shields that have a central, rigid column that looks like it’s made out of someone’s vertebrae? That’s because they are, because once they get old enough they kill one of their parents to make that shield as a badge of honor. They’re bloodthirsty, and they’re violent, and you’re not going to fucking _reason_ with them by offering them aurodium or lapis or any other form of currency. They can see through all of your _qosar-venikh._ They respect power, and right now, the First Order has none of it. If you can best them in their form of combat, _Lajilat_ , then you may be able to convince them to form some sort of alliance with you, but if you’re looking to wipe them off the face of the galaxy so that you can take whatever resources you’re after from their planet, I can tell you right now that that is not going to happen. They may seem like primitive fighters to you, but they are exceptional warriors in combat and short of glassing their planet, there is no way you’re going to defeat them.” You pause for a moment to catch your breath, focused intently on the holo in front of you as you zoom out and focus on another planet. “And here,” you say as you pull up a lush swamp planet.

               “Sondaria,” you announce. “Once known by a different name. Currently inhabited by Rodians, but it was first colonized during the ancient expansions by an extinct race called the Arkanians. Sound familiar?” Hux just considers you without saying anything, and you take his silence for ignorance. “Okay, fine, since you apparently never bothered to learn, let me educate you on Arkanis Academy’s apparent historical namesake. When it was first colonized several centuries ago, Arkanis Sector was so named because it was meant to be a bastion of order in the Outer Rim. Arkanian culture prized order and civil service above all else, and every citizen triumphed their service above personal comfort, something the Sondarian Roadians inherited. Did you ever notice how the more you seem to gain the upper hand against them, the harder they fight? That’s why Arkanis Academy was so named. Fear will not motivate the Sondarians, and they will never get tired of war, so you have to appeal to their sense of service to a higher cause. They would serve well in an administrative role, and that would free up more of your troops for ground operations.”

               “And here,” you say, focusing the holo elsewhere in the galaxy. “Lamela’s fourth moon. It has a massive gravity well because it’s rich in baradium, but I suppose that’s why you want it. Unfortunately for you, the _primitive_ Lamells discovered it three hundred years ago and are extremely well versed in its properties. They may seem basic to you, but trust me when I tell you that they’re far from primitive considering that scientific advancement is quite _literally_ their currency. Their language doesn’t even have a word for _soldier_ , since they avoid pursuing any and all forms of combat. The only reason they never developed spaceflight is because their planet lacks the natural resources they need to produce repulsors, and to them, you’re just a pesky distraction constantly getting in the way of their progress. If you want to stop losing entire battalions to their precision thermal cores, you’ll have to stop disappointing them with blasters and soldiers and gunships, which _they_ view as primitive, not to mention irresponsible, considering it’s the waste of a life and a brain that could have been put to better uses, better talents, like creating something. The only way you’re going to impress them is with a demonstration of peerless technological mastery, and then invite them to share in it. What’s the most recent commodity your intelligence has reported seeing them trade?”

               You turn to Phasma, specifically, and she looks extremely surprised to hear what she probably assumed was a piece of confidential intel. “They weren’t sure,” she begins hesitantly. “But it looked like the beginnings of dark energy concentrators, likely reverse-engineered from one of my own designs.” She shakes her head briefly from side to side. “But how could you possibly know-?”

               “There you go,” you say quickly, dismissing her concern. You were on a roll, and you didn’t have time to explain that you had spent years studying this information so that you could apparently use it for just this occasion. “What’s your strongest dark energy weapon?” Phasma narrows her eyes at you, and you just let out a sigh. “Okay then, nevermind, it’s probably overkill, knowing you guys. Find some way to boost a very small detonate core with dark energy, like your blaster, Phasma, and drop it in a deserted area visible from one of their cities and then withdraw your troops. In their culture, red is a sign of something akin to academic tenure, so wear a red cloak over your armor and introduce yourself as its chief designer and offer to sell the technology to their society in exchange for scientific labor. Overnight, their highest currencies will be obsolete, and you’ll find swarms of the galaxy’s most brilliant researchers clamoring to work on the First Order’s technology, and if you ever want to build another Starkiller Base or another planet-destroying super weapon, you’ll want them to be in on it so that it’s not quite as easily destructible as the last one.”

               You flip to another planet with an occupied First Order base and can’t help but let out a small laugh as you read the case notes that appeared after you tapped on the small circular icon. “Seriously? Ragore? The Drafain inhabitants, above all else, prize conformity. In childhood, the children are whipped just for speaking a beat out of tempo, and you’ve seen how brutally effective their society is at organizing _anything_ , especially a military. They’ll never stand to be absorbed by the First Order, but they might work with a single military unit headed by one of your most rigorous and pedantic officers. If they’re satisfied that you can truly maintain order amongst yourselves, then they might see the value of forming independent auxiliary battalions to join you in bringing order to the galaxy as a whole, since your ideals seem to line up that way.”

               You do this for a few more planets, pointing out each stronghold and describing a little bit about the communities that reside there. “See?” you tell them as you eventually step away from the holo. “Do you see what I’m talking about? You’re failing because you don’t fucking know anything about anything. You talk this big game about the First Order and all its power, but you’re missing one fundamental fucking fact. The First Order relies solely on human power, few droids, no aliens, and your whole human supremacy ideal would be cute if it wasn’t so fucking sick because it’s so ridiculously unrealistic. Aliens outnumber humans in the galaxy, plain and simple, and if you want to win this war, you can’t just expect to wipe out everyone that lives on all of these planets, because that’s just not going to happen, you can’t just go from planet to planet committing mass genocide while pretending that you’re strong enough to stop anyone who opposes you. You can’t just kill everyone, which means that if you want to win this war, you’re going to need to recruit help aside from shady financial deals, and in order to do that, you’re going to need to know who else you’re sharing the galaxy with. Hell, you need to know _who_ you’re going to rule over, and you don’t, you don’t have a fucking clue, not about their language or their culture or their planet, unless it has resources that directly benefit you, which is why you’re going to lose. The Republic has their Senate, they make it at least seem like the individual planets have at least somewhat of a say in what happens to their planet, and if it’s a choice between at least appearing to be heard and from being wiped out entirely, you can bet they’re going to choose the Republic if they think that it’s the only way they’re going to survive.” You shake your head. “So keep it up. Keep telling yourself that the First Order will return to its former days of glory or whatever, because you’re _delusional_.” You turn to Hux and meet his gaze unflinchingly. “The First Order will crumble and I can only hope it crushes you under its boot when it does.”

               And that was that. You had nothing more to say to any of them. Instead, you turn on your heel and head back through the kitchen, and you’re about to head up the staircase when you suddenly feel your entire body freeze in mid motion.

               “Please tell me you’re not doing that,” you say quietly. Kylo had not used the Force in order to control your physical movements for years, and it wasn’t something you appreciated outside of a sexual context. “Let me go before I make you let go.”

               The hold on you immediately drops, and you stagger forward for a moment before you catch your balance as you turn around to face him. “Stay,” Kylo says softly, and you let out a deep breath. “Come back and sit down. He wants to hear what you have to say.”

               “He already heard what I have to say,” you tell him, trying to push the anger out of your voice. You weren’t angry at Kylo, and it would do you no good to turn against him in this way. “Look, I appreciate that you know how smart I am, I do, this is what I’m good at, but Hux doesn’t want to listen to anything I have to say.”

               “He’s ready to listen,” Kylo tells you, and there’s such a firmness in his voice that you can’t help but look up and meet his eyes. They’re radiating an expression that you’re not quite sure how to describe. There was a touch of pride in them, yes, but there was almost something akin to fear. He had never seen that side of you, authoritative and commanding, as if you truly belonged in the highest echelons of the First Order.

               But maybe you did. Maybe this had been what Anakin had warned you about, what he had prepared you for. You had thought before, on numerous occasions, that you could better defend your family from within the First Order. You didn’t want to actively work against the Resistance, against Poe, but it was starting to look now like you had no other options. You had to make a choice, although it was an easy one to make. Your family came first every time, and you were not going to back down, not from this, not ever again. You often wondered what you could really do with your skillset, what you could provide to the universe, and maybe this was it. Maybe Anakin truly did want you to continue with the First Order after all. If that was your destiny in life, then there was no use trying to fight it. The Resistance had dumped you on the Starkiller Base to begin with, and then, when you thought you had escaped to the Resistance itself, Kylo had dragged you back into the First Order again. Maybe it was no mistake that your path seemed constantly entangled with the First Order. Maybe the Force kept giving you opportunity after opportunity to join ranks with them yourself, to actually make something of yourself there. It would give you that sense of purpose that you always craved, and it was certainly possible that you could still provide a good to the universe from within the First Order. After all, it was not compromised solely of bad people. Kylo was misguided, but you wouldn’t exactly call him a villain, and Phasma was one of the kindest and most loyal people that you had ever met. Hux was a different story, but if you could blame his strict, ideological upbringing on his father, then his reckless disdain for the lives of others almost made sense. The First Order was not compromised of evil individuals, just misguided ones, that had been all brought together by Snoke through deceitful, manipulative means in order to try to harness their full potential.

               But Snoke was gone, and now that you were among them, you considered the possibility that you could provide them with the direction that they now sought. You glance aside at Kylo before you nod your head stiffly and head back into the room, waiting for Kylo to take a seat on the couch as you cross your arms over your chest, feet spread shoulder width apart as you stare down at Hux. “Tell me that you want my help.”

               “I always thought your skillset would make you a valuable addition to the First Order,” Hux says smoothly, but you narrow your gaze, in no mood to be trifled with.

               “Tell me that you want my help,” you repeat firmly, articulating each syllable, and out of the corner of your eye you can see the corner of Phasma’s lip quirk upwards in amusement. Kylo, himself, looks almost concerned, but you could explain everything to him later. You had always been there to support him, almost unquestioningly, as you moved from base to base, and now it was time for him to do the same for you.

               “The First Order would appreciate-“

               “Not the First Order,” you insist. “You. Specifically.”

               Hux seems to wrestle with himself for a moment, but he doesn’t look angry. Instead, he seems almost amused by the whole situation, as if he should have known that he had this coming. When he finally looks up at you again, his eyes are dancing with a playful spark that you had never expected to see from him. “It seems I require your assistance.”

               “And that’s about as good as I think I’m going to get,” you say with a sigh as you turn back to the holo. “Now, if you want my help, you’re going to let me talk, and you’re not going to interrupt me. I’m going to tell you exactly what I think, and if you don’t like it, you can wait until after I’ve finished speaking. Is that clear?” There’s a silence that follows, and you can’t help but smirk as you begin to pace back and forth as you talk. “Good. First of all, you are not going to control me. If I do join the First Order, I’m not going to answer to anyone, except Kylo, and that’s because we’re a team. I don’t want you to get any ideas that you control me or you can tell me what to do. I will _listen_ to what you have to say, but I want to make it clear right now that you hold no authority over me and you will not force me to do anything I don’t feel comfortable doing. Understood?” Hux nods his head slowly, almost reluctantly, and you nod your head forward in steady confirmation as you continue.

               “Now, here’s the thing that’s always bothered me about the First Order. Your name is synonymous with genocide, with destruction, and destroying the Hosnian System didn’t help things, if anything, it made it worse. It put a target on your back and while it forced people to take you seriously, it easily made you public enemy number one.” You take a deep breath as you turn back to face them.

               “What we need to do is unite the people against the Republic. I know what Captain Deso has done to me, personally, and I’m sure there are more corrupt Senators and politicians among their ranks than I can count.” You put your hands behind your back, your index finger and middle finger pinching together over your wrist, as you start to pace again. “Now, this isn’t going to be easy. People like the status quo. People don’t like things to change, which is exactly why we have to be smart about this. We need to start at the Eastern Outer Rim, near Tatooine, near places where the Republic doesn’t have any influence and then work our way towards the Core planets. Now, that’s an ambitious goal, and it’s not going to happen overnight, but there’s several things we can do in that time.”

               You pull up the holo and zoom in closer on the Unknown Regions. “We still need to know what’s out there. The Republic seems to be set on leaving it alone, but Phasma, you’ve already indicated that there could be something of value out there. I mean, sure, there could be nothing, but it would give us at least a little more legitimacy and a lot more of a galactic presence before we take on the Republic directly.” You zoom back out to show the rest of the galaxy, looking over the series of little yellow orbs that signified the different First Order bases that were spread throughout the various systems.

               “I don’t know if this is exactly what you intended by spreading out, but it was a good plan,” you tell no one in particular. “You’ve managed to set up bases all over the galaxy, and that’s good, that’s a good start, but you’re going about it the wrong way. You’re trying to expand these bases and conquer the planets, and that’s something you need to stop, simply because that’s not how you’re going to succeed. You need to think about the long term strategy here. The Empire may have valued human supremacy over human primacy, but it’s only a matter of time before both approaches will no longer serve your needs. Instead, you need to befriend the various races of the galaxy, make alliances with them. Convince them to share their resources in whatever way is most appropriate to their culture. Some groups will have weapons, others will have information, it all depends on where you are in the galaxy, but we can use it all to our advantage, and when the time comes to take on the Republic, we can ask the groups that know how to fight _with_ us. We need to show them that the First Order is a symbol of strength and unity against a vicious, corrupt Republic, not the other way around.” You stop pacing as you turn around to face them again. “As I’ve said before, if your ultimate goal is to rule the galaxy, then you need to learn exactly who you are ruling over. Every planet, every species, has their own goals and motivations, and if you know what they are, the more easily they can be exploited and converted to our cause.”

               “And what of the Resistance?” Hux’s familiar voice of authority is back, but the look on his face seems to indicate that he is listening, really listening, to what you’re saying.

               “The Republic’s fleet was crippled at Hosnian Prime thanks to your superweapon,” you say, gesturing vaguely towards Hux. “And the Republic has so far relied on the Resistance in order to help provide them with a military presence as they rebuild. The Resistance is just military muscle in order to make sure the Republic stays in power, that’s all it is, but there is distrust of the Republic from within the Resistance.” You can’t help but let a small bit of gloat creep into your next words. “Because of my past relationship with Commander Dameron, the trust between them was probably severely wounded when the Republic decided to label me a traitor and accuse me of treason, and General Organa often indicated that she dared not step foot on any Republic world for fear that a convenient accident might befall her.” Kylo looks to the side, but his expression does not change as he quietly listens to what you’re saying. “I don’t know how we’d be able to manipulate their trust, but if we can’t turn them against the Republic, then we have to be prepared to face them in battle. Considering Commander Dameron’s skill and experience, not to mention the countless experienced officers and military officials they have from the Republic that defected to the Resistance, this is not going to be easy. We’re going to need to train better soldiers, better pilots, especially, if you ever want to have any hope of taking on Black Squadron and the rest of the Starfighter Corps.”

               “And you would be prepared to do that?” Phasma asks, and if you’re not mistaken, there’s a touch of surprise in her voice. You understood where she was coming from. You had cared about Poe, thought you maybe could have loved him, at one point, but that was years ago. If your dream last night had told you anything, it was that he was no longer a part of your life anymore. Hell, you had no way of really knowing if what you had seen was just a possibility of things that could happen, or things that were already in motion. Sadie had been expecting in your vision, but what if she was already pregnant? What if Ladson was already back on your old academia? What if Poe had already moved on and was with someone else? What if he had long since abandoned any hope of trying to track you down and had simply forgotten you?

               Just the thought of this makes your next words so much colder, so much darker than you had originally intended, and the three of them pick up on it almost instantly. “If that’s what it takes,” you say firmly. “As you said before, if the First Order is to succeed, it must be put before all personal connections, especially those that are tied to the Resistance.” You glance aside from Kylo, who cautiously meets your gaze, and you hope that he can sense that you are saying those words solely for Hux’s benefit. Kylo gives his head a slow, almost imperceptible nod to show that he understands, and you feel the knot in your chest loosen as you continue. “Regardless, I know how to fly, but I’m not an experienced pilot by any means, especially not when it comes to aerial combat. I’ll assist and advise with what I’m good at-“ you turn to Hux now as you speak your next words. “-but I trust that with your education and experience that you’ll be able to manage your military resources to maximum effectiveness, General. You were able to create the Starkiller Base without inciting any reaction from the Republic, so I’m sure you are more than capable of channeling our resources on a smaller, but invariably more distributed, scale.”  

               Hux had been looking down as he considered what you were saying, but now he looks up at you with a gleam in his eyes. Phasma is still looking at you with an expression that shows that she is both proud and impressed, but Kylo’s expression is still hidden away as he considers you. You were not the same person that he had met aboard the Starkiller Base. You were stronger now, and you were not about to let yourself become a victim of your circumstances, not again. Now that you had the Force, you had the power to protect what was yours, and in this regard, you had to admit that Hux had been right. Power was the only thing that mattered, but power didn’t necessarily mean raw strength. Power meant strategy, and above that, it meant the ability to control your situation, to control your future and dictate your own destiny. In that case, you would do anything and everything to ensure that _you_ not only secured power, but retained it, in order to protect the family that you had come to cherish. Hux may have been lying about having a wife and child, but his lies did not lessen the impact behind his words: you can’t love what you can’t protect, and you were going to protect you and your family by any means necessary.

               You stand up a little straighter as you raise your eyebrows and regard each of them in turn. “Now then. Questions? Comments?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> M'athchomaroon! Athchomar chomakea! I know I've got a lot of Game of Thrones fans reading this story too, so I had to throw that little bit in there for you guys! xD I learned Dothraki thinking it would be fun but literally no one else I know uses it, so I've been looking for ways to implement it so that it doesn't go to waste, and Dothraki is actually a perfect example of how other groups/species base their language around their culture. For example, there are three words that mean _to kill_ : addrivat, ogat, and drozhat, and each one differentiates by the subject of who is doing the killing, whether it is a sentient person, an animal, or an object. And if you're asking, _"How are you today?"_ or _Hash yer dothrae chek asshekh?_ , it literally translates out to _Did you ride well today?_ because that's such a big part of their culture.....I don't know, linguistics is super interesting to me and I love learning languages and the little subtleties of each language that piss people off, like how there's -at verbs and -lat verbs, but some -lat verbs actually follow the conjugation rules of -at verbs and how do you know the difference????? doesn't frustrate me at all, that shit _intrigues_ me, it's like trying to figure out a little puzzle...
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> Okay, I could go on but then we'd be here all day and we both have shit to do so I'll stop there. xD Reader is finally using her skills to become a badass - and it's not her fighting skills or her abilities with the Force - it's her own intelligence and pre-Starkiller Base skills, which makes me happy because this isn't something she really learned from Phasma or picked up from Kylo - this is all Reader, in her element, and it's something we really haven't seen since _Flare _, so I'm glad to see that Reader still hasn't forgotten the knowledge she picked up on her old academia. Remember kids, knowledge is power!!__
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> _And I just wanted to apologize again for Thursday's chapter being released so late. Crazy graduation parties are happening and I'm driving and running all over the place, so I appreciate your patience with my crazy schedule, but I'm staying on top of things and releasing this one super early and by Tuesday everything should be back to business as usual. Congrats to everyone who is graduating this weekend, you've earned it!! ^_^_  
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> _Until then, dothras chek! ;)_  
>  _


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW content ahead

               Needless to say, Hux and Phasma were quite pleased with your apparent change in attitude and your willingness to assist the First Order. Phasma herself told you that she had seen something special in you the moment she had first laid eyes on you, and her evaluation had nothing to do with the Force. You had stood up to Ren, something even her own, trained soldiers were apparently afraid to do, and through that, she had seen your potential. People who had nothing to fear had nothing to lose, and people who did not fear death would go far. That had always been the sage advice she told herself before battle, and while she thought you a kindred spirit in this regard, she couldn’t have been further from the truth. You _were_ afraid; that was exactly why you were joining the First Order. It wasn’t because you weren’t afraid. It was just the opposite. You were afraid of losing everything that you had come to love, and you were not about to let that happen if you could help it.

               Kylo, however, was not exactly pleased by your sudden decision, especially considering you didn’t exactly talk it over with him beforehand. The minute you were back in your bedroom and very much alone with him, Kylo’s demeanor slipped and you could feel his emotions radiating off of him, unsettling you to your very core. You weren’t afraid of him, exactly, but it was clear Kylo himself didn’t quite know how to feel about what had just transpired, and that meant that you had no idea how to react in order to placate him. Instead, you just stood across from him, your arms crossed over one another, trying to keep a firm hold on the control that was desperately slipping from your grasp. You could fool Phasma, and you could fool Hux, but you couldn’t stay strong around Kylo when you inwardly felt as though you were about to collapse and drop to your knees at a moment’s notice. You had seemed all right at the time, spurred on by an untapped reserve of fury, but you couldn’t deny that the encounter had left you seemingly drained.

               Kylo clasps his hands behind him as he begins to pace the length of the room, his head bowed in thought, and you stay silent as you watch him and allow him time to collect his thoughts. You considered sitting down at the end of the bed, but that would only put him in the position where he could tower over you, and you in no way wanted to feel like you were being scolded like an errant child, especially when you had done nothing wrong. You were only trying to protect him, and Ani, trying to protect the very thing you had once initially resisted when you first arrived on Naboo. If anything, he should have been grateful that you decided to take this path, to try to stay with him no matter what the cost.

               “How long?” Kylo asks at length, and the question throws you off guard. He turns to look at you, but you don’t say anything as you merely tilt your head to the side to show your confusion. “How long have you been thinking about this? You’ve obviously been giving this some thought.”

               “I honestly haven’t,” you tell him, and Kylo gives you a dubious look. “I really haven’t,” you repeat with a little more force behind your words. “I mean, I’ve obviously given it _some_ thought; we’ve been on and off First Order installations for the past few years, and I’ve often wondered what you did so of course I thought about it, but when Hux was sitting there talking about why the First Order is losing this war, especially when it’s so ridiculously obvious why, I just couldn’t help myself.”

               “Do you know what this means?” Kylo asks you, and you shake your head from side to side.

               “Honestly, I really don’t,” you admit. “But I’m sure you’re going to tell me, aren’t you?”

               “I wanted to keep you out of this,” Kylo says through gritted teeth, and he’s clearly exasperated as he runs one large hand through his hair. You stare him down, trying to figure out why he was acting this way.

               “It’s not that bad,” you tell him, trying and failing to see this from his perspective. You knew implicitly that Kylo knew the First Order much, much better than you did, but you weren’t so sure why he didn’t seem to want you to be a part of what ostensibly amounted to be his life’s work. “We’re a team, right? We do things together? Well, this is just one more thing. You don’t have to hide things from me anymore. You can tell me what’s going on, you-“

               “You shouldn’t be a part of this,” Kylo insists, and as he turns back to face you, his dark eyes are gleaming. “If something happened, if you ever did have to go back to the Resistance, the less you knew the better. If you can prove to them that you didn’t know anything about what happened in the First Order, they may drop your charge of treason and keep you safe from the hands of the Republic.”

               “If something happened?” you ask, taking a step forward to him. “ _Did_ something happen that you haven’t told me about?” Kylo just shakes his head from side to side, his long, dark hair bouncing with the movement, but you don’t believe him. “Are you sure about that? You haven’t had any Force visions or anything? Any dreams?”

               Kylo looks up at you sharply. “Have you?”

               “I asked you first,” you reply, a bit teasingly. “Come on, Kylo, you know you can tell me anything. Don’t hold back on me now.”

               “I think they’re close,” Kylo admits softly. “I had a dream that you were captured by the Resistance.” He turns away, clearly uncomfortable. “It was just a dream. I don’t want to dwell on it.”

               “Maybe you should,” you tell him. “Because I had the same dream.” Kylo’s eyes are wide as he turns back to face you. “Okay, wait, not exactly the same dream. I had a dream that you were taken captive by the Resistance and put down, and I was all alone. Ani wanted to stay there, at the Resistance base, and I was sent back to my academia but it was like everyone had moved on with their lives and without you and Ani I was completely alone.”

               Your voice trembles a bit as you speak, and Kylo notices this as he comes over and places the palm of his hand against your cheek, cradling you with the warmth from his palm. You lean into his touch slightly as your eyes soften, embracing his tender gesture. “Are you all right?”

               “Yeah,” you reply, your voice much softer and gentler than it had been a few moments ago. “Yeah, I’m okay. It _wasn’t_ just a dream though. Anakin told me so himself. I think he wanted it to be more instructional than anything; it was supposed to serve as a warning that that could really happen, that that could really be my future if I don’t do anything to protect what I have now.”

               Kylo pulls his hand away as he regards you sternly, and you can’t help but let your heart sink at the withdrawn contact. “My grandfather? Are you certain?”

               “He showed himself to me,” you tell Kylo, and he turns around so suddenly that you are talking into one of his broad shoulders. “The fact that you and I both had similar dreams means that something is coming, something we have to be wary of. I want to protect Ani at all costs, as do you.” You take a step around him so that you can face him again. “I want to protect this family as much as you do, Kylo. Remember? We were standing right here in this room when I told you that I would never feel anything for you again, and we’ve come so far since that day. I don’t want to lose that.”

               “So this is why,” Kylo murmurs under his breath. “So this is what prompted your outburst downstairs.”

               “I wouldn’t call it an outburst,” you mutter as you shake your head. “If I can protect us by helping the First Order, then it’s worth it. I’ll do it, if that what it takes.”

               Kylo lets out a good-natured snort as he smooths your hair back with one hand. “Considering the last time you were alone with Hux you locked yourself in your room to be free of him, I was wondering what had gotten into you in order for you to claim to want to work with him so willingly.” Kylo had a point, but it wasn’t something that had really crossed your mind downstairs. You wanted to help, but you hadn’t really thought about what that might entail.

               “I’m hoping I won’t have to work with him much,” you admit. “I mean, I’m sort of hoping I can just give him counsel when he needs it and be done with it from there. I don’t know how much he’ll actually really _need_ my help, or want it, you know?”

               “He may want it quite a lot, I would imagine,” Kylo says softly. “Especially if he knows that I don’t like it.”

               “Then pretend you do,” you say with a shrug. “Pretend you love the fact that I’m helping out the First Order, and then maybe he won’t want me to take part in it after all.”

               “It’s not that simple,” Kylo says as he shakes his head. “In either case, it doesn’t matter much now. We can’t do very much from here, at any rate.” His tone confuses you, and you drop your head to one side.

               “We can’t stay here,” you tell him. “I don’t know about you, but we had these dreams for a reason. I think he’s warning us to leave the planet. I don’t know where we should go, but I think he was trying to warn us that the Resistance knows where we are and that they’re on their way, in order to give us incentive to move out.”

               Kylo studies you for a moment, as if he’s not quite sure what to say. “Have you spoken to our son? Has he had a similar vision?”

               “I’m not quite sure,” you admit. “He said he dreams a lot but it was nothing important. He did say, though, that if I was seeing Anakin, that it definitely meant that something was up.” You gnaw on your lower lip. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Kylo. You’ve been keeping us safe all this time, and I have no doubt that you will continue to do so. I want to share that burden, if I can, but I’ll follow your lead and do whatever you ask.”

               Kylo grabs you suddenly, planting both hands on either side of your face as he kisses you deeply, pulling you into him. “You are so loyal to me,” Kylo says in a soft murmur as he pulls away slightly, although his lips still bump against yours in a pleasant sensation as he speaks. “I do not deserve you.”

               “You do,” you tell him firmly. “You do because I want you, more than any kind of life I could have had at the Resistance, more than anything.”

               Kylo brushes your hair back with both hands and you think he’s going to kiss you again, but he just swoops his lips up as he plants a kiss on your forehead instead. “What do you want me to do?” he asks, as he bends over you. “If you want to leave, say the word and we’ll go.”

               “I think we should talk to Ani,” you say as you look up at him. “I mean, we’re a family, right? This should be a family decision.”

               Kylo nods his head forward in agreement in a quick series of nods before he looks down at you again. “But first…” He presses his mouth to yours so intensely as he kisses you that your mind almost goes blank for a moment, and for a second you almost feel as though you’re about to fall backwards as he pushes his full weight into you as he kisses you. He senses your unease as he pulls backwards, slowly, almost shyly.

               “What was that for?” you ask, but you can’t help but grin as you stare up at him. “Were you really that turned on by my speech downstairs?”

               “Yes,” Kylo says as he presses his lips to yours again, and you can’t help but let a wave of surprise wash over you for a moment before you close your eyes and surrender to the kiss, welcoming the sensation of Kylo’s large hands around your waist as he pulls you in closer to him.

               “I didn’t know joining the First Order would have such an effect on you,” you tease gently as you pull your shirt up and over your head, and Kylo hums a small murmurs of appreciation as his hands skim over your breasts, his thumbs moving in slow circles in opposite directions over your nipples, which were quickly hardening under his touch.

               “It wasn’t that,” Kylo tells you, his voice deliciously low. “It was you. Your voice, your authority, your confidence. You said what you wanted to say and didn’t hold anything back. You were forceful and articulate and I don’t think you’ve ever let anyone else see that side of you.”

               “Well, I guess I had to be, right?” you tell him as you run the tip of your nose against his. “Wife of the great Kylo Ren? They shouldn’t expect anything less from me. I think you would have gotten pretty bored with me if I had simply been docile and compliant to your every whim.”

               “I don’t think I ever viewed you as servile,” Kylo admits as he starts to run his hands along your back. “Remember when I first stepped foot in your chambers aboard the Starkiller Base? You insisted I take off my helmet, insisted on calling me Kylo simply because everyone else called me Ren, and then you had the nerve to stare me down and call me a coward after I attacked you. You were never truly afraid of me, even when I gave you every reason to be.”

               You can’t help but blush as a shy smile surfaces on your lips. “I don’t know,” you admit with a small shrug. “Maybe I’m just incredibly stupid.” Kylo just lets out a small chuckle as he shakes his head from side to side in obvious disagreement.

               “Or maybe it was always our destiny to be bonded,” Kylo tells you as he lowers his lips down to yours again, and you can’t help but rise up to meet them. You wrap your arms around the nape of his neck as you let him hoist you into his arms, hands under your thighs, as he carries you over to the bed, sitting down so that you are straddling him.  You put both hands against his cheeks as you welcome his tongue into your mouth again, deepening the kiss as you move in slow, rhythmic circles against his lap. As the kiss becomes more intense, you can’t help but run one hand through his thick hair, letting the other one leisurely run up and down the small of his back. One of Kylo’s hands remains planted firmly on your waist for support, while the other languidly runs up and down your back, his long fingers intertwining in your hair.

               “Don’t you dare leave my side again,” you warn him as you sit up slightly to slide off your pants, and Kylo helps you, sliding them off of your thighs as you roll off to one side to scooch out of them completely, wrestling them away from your ankles. Kylo takes the moment while you’re fighting with the fabric to pull his pants off first, jerking his shirt off over his head with one hand as you clamber back onto his lap. You take his erection in one hand, moving the pad of your thumb over the tip to spread the small bead of pre-cum that had collected there, before you put your thumb in your mouth and close your eyes, making a firm sucking sound with a small hum of appreciation as you do so.

               Kylo lets out a breath to show that he can’t wait any longer, and you wrap both your legs around his waist so that you are sitting comfortably in his lap before you support yourself with one hand as Kylo plants both hands on your waist and guides you up onto his length. You push yourself down slowly, your lips finding his neck as he does so, kissing and sucking at the fragile skin there but trying not to leave any mark. In truth, it had been a while since you had marked each other so visibly, and although you weren’t generally shy about your affections, it seemed a bit awkward to continue in that way with Phasma and Ani, and now Hux, so close. They knew you were intimate, obviously, but that didn’t mean you wanted to leave a physical mark that would lead them to possibly comment on it.

               You wrap both arms around his neck firmly as you finally seat yourself onto him completely, and Kylo wraps his arms around you as he captures your lips against his again, beginning to move up and down in a slow, steady rhythm. “Faster,” you whisper against his mouth, and Kylo lets out a small grunt as he plants one hand on your hip, close to your thigh, as he wraps the other arm around your shoulders, holding your body flush up against his so that your breasts bounced pleasantly against his muscular chest as you moved up and down along his length. Almost at once, you begin to feel the delicious sense of delirium that came with being fucked by him, and you dip your head down against his neck as Kylo bites down into your shoulder, sucking at the bruise he had placed at the base of your neck only days before.

               “I love you,” you whisper softly, your lips tasting the salty sweat that ran down his neck, and you gingerly let your tongue slip out between your parted lips to capture a taste as you nuzzled into him, pressing your body as close to his as you possibly could.

               Kylo grunted your name and squeezed his eyes shut as the pressure from his hands against your hips became tighter than ever, and you couldn’t help but let yourself go, knowing how close he was to his release. You find yours almost instantly after he does, running your fingertips down his back as you embraced the shudder of your orgasm. You didn’t just want this, no, this went above simple want. You needed him, needed him by you to please you and care for you in only the way that he could, and as you rested your cheek against his collarbone you knew that you had made the right decision. Joining the First Order meant that you could stay as close to Kylo as possible, and you knew after the warning that you had just received that it would be unwise to let him out of your sight ever, ever again.

               You let out a small laugh as you finally eased yourself off of him, placing both hands on his shoulders for support, and Kylo’s fingertips traced a line down your sides as you stretched in front of him before collapsing down onto your side on the bed. Kylo follows suit, laying down next to you as he cups your cheek with one hand, caressing the tender, overheated skin there with the side of his thumb. He locks eyes with you but doesn’t say anything, and you just smile softly before you close your eyes and reach forward to kiss his forehead, resting yours in his sweaty, dark hair as you lay the other side of your head on one arm for support. “Is that even comfortable?” Kylo asks you, and you can’t help but laugh again as you roll over onto your back, letting Kylo run his fingertips up and down the inside of your thigh. It sends a delicious shiver up through your core, and you can’t help but grin as you let your eyes slip closed as you enjoy the sensation.

               “We probably shouldn’t get too comfortable,” you tell him. “We still need to talk to Ani-“ But your concern is cut short as Kylo presses a series of soft, gentle kisses against the outside of your thigh, holding your calf between both of his large hands, and you can’t help but let out a breathy gasp as you throw your head back into the pillow, overcome with a dizzy, lightheaded sensation yet again. “Oh, please don’t do that.”

               “Please _don’t_?” Kylo asks tauntingly as he continues tracing the curve of your thigh with his lips, and you can’t help but shiver as you feel goose bumps rising to the surface of your skin.

               “That feels really good,” you breathe, and suddenly you find your back arching completely off the bed as Kylo moves his lips between your legs and gently juts his tongue against your clit. You can’t help but whimper pathetically as you fist one of your hands in his hair as you scooch down closer to him on the bed, letting him take you in his mouth. Eyes half open, you can’t help but thrust gently against his lips as he assaults you with his tongue, teasing you viciously as you start to build again.

               “Oh, you must really be pleased with me,” you murmur as you feel the blankets move back and forth underneath your bare back in time to his thrusts. “If I knew that I was going to get this reaction, I would have insisted on helping out the First Order a lot sooner.” Kylo starts to pull away as he begins to murmur something, but you shake your head from side to side as you keep a firm hold on his head, keeping it steady between your thighs. “No, shush, don’t talk, keep going just…keep…going…”

               You can feel yourself building quickly again, and as his tongue laps against your sensitive clit, you quickly feel yourself ready to spiral over the edge again. Kylo slows his pace considerably, pampering you with veneration in slow, languid caresses with his lips, but it only serves to increase your frustration as you cross your ankles over his back, thrusting into his mouth to urge him to go faster. Eventually he does, applying a frantic burst of suction against your clit that makes every nerve ending in the area scream out as you grab the sheets on either side of you and succumb to him, letting yourself drown in the ecstasy of the sensation. Kylo keeps you going until your body physically can’t take anymore, and then he slowly pulls away from you, wiping your juices from his mouth against your thigh as he slowly plants firm, yet wet kisses up your abdomen, between your breasts, where he eventually lets his head recline as he drapes his large body over yours.

               “You are way too good to me,” you breathe, still deliciously lightheaded, as one of your hands finds its way into his dark hair again, gently smoothing it back away from his face. Kylo responds by simply jutting out his tongue and licking against the side of your breast, and you can’t help but jerk your hips upwards in response to this sudden sensation.

               “Sensitive,” Kylo teases, but he lets out a small murmur of appreciation regardless. You roll over so that you effectively push him off of you and scoot down so that you are burying your face in his chest as you wrap your arms around him, and Kylo leans back so that you can reverse your positions, letting yourself rest on his chest instead as he runs a hand through your hair.

               “You are so amazing,” you whisper into his warm skin as you rock back and forth, and Kylo laughs good-naturedly into your hair as he presses a firm kiss against your temple.

               “No more so than you,” Kylo replies, his voice quiet, and you hum happily as you take in his embrace. Right then, you knew that you wouldn’t trade this for anything, and you were almost glad that Anakin had put that vision in your head. If he hadn’t, you probably wouldn’t have confronted Hux the way you had, and then you wouldn’t have felt so relaxed and at peace right now, cuddling into Kylo’s arms as you embraced his scent and his smell and everything about him. Kylo just chuckles lightly to himself, as if he can sense your thoughts, and you quickly push yourself up so that you can look over at him.

               “I’m happy,” you tell him. “You make me happy. Is that such a bad thing?”

               “It’s a concern,” Kylo admits, but his voice is light and gentle as he says it. “It only makes me more concerned that if something were to happen-“

               “Shush,” you say firmly as you bend down and place a placating kiss against his lips. Kylo lets out a sigh as he runs a hand through your hair, and you prop yourself up so that you can still look at him as you talk. “Nothing is going to happen, because I’m not going to _let_ anything happen. As much as I love it here, I love you more than anything, and as long as we’re somewhere safe, than I don’t care if we’re back on Tatooine.”

               “You don’t want to go back there any more than I do,” Kylo says as he narrows his eyes, and you can’t help but giggle in agreement. “What ever happened to asking Ani what he would prefer?”

               You just shake your head. “I mean, we can bring it up to them at dinner tonight, I guess.”

               “Them?” Kylo asks as his eyebrows shoot up, but he looks almost amused more than anything.

               “Well, Hux and Phasma,” you say with a shrug. “If the Resistance really is on their way, then we should warn them too.”

               Kylo props himself up on his elbows as he raises one eyebrow. “Were you considering _not_ warning Hux about a possibly impending strike from the Resistance?”

               “Were you?” you reply, and Kylo just chuckles and bows his head as he shakes it from side to side.

               “I was considering it,” Kylo says, but you are pretty sure you can detect a clear note of sarcasm in his voice. “In either case, I would have to warn Phasma, and she would tell Hux directly so he would have found out about it regardless.”

               “Well, now we can tell them together,” you say, although you hold back for just a moment. “Who wants to tell them? Should I tell them? Should you tell them?”

               “Whatever you want,” Kylo says, with a shrug to show that it makes no difference to him.

               “I’ll leave that to you,” you tell him. “Unless you want me to. Unless we both find a way to tell them together, I don’t know. Hux knows you as the one with the most Force power; I don’t want to upstage you or anything.”

               “You couldn’t,” Kylo says with a small laugh. “Remember, I am still more powerful than you are.”

               “Are you, though?” you ask him with a malicious gleam in your eye. “Are you though, really?”

               “I am,” Kylo replies. “Would you like me to prove it?”

               You sit up on your knees, supporting yourself with both hands against his abdomen as you bite your lip and consider him. “Not now,” you tell him. “For one, I am much too weak right now to even consider sparring with you, and second, we’re a team. I don’t want to think about which one of us is stronger, because we each have our different strengths. I just want us to support each other and be there for each other so we can be there for Ani.”

               Kylo just interlaces the fingers of both hands together as he leans back against the pillows that he’s propped up behind him so he can get a better look at you. “You really are quite happy to be here, aren’t you?”

               “Have I ever given you any indication to show that I’m not?” you ask as you tilt your head to the side, and Kylo just shrugs as he wraps both arms around you.

               “Fair,” he sighs. “But you know I’ll do everything in my power to protect you and Ani no matter what the cost, you know that, don’t you?”

               “Don’t talk like that,” you scold immediately. “We’re sticking together, so if you get captured, we all get captured. If one of us falls, we all go down together.” Kylo just laughs at you, as though he doesn’t really believe you, and you frown as you cross your arms over your chest. “I mean it.”

               “What about Ani?” Kylo asks you, and now it’s your turn to laugh as you shake your head at him.

               “They have nothing on him, he was just a kid when everything went down,” you say as you roll your shoulders back. “If anything, trying to capture three extremely powerful Force-users? That won’t go down so well for anyone that gets in our way. We’ll just – boom – neck snap, and-” You mimic your lightsaber slicing through the air, burning a hole in an imaginary assailant’s chest before they slump to their knees.

               Kylo appraises you for a moment, just sitting there, studying your face. “You’ve never killed anyone yet, have you?”

               Your smile falters as you try to think back. “I don’t think so,” you admit. There had been Storm Troopers that were injured when you escaped the _Resolute_ , but you hadn’t been the one firing the blaster, hadn’t been the one who ignited a thermal detonator, and hadn’t run anyone through with your lightsaber the way Kylo had.

               “You would know if you had,” Kylo says with a small smile. “I’m just concerned. You say you would do anything to protect us, and yet I don’t know how you would react if you actually had to kill someone who got in your way.”

               “If it was your life versus theirs, I would choose yours in a heartbeat,” you tell him with unflinching resolve. Kylo looks troubled, but you had hoped your firm response would quell his fears. “What’s wrong?”

               “I don’t want that on your conscience, if I can help it,” Kylo admits. “You think you would be able to handle it now, but when the time came…” He shakes his head as he lets his voice trail off, and you can’t help but let a soft smile rise to your lips as you take one of his large hands in both of yours.

               “When the time comes, we’ll see,” you say softly. “No point in worrying about it until then.” You raise his hands to your lips as you kiss the back of his knuckles, and Kylo offers you a shy smile in appeasement. “There. Now then, we need to focus our attentions on other things, like what we’re going to tell Hux and Phasma at dinner tonight.” Kylo shakes his head like he really doesn’t know how to proceed, and you let your shoulders slump discouragingly. “You’re going to make me tell them, aren’t you?”

               Kylo just smiles as he looks up at you, brushing a wayward strand of hair out of your face. “Only if you want to.”

               Unfortunately, you had forgotten that Kylo could sometimes be a liar and a traitor in his own right. It was almost ironic, considering he hated traitors above all other sinners, people who turned against a cause that they had once wholeheartedly pledged to be committed to, but apparently that standard did not hold true considering what he had told you earlier.

               “Don’t you have something you wanted to tell them?” Kylo asks you pointedly at dinner that night, and you almost gape at him with a mouth full of food. Luckily, you manage to swallow first, but that doesn’t help ease the knot in your chest.

               Hux puts down the glass of wine that he had been sipping, and his forehead creases as he turns to you. “Does this have anything to do with what we had discussed earlier?”

               “In a way,” you reply. You were suddenly completely unsure how to act around Hux, and although Ani, Kylo, and Phasma being there made it a bit easier, you couldn’t help but let a small voice in the back of your head tell you that you should be choking him instead of conversing with him. If anything, you could do it, you could Force choke him and explain that he was simply choking on his food. No one would notice any difference. Probably. “I am beginning to fear that Naboo is no longer safe for us.”

               Ani looks up at you sharply, as if he’s concerned, as if this wasn’t the sort of thing that you should be telling Hux or Phasma. But if you were really trying to prove your fidelity to the First Order, then you had an obligation to tell them, didn’t you?

               Hux looks mostly unconcerned by your sudden declaration, and although Phasma seems to be listening, you know it’s really Hux that you have to impress. “I was granted a vision through the Force,” you explain, hoping beyond all hopes that Hux would not think you were crazy for explaining it in such a way. “I was granted a warning. In it, I saw that the Resistance found our location and we were captured, taken back to the Resistance base. I fear that if we stay that this vision will come to pass.”

               “We have been here for years and gone undetected by the Resistance,” Phasma says evenly. She doesn’t sound like she is challenging you, merely offering up an alternative perspective. “What makes you think they will find us now?”

               “It’s just the vision I had,” you admit as you turn to Kylo, waiting for him to offer up his support.

               Kylo seems reticent to say anything, and you stare at him in confusion, waiting for him to say something, anything, but he doesn’t. He stays silent, and you’re wondering if he had suddenly changed his mind about leaving Naboo after all. “Did you have this vision too, Ren?” Hux asks, not altogether unkindly, and Kylo seems to shift uncomfortably under his gaze.

               “I did,” Kylo admits, and Hux sits back in his chair, as if he’s satisfied. “It’s not altogether clear how they would track us down, merely that they would arrive, and soon.”

               “But you’re both linked through the Force, bonded,” Ani pipes up, and you turn to him sharply. “Doesn’t it only stand to reason that if one of you had a dream, that the other would have it as well?”

               You give Kylo a troubled look, and he just shakes his head as more authority starts to creep into his tone. “That’s not the way it works,” Kylo snaps. “We each had a very separate vision, and you should know better than to question the nature of the Force.”

               Hux raises his eyebrows to see Kylo scold his son so openly, and even you can’t help but give Kylo a stern look. “Did you have any visions of your own, Ani?” you ask him, a bit gentler, but Ani just shakes his head. Phasma looks a bit ill at ease, but even she has nothing to really say either. “So,” you say firmly as you turn to Hux. “Kylo and I both had a similar vision that the Resistance is coming for us. How will you respond, _General?_ ” You pull the corner of your lip upward in the most confident, cocky smile you can manage as Hux stares you down, but a knowing smile plays on his lips all the same.

               “If you and Ren both sense that danger is close at hand, then we will of course proceed with caution,” Hux replies firmly, and you can’t help but observe Ani’s look of disappointment. “We’ll make arrangements to leave by the end of the week. Should that be soon enough?”

               “That should be,” you reply, and while Phasma and Hux start to converse about arrangements and where we would go, you can’t help but reach out to Ani in your mind. _What’s wrong, Ani? Do you know something that we don’t?_

 _No,_ Ani replies as his eyes meet yours across the table. _I just don’t want to leave Naboo. We just got back._

 _I know,_ you reply with a soft, reassuring smile. _You know how much I love it here. I don’t want to leave either, but we’re a family, and family comes first, right?_

Ani glances at Kylo, and bows his head in an apology. You can tell by the expression on their faces that they are having a private conversation of their own, although it’s not hard to read what they’re saying by the somber, apologetic look on Kylo’s face. You could understand why Ani didn’t want to leave, but he had to understand that this was in your best interests. You were a family, and you were not going to let yourselves be captured and torn apart by the Resistance. Maybe Ani had forgotten that Kylo hadn’t been there in his youth to watch him say his first words or take his first steps, but you did, and it was sometimes all you could do not to live in constant fear of going back to the place where you would spend every day waiting for Kylo to return, waiting on a shadow that would never again pass over the threshold to your home again.

               Even still, you had underestimated something, either the nature of the warning that you had been given or how close the Resistance was. You had thought that a week would be plenty of time in order to make your escape, but the truth was that you should have left immediately, as soon as you had received that warning. You had actually been in your room packing with Kylo, going over necessary arrangements to figure out what clothes you needed to bring and how long you were going to be away, when suddenly you heard Ani’s voice crying out in your head, a frightened voice of panic and concern that you had never heard from him before. _Mom! Dad!_

Your eyes met Kylo’s from across the room, and at the same time, both of you moved in unison towards his location, going as fast as you could. You were closer to the door and so you bounded down the staircase first, taking them two at a time with your hand on the railing, just in case you needed to dodge something and jump over it and land on the other side. However, that didn’t seem to be the case, as Ani was standing in front of the front door, which was wide open, as he stared out at someone or perhaps multiple someone’s that lay beyond. You were down the stairs in seconds, and you wrapped your arms around his shoulders as you gazed out into the grey, overcast sky that Naboo had granted you that day.

               “Ani, what’s-“ You freeze suddenly as you stare at the two people who were standing outside your doorstep. They weren’t carrying blasters, and they didn’t appear to be armed. They were wearing normal clothes, although you couldn’t help but notice that one of them was wearing the standard issue dark slacks of the Resistance. One of them raises their hands in greeting as they force a smile in your direction, but no words are spoken. No sound comes out. For some reason, time seems to freeze and the moments seem to stretch on forever in either direction. You felt trapped in it, unable to move or respond or even think, until you feel Kylo’s hand on your shoulder and it allows you to move again. You blink in a vain attempt to take stock of yourself as you take in the two people standing outside of your home, two people who you now could almost consider to be strangers. It would hardly be wrong to call them anything else, as this was the first time you had seen either of them in years, and they were, quite frankly, two people who you assumed you never would see again.

               “Hi there,” she says, and her voice is the same as you remembered it, although it seemed a bit high-pitched, a bit nervous, considering the circumstances.

               “Sadie,” you say after a moment, before you glance at the figure beside her. “Ladson.”

               “Hey,” Ladson replies. He forces the corners of his lips up to the corners of his mouth, but it’s an uncomfortable smile, a forced smile, more for the sake of pleasantries than anything else. “Can we come in? We should talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ruh-roh. So Sadie and Ladson have found them, which probably means the Resistance isn't too far behind as well. Considering that the Reader has recently decided to forsake the Resistance and do everything in her power to protect her family from within the ranks of the First Order, this isn't exactly convenient timing. Will she be happy to see them, or will she be concerned for the danger that their presence inevitably brings? Guess you'll find out on Thursday. I don't think I need to tell you that shit may get a little...intense. ;) Until then, cheers!!


	22. Chapter 22

               Out of all the people who you had expected to be seated in your living room on Naboo, you had hardly expected Hux to be one of them. But Hux had arrived, much against your wishes, and now Sadie and Ladson were sitting in his familiar spot on the loveseat, sitting so close together that they almost seemed joined at the hip as they looked around the room, taking in the tall ceilings and intricate architecture that you had been informed was customary for such houses on this planet.

               “It’s nice,” Sadie says quietly, and you can tell she’s making an effort to be polite. You hadn’t seen either of them in years, and considering the abrupt circumstances in which you had left the Resistance base, you hadn’t truly expected to see either of them ever again. That in itself seemed strange considering you used to spend every day with both of them for years, but that life back on your old academia was long behind you. Neither of them looked surprised to be seeing you there with Kylo, who you had pined over both night and day, which spoke volumes in itself. You may have been taken against your will, but you could be sure that they had no doubts as to why you had stayed. “Have you been living here all this time?”

               Kylo shoots you a look that warns you to keep quiet, and you just shrug your shoulders absent-mindedly, trying to make it look like you weren’t taking any cues from him. “Hard to say, really.”

               Ladson frowns at this as he stares you down, and you look away uncomfortably. You don’t want to pick up on all the ways he’s changed physically in the past five years, any more than you want him to notice the ways that you had probably changed as well. Sadie, however, seems determined to make some sort of pleasant small talk as she fixes her eyes on Ani. “Is that my little Ani? You’ve grown up; you’re so tall now.”

               Ani, however, is standing stock still, frozen in place, his eyes wide, as he stands on the other side of the room just staring at them, as if he almost expected them to be hallucinations instead of actual people. “Who sent you?” Kylo asks after a moment. Sadie pushes herself back into the couch a little bit, and although she tries to make the motion as imperceptible as possible, it’s not hard to notice her subtle attempt to shrink away from him.

               “Sent us?” Sadie repeats blankly, but it’s the wrong thing to say when it’s quite obvious she didn’t just blindly stumble her way onto your doorstep.

               “Let’s not play games,” you say as you lean forward against the back of an armchair that was closest to you. “You didn’t just drop by to pay us a social call. Someone sent you, and while I’m guessing it was the Resistance, it could very well be the Republic, so we don’t have a lot of time to waste here, and it would serve you well to answer our questions as quickly and directly as possible.”

               Ladson and Sadie both stare at you as though they had never seen you before in their entire lives, and you supposed they hadn’t. They had seen glimpses of it here and there, especially when Poe had showed up on your doorstep back on your old academia, but they had never seen you ready and willing to embrace your new life with Kylo from within the First Order. If you were joining the likes of Hux and Phasma and Kylo Ren, you had to be cruel, and ruthless, and unapologetic in order to protect what you wanted to keep. Sadie and Ladson were old friends, but they were just that, old friends, and they weren’t a part of your new life any longer. If this notion brought you any regrets, you couldn’t entertain them here.

               “It’s been a while,” Ladson says quietly, and you can’t help but frown at him as you both appraise each other. Seeing Ladson again was quite different than seeing Sadie, although you could see why they would have asked her to come along for good measure. You had never said goodbye to him. You had both been living your lives like normal until Kylo had swept you away, and you could only imagine how Ladson must have taken that loss. For a while you had been focused solely on Poe and how he had handled your disappearance, but you had never really taken a great deal of time to stop and consider how Ladson had handled everything. Did he blame himself for not being there to protect you and Ani? It was a little late now, of course, and you weren’t exactly going to reopen old wounds and ask him, but a part of you still wondered. Ladson had been there for you through everything, through your trials aboard the Starkiller Base and Ani’s birth and early childhood, and your time with the Resistance, but now you were treating him with suspicion, as if you could no longer trust that he had your best interests at heart. In a way, you supposed he didn’t. You could imagine that he might be there to offer some sort of deal for you and Ani, but if that was the case, you didn’t want it. Even if the Resistance was willing to take you back with open arms, no questions asked, and all charges of treason dropped, you were not going to leave Kylo, not for anything they had to offer. If anything, your ultimate goal was to keep your family together, and if they were trying to do something to separate you, then that made them your enemy, and you could not trust them any longer.

               “It has,” you reply, although you stretch your neck to one side, making a conscious effort to appear annoyed. “Now, who sent you?” Ladson drops his gaze, and you can’t help but let a smirk pull at the corner of your lips as you try to appear aloof, try to distance yourself from the person who had once been their friend. “Or should I have Kylo Ren do the honors and extract the truth from you? I’m sure you remember what that feels like.”

               Kylo raises one hand out in front of him, and Sadie literally pulls her legs up on the couch as she ducks her head, trying to make herself as small as possible, while Ladson shields her with one arm, leaning forward and sitting up straight so that he is balancing on the edge of the cushion. “Poe Dameron sent us,” Ladson says, and you can practically hear the spit in his throat as he swallows hard and turns to you. “You remember him, don’t you?”

               You can tell he’s fishing for a reaction, and you’re just as determined not to give him one. “Vaguely,” you reply, as if it doesn’t make a difference to you. You still thought about Poe more than you would like, but neither of them knew that. For all they knew, you had completely forgotten everyone you had come to befriend at the Resistance base, and while that idea seemed unfathomable to you, that was just the sort of impression you wanted to give them, although you didn’t want to think too much about why that was. Nevertheless, you can just barely catch Kylo watching you out of the corner of your eye. He knew you just as well as you knew him, but you didn’t have to be bonded to him in order to know how he felt about Poe sending your friends back for you. This is what he had feared, what a part of him had _always_ feared, that Poe and your friends would show up on your doorstep and whisk you away from him forever. You were not going to leave him, not for anything, and although you had tried your best to assure him of that fact, it was something that he still feared all the same. “I don’t suppose he happened to mention why he sent you, now did he?”

               “A lot’s happened since you’ve been gone,” Ladson tells you, but you just roll your eyes. You had assumed that a lot had happened in five years; that was what happened. Time passed, things changed. People changed, and you were not excluded from that. In fact, you were almost certain that out of everyone standing in that room, you had changed the most. Ani had grown up, but you were not about to let yourself be taken against your will again. You were constantly becoming a victim of inopportune circumstances, and you were not about to let yourself fall into that trap again.

               “You’re not giving me answers as quickly as I want them,” you warn him. “Now, you both know that Kylo Ren can get into your mind, but I don’t think you want to see what I’m capable of, especially when I’m impatient.” Their shocked faces told you all you needed to know. They had seen you like this when you had confronted Poe, but he was a stranger and you had good reason not to trust him when you had first met him, especially after all the Resistance had put you through. But this was different. You were supposed to be their friend. You had saved Sadie on the Starkiller Base, and they had both helped you raise your child. You were sure that, despite the years of distance, they were expecting some sort of warmer welcome, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to give them one, not when your mind constantly rang out with the possibilities of what they were looking to take away. Perhaps too much time had truly passed, but you could no longer trust them as you once did.

               “What’s happened to you?” Sadie exclaims as she leans forward in her seat, but she immediately makes herself small again as soon as Kylo regards her under his stiff gaze. Even still, she’s not quite finished as she mumbles her next words under her breath. “You’ve changed.” The words don’t sting as much as you almost expect them to, but you refuse to let that train of thought derail you from your purpose as you turn to Ladson.

               “I don’t know how much he’s told you,” Ladson says, and though he glances in Kylo’s direction, he does not meet his eyes. “But almost immediately after you left the base, the Republic accused you of being co-conspirators with Captain Phasma in his escape and charged you with treason.”

               “I’m aware,” you say idly, although the boredom is palpable in your voice. You knew all this already; what they were telling you was not exactly brand new information. You had known this for years, and it was part of the reason why you had never returned; surely if they were wondering why you hadn’t returned yourself, this bit of information had factored into their conclusion. You had no reason to try to go back to them, or even reach out to them, with the unnecessary risk that it brought you. If you had so much as found a way to send them a message, Hux could have found out and accused you of treason against the First Order, or the Resistance could have figured out where the message was sent from and attacked the base, leading you and your family to be separated, or worse, captured, if not killed in the impending strike. No, that was not a risk that you wanted to take, especially when you couldn’t even have been sure what you would have said to them. Even now, telling them that you were alive at the expense of your family’s security hardly seemed worth it.

               Nevertheless, you can’t help but think that he has a reason for bringing this up. “Has that changed?”

               “It can,” Ladson tells you, and he can’t conceal the small bit of optimism in his voice that puts you on guard immediately. “Poe wants you to come back to the Resistance and there he can work on your defense against the Republic’s charges.” You can’t help but laugh openly at their naivety. Even if you went back to the Resistance, Kylo would not go back with you, and the Republic would crucify you as a scapegoat in order to put the public’s mind at ease. You’re debating sharing this obvious piece of overlooked logic with him, but Ladson keeps going. “Whatever happens, though, he is _not_ going to turn you over to the Republic. There have been several schisms between the Republic and the Resistance lately-“

               “Oh, I’m sure,” you murmur under your breath.

               “-and he will not hand you over to them,” Ladson finishes. “He made sure that I promised you that. He says he still remembers how you feel about promises.”

               Your arms, which had been crossed over your chest with a smug sense of arrogance, suddenly drop to your sides as your hands ball into fists, clearly affected by his words. Poe had remembered that much about you, but what else did he remember? Did he think back on all the times he had spent with you, in your room at night, in the cockpit of one shuttle or another, walking around the base with you at night when you couldn’t sleep? Did he replay the conversations that he had with you in his head over and over again, still trying to remember who you were, still trying to maintain that one small link to you, hoping that you had not changed? Hoping that your feelings for him had not changed? Did Poe Dameron still care about you as something more than a friend?

               Or, better yet, did it even matter?

               “I’m not playing this game,” you tell him with a shrug of your shoulders, trying to appear nonchalant. “I’m not going back. I don’t care what Poe has to say, although I’m curious to know why he didn’t come deliver this message himself.”

               “He’s busy with other things,” Sadie says quickly, and you know from her tone that it’s a lie. You turn to Ladson as you raise your eyebrows and tilt your head to one side, giving him a chance to tell the truth before you simply took the information for yourself.

               “He wasn’t sure how you’d react to seeing him again, especially when he figured Ren probably wouldn’t let you speak to him alone,” Ladson says evenly. “He still misses you though. He-“

               “He’s moved on,” you say dismissively, and your tone seems to surprise them. You didn’t want to talk about Poe, not in front of Kylo, and you especially didn’t want them to see that you still cared, both for him and them. Your cocky swagger was the only thing that was defending you from breaking down in front of them completely, and that was something that you would not allow yourself to do. You had to remain strong now, indifferent to all nonessential attachments; the First Order demanded that of you. “He’s moved on; he doesn’t give two shits about me anymore.” You center yourself in front of them. “Not that that really matters, because I don’t care about him either, not one bit.”

               “Are you only saying that because you’re in front of him?” Ladson asks, gesturing towards Kylo, and you narrow your eyes at him in cold fury, unable to believe that he would call your allegiance to him into question so openly.

               “You would be wise not to insult him in front of me,” you growl, bowing your head as your hands clench into fists at your sides, and Kylo puts a hand on your shoulder to steady you. You close your eyes and allow yourself to be calmed by him, while Ladson and Sadie stare on in confusion. You had always described how you were the one to center Kylo when he was going through one of his moods, but now it appeared that the tables had turned and it was Kylo who was comforting you and helping you remain rational despite your anger instead. “This is his house, and you will show him respect.”

               Kylo runs his hand along the back of your head, trailing his fingers in your hair, and you feel yourself soften underneath his touch. You take a moment to collect yourself, to allow yourself to be steadied by his presence beside you as you lean back into him, only slightly. “After all this time, how did the Resistance locate us now?”

               “That one I don’t have the answer to,” Ladson tells you, spreading his hands, and Kylo looks to you for assurance. You just nod your head forward, signaling that Ladson appeared to be telling the truth. At least to you, he seemed to be. You had no idea if he had learned to be a better liar since you had last seen him, but it didn’t seem like a lie. The _how_ would be useful to know, but then again, it wasn’t exactly pertinent information, considering that they were already here.

               “What was his purpose for sending you?” Kylo asks, his voice commanding and full of familiar authority. “To try to convince her to come back to the Resistance willingly?”

               “Not just her,” Ladson says, and Kylo raises his eyebrows in surprise. “Commander Dameron isn’t foolish enough to think that you’d come with her, Ren. You know he would have to hand you over to the Republic for everything that you’ve done, but-“ he turns to you now. “-he was hoping that we could at least convince you to send Ani back with us, even if you won’t come along.”

               “What?” you and Ani exclaim at the same time as Kylo’s face contorts into a snarl.

               “Easy,” you warn him, throwing one arm out to the side, as if to hold him back, before you turn back to Ladson. “What does the Resistance want with Ani?”

               “Safety,” Ladson replies. “We don’t exactly know how you’ve been living for the past few years, but both you and Ren are on the run from the Republic. If something were to happen and you and Ren were to be captured, then where would he end up? We’ll take him back with us, Leia will watch over him, and Poe wants to assure you that he’ll have the best kind of training, the same kind of training that you received when you were there.”

               You’re not sure what he had actually intended by that comment, but it stings like a slap in the face, and you can feel your anger rising in your chest before Kylo, of all people, lets out a chuckle as he visibly relaxes. “That instruction was given to you by the pilot,” Kylo acknowledges. “But that was not his idea. That was my mother’s.” You think it over, and that thought makes you relax a bit too. It _did_ make more sense to be coming from Leia, but at the same time, that didn’t mean you liked the idea of Ani going off to live with the Resistance, no matter what the circumstances. There was a certain bit of logic there, but that didn’t mean that logic triumphed over family. You and Kylo had been doing your best to keep him safe and well cared for, and over the past few years, you had done just fine without the help of the Resistance or anyone at all.

               “My place is with my parents,” Ani says firmly, as if making a sudden decision, and you can’t help but smile proudly at him as he steps up beside Kylo. “If the Resistance is so determined to offer me asylum, then they should be able to offer it to _both_ of my parents as well.”

               “The Resistance has offered it to her, but not to him,” Ladson says a bit quietly. “They’ll never agree to that.”

               “No,” you agree. “But that does then beg the question, are you both with the Resistance now?”

               “Not me,” Sadie says quickly, holding up both hands in the air as if in surrender. “I still run my father’s shop back home. He’s getting on in years, and I basically do everything myself now, although a lot has changed for me too. I am kind of sort of married now.” She blushes slightly as she looks up at you, expecting you to give some sort of comment, but you don’t. Honestly, considering the vision that Anakin had given you, you don’t really feel anything for this news, one way or another. Sadie seems a bit surprised by your lack of a reaction, but you don’t feel particularly inclined to respond to that either.

               “And what about you?” Kylo asks, turning his gaze to Ladson, who lets his tongue jut out of his mouth to wet his lower lip as he looks away. You may not have seen him for years, but it appeared Ladson still had that telltale tick whenever he was posed a question he didn’t truly want to answer.

               “He is,” you tell him, and Ladson glances up at you in surprise. “He’s wearing the standard issue slacks of the Resistance. The boots too.” You didn’t mention aloud that they were a very similar style to the kind of boots that you had always seen Poe wear, and you didn’t like how that was one of the first thoughts that popped into your mind when you saw them, either. The stone around your neck, which you had worn for years without hardly being aware of it, suddenly felt very heavy against your chest, as if it had suddenly obtained sentience and wanted to make its presence known.

               “Still as observant as ever,” Ladson teases with a light smile, but you don’t relax. You didn’t know who Ladson had become while he was with the Resistance, and you weren’t exactly keen on finding out. You had both become two different people during that time, and no matter what had happened in the past, you couldn’t risk pulling him into your life now. No, you had decided to join the First Order, which meant that Ladson was part of the opposition. Ladson, for all intents and purposes, was your enemy now.

               “He’s still seeing his boyfriend,” Sadie tells you. “Do you remember him? The pilot? I didn’t think it would last, but they’re still together, somehow.” It irks you a little bit that Sadie seems to know much more about his romantic entanglement than he had ever shared with you, but you try not to let it show.

               “Pilot?” you echo curiously as you cross your arms over your chest and raise your eyebrows as you look down at him.

               “I told you, they never met,” Ladson whispers crossly, and he looks almost panicked as you stare down at him, gnawing on your lower lip as you mull over this new bit of information.

               “Why was that?” you ask him. “You were always trying to keep your relationship secret, so secret, in fact, that I had no idea where you were the night that Ani and I left the base.” Ladson looks up at you for only a moment, but it doesn’t take any longer than that to catch the obvious look of guilt in his eyes. You couldn’t believe how readily the emotion had come to him, especially since it had been _years_ since that had occurred, but clearly it was something he still hadn’t let go of. Which then begged the question that if Ladson still felt so strongly after all this time, did Poe? He had been the last one to confront Kylo Ren before you had left the base, blaster in hand as he remained determined to keep you and Ani on D’Qar even if it cost him his own life, and suddenly it occurred to you now that he probably hadn’t moved on, that he probably still felt just as guilty as Ladson did, and he wanted you back in order to repair that mistake. He wanted you to come home, not just because he missed you, but to help heal his own guilt over letting you slip away in the first place.

               “Because he’s a pilot for Red Squadron,” Ladson sighs. “I was worried that, you know, considering he answers directly to Poe, and you had a thing with Poe, that, I don’t know, I just didn’t want it to get _weird_. Poe, well, Jess, really, had been trying to plan out a surprise gathering so that you could meet everyone in his squadrons and I was going to introduce you then, but it just never seemed like the right time, and then you got sent away, and then Rey and Finn left, and then by the time they came back, you were gone, and it just-“ Ladson shakes his head. “It just didn’t work out that way, I guess.”

               “How are they?” you ask quietly, trying to keep your voice cold, as if you were asking just for the sake of asking. “Rey? And Finn?”

               “They’re fine,” Ladson says, sounding almost a bit surprised that you asked. “They’re great. They miss you too. Rey’s not found anyone on your level to spar with since you left, and Finn, well, you know Finn. He can’t wait for you to get back either. He’s been working on a new obstacle course lately, actually, and Poe took one hell of a beating testing it out. Rey did much better, but, you know, using the Force and all, it was kind of expected.”

               You can feel your heart thudding in your chest as you listen to him, and you can picture it, you really, truly can, the three of them laughing and training together and suddenly you couldn’t help but feel so excluded from the main group, that you would give anything, absolutely anything, in order to go back to them so that you could experience it again for yourself, the joyful feeling of simply knowing that you belonged, that you were included, that you were _wanted_ …

               Suddenly, though, Kylo subtly takes your hand in his from behind the chair where Sadie and Ladson can’t see, and gives it a quick squeeze as he senses your longing. That small bit of contact hardens your resolve as you realize that they had moved on. Maybe not in the same way that you had, but they weren’t spending every second of every day trying to figure out how to get you back. They were living their lives with the possibility that you would never return to base, and while you could hardly hold it against them, a part of you did. A part of you wanted them to wait for you, to put everything in their lives on hold until they found you again, and as unrealistic as that notion seemed, it was the only way that you would have gone back. Hearing that they were training and having fun without you there only helped to cement the notion that they had learned to live their lives without you in it, and you didn’t know if you could ever fit into their new lives if you ever did go back.

               No, you had your new life with Kylo now, and that was the only life that you wanted, the only life that you needed. Besides, you could be sure that Kylo would never stop missing you, or pining for you, like they apparently had. Kylo would have never have given up searching for you, you knew that, implicitly, and Kylo would not have let you go for anything. With this notion cemented in your mind, you decided right then that no matter what happened, no matter what the Resistance promised, that you would never go back to them if it meant that you had to leave Kylo’s side.

               Even still, you couldn’t help but feel as though someone had literally squeezed their icy fingers around your heart as Ladson told you about his time on base, about what he and the others had been up to, and you were thankful when Kylo finally cut him off. “So are you a pilot for the Resistance then?”

               “Not exactly,” Ladson explains. “Asher taught me how to fly, and I have a few years of experience, but I mostly help out the Resistance in any way I can, just, you know, helping out, doing odd jobs here and there.”

               “Asher?” Ani asks as his eyes go wide with recognition. “You’re dating _Asher_?” Kylo glances aside, giving him a firm look of disapproval, and Ani quickly drops his gaze. You had never met Asher, never heard the name, but apparently Ani had. You wanted to ask how he knew him, but something told you that it would be better if you didn’t. You were curious, but then again, you didn’t want to make it seem like you cared too much.

               “On and off,” Ladson says with a shrug as he turns to look at you directly. “I, uh, I wasn’t exactly much fun to be around for the first few months after you left.”

               “Few months?” you echo, raising your eyebrows.

               “Yeah,” he replies, with a firm nod of his head. “We looked everywhere for you. Even gave Sadie here a visit-“ he pokes her in her side, and she gives a small wave. “-you know, just in case you wound up back there.” You glance aside at Kylo, remembering how he once suggested that you should head back there in case he didn’t return the first time he had left Naboo. But he had, and you hadn’t seriously entertained the thought of leaving ever since. “But after we couldn’t find you, we just sort of figured that you didn’t want to be found.”

               “She didn’t,” Kylo says firmly, but you suddenly can’t bring yourself to meet their eyes. A few months hardly seemed like a lot of time in the overall scheme of how long you had been gone for, but they _had_ looked for you, they had honestly given it their best effort, especially if they went as far as to head back to your old academia and enlist Sadie’s help in trying to find you. You didn’t want to tell them that all of their efforts were a waste, that in a way, they were right. They had spent months looking for you, but it had only taken you one month to warm up to Kylo Ren again, one month to decide that you didn’t want to go back to the Resistance after all, not when you could be with him. A part of you did want to go back when you remembered how happy you had been there, but a much larger part of you didn’t want to be found so that you would never have to make the decision of choosing between who you wanted to be with more. You wanted the best of both worlds and the inconvenience of neither, and you let your heart sink into its own puddle of guilt as you realized just how selfish you really and truly were, praising yourself for being able to make the best of your situation while faulting them for trying to do the best they could with theirs.

               Your smug sense of superiority is gone now, and the only thing left standing in its place is the person that had once been their friend on the Starkiller Base, the person who had lived with them for years as they helped raise Ani and kept you company with constant assurances that Kylo Ren would one day return for you. And he had, he finally had, even though the circumstances surrounding your departure with him were less than ideal. Still, you can tell that they’re waiting on you to confirm Kylo’s assertion, and you nod your head forward as you try to come back to your stronger self, to the person that you had become.

               “My place is not with the Resistance,” you say as firmly as you can manage, trying to stuff away the doubts that would only serve to be your undoing. “I understand that Poe means well, but my place is here with my family, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m sorry that you wasted a trip, but we’re staying put.” You roll your eyes. “Well, we’re not staying _put_ , obviously we can’t stay here now that you know where we are, thanks for that, by the way, but I’m sure you know-“

               “That you must both now meet your end,” Kylo says softly, and you and Ani quickly turn to stare at him.

               “We can’t kill them,” you say firmly. “Didn’t we just have this discussion that I haven’t actually killed anyone yet? I can’t start with them.”

               “We don’t need to kill them,” Ani adds, just as firmly. “Ending their lives won’t change anything.”

               “Ani’s right,” you agree. “Besides, if the Resistance already knows we’re here, killing them won’t make a difference. We can keep them here until we’re ready to leave and then let them go once we’re safely off the planet or something, but we’re not _killing_ them.”

               Kylo looks like he’s about to argue, but Ani steps up instead. “She’s right,” he insists. “We let them go. Two votes for, one against; we outnumber you.” You want to point out that that’s kid logic, but considering its in favor of your position, you decide to keep silent.

               “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” The hair stands up on the back of your neck as Hux steps out from the doorway behind you. You tilt your head to the side to see Phasma approaching from behind Ani, dressed in her full chrome armor, and while Ladson’s eyes go wide upon seeing her, Sadie visibly recoils from Hux. You had no idea how long they had been there discreetly listening to your conversation, but you don’t have much time to dwell on it as you notice Sadie’s reaction as she looks Hux up and down, viewing him as if he had stepped out from one of her nightmares. Her pupils are dilating and she appears to be raking in air like a parched beggar gasping for water as he takes a few steps into the room. They are both carrying blaster pistols, both raised and ready to fire, and suddenly you can’t help but feel the threat level of the situation rise a few notches with the introduction of weapons into the current state of affairs.

               Hux notices her reaction, but it only seems to amuse him to see her so affected by his presence. “Hello sweetheart,” he says with a sly smile. “I haven’t forgotten you. Have you missed me?”

               Sadie lets out an audible whimper, and you notice her arms are shaking against the edge of the cushion. You want to say something, anything to try to comfort her, but you’re not quite sure what to say or do when she suddenly jumps up and makes a run for the doorway. You can appreciate how terrified she must be to see Hux again, someone who had caused her so much pain and torment, someone that had abused her so terribly, but you can’t risk her escaping and running to the Resistance before you had a head start off Naboo.

               Your hand shoots out before you even realize what you’re doing, and Sadie’s body immediately freezes mid-motion. No one moves. No one even says anything. In fact, all time seems to stop as Sadie twists her head slightly towards you so that you can see the pure terror in her dark eyes, and for a moment you don’t feel anything. You should, you know you should. You know that you should feel compassion towards her as you see her bottom lip trembling in fear, but deep down, all you can feel is a hollow sense of numbness echoing throughout your core. Sadie, your friend, your sister, was suffering, and you could barely bring yourself to care beyond your own self-interests.

               “You’re right, Sadie,” you say, letting smug confidence creep back into your voice. “Things really have changed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *hears the sound of muffled screaming in the distance*
> 
> I know when I first wrote this chapter, a lot of my editors completely lost their shit at the end (in a good-ish way). The Reader remembers how much Sadie had suffered, considering how much she's thrown it back in Hux's face as of late, and yet she doesn't even seem to notice the scar that Kylo left on her neck when he freed her from his captivity; it doesn't register in her conscious thoughts at all, which is, for lack of a better word, interesting. And then, what the Reader does next, which I think, is pretty unforgivable, is to keep Sadie in that situation. Sadie just saw her abuser again, who openly admits that he not only recognizes her, but _remembers_ her (scary!!), and she just wants to _go_ but the Reader is like, "Eh, not so fast" without showing any emotion for what she's going through, which is in huge contrast to what lengths she seemed to want to go to in order to protect Sadie in _Flare_. And what's worse, is she recognizes this, like she knows she should feel terrible about what she just did, but she just doesn't, and she doesn't seem all that bothered by it either.
> 
> And before that happened, I think we're getting into a really interesting part of the Reader now where she is self-aware enough to realize her own flaws, that she sort of liked the thought of everyone looking for her and everyone missing her, putting their lives of hold for her, and now she's sort of forced to wake up to the reality that yes, they did miss her, but they had to move on just like she did, and she feels guilty about holding them to a higher expectation than she held herself to. She realizes her behavior and thoughts are problematic, but at the same time we end the chapter with her ultimately deciding that it's in the past and she wants to embrace her new role in the First Order, and so her flaws are almost "excused" in that light, because as long as she's comparing herself to people like Kylo, who killed his own father, and Hux, who had destroyed the Hosnian System, nothing she can do is quite as bad in comparison, and so it'll be interesting to see what she'll do, how far she'll go, and how she'll justify it under the pretense of protecting her family. 
> 
> But why is the Reader acting this way? Did what Hux say really bother her that much? Was it the dreams that Anakin showed her that impressed on her so heavily? Have Kylo's maniacal tendencies transferred to her through the Force bond? Is there a darker force at work here, or has the Reader literally just snapped in response to the thought of becoming a victim in another unfortunate situation yet again? (Cause let's be real, what if she's like, "Okay, yeah, good deal I'll go back" and then they hand her over to the Republic anyway? The girl's got pretty understandable trust issues from B's betrayal to Kylo's abandonment, etc. etc.) And, I think, it'll be interesting to see how Kylo and Ani will react to the Reader's change in behavior. If Kylo thinks the Reader is starting to act more like his old, impulsive self, will he blame himself? Will he try to help her control it? Or will he welcome her descent, knowing the further she gets into the First Order, the less likely that she will ever go back to the Resistance and leave him. Just some stuff to consider....until Saturday, when things really start to heat up...literally? >.> Until then, cheers!!


	23. Chapter 23

               “Okay, okay, we can see you mean business,” Ladson says as he stands up to take hold of Sadie’s arm. “Please, just, let her go. Let’s talk this out.” You let out a heavy sigh through your nostrils before you eventually lower your hand, making it seem like you were begrudgingly granting his request. You release your Force grip around Sadie, and Ladson pulls her down onto the couch beside him as he wraps one arm around her shoulders, checking to make sure that she’s all right. Sadie just sits there, hands shaking, eyes trained on a spot on the floor directly in front of her, letting her bottom lip quiver dramatically although no sound escapes her lips. To be honest, you hated seeing her like that, but only because of how weak she seemed. Even before you had a firm mastery of the Force, you had resolved to face your seemingly inevitable death on the Starkiller Base with a solemn sense of dignity. The fact that Hux was here probably brought up a painful sequence of memories that she would have preferred not to relive, but there wasn’t much you could do about it now. You didn’t like Hux all that much either, but then again, you had never been abused by him the way she had been.

               “Hux, stay away from her,” you snap, although he had made no move to get any closer to her. “The situation is bad enough as it is. Let’s not make it any worse.”

               Hux regards you with a smug smile before he turns back to Sadie and Ladson on the couch. “Fair enough,” he relents, and it’s only when Ladson gives you a look that intermingles a perfect ratio of surprise and confusion that you realize that it appeared that _you_ were giving orders to _Hux_.

               “So this is the sort of company you keep now?” Ladson asks, and while his expression belies a hint of bewilderment, his voice is dry. You’re pretty sure you can see a spark of hatred in his eyes, but, again, the damage had already been done, and there wasn’t much you could do about it now. Maybe it was better if he hated you. If he did, then perhaps that would erase the pesky sense of guilt he seemed to harbor surrounding your departure. Before, there was always the nagging, lingering question of what would happen if you really did want to return to them, but now there were no more questions, no more doubts. Not only did you not want to go, but you couldn’t be sure Ladson wanted you there anymore, either.

               Oddly enough, this was fine by you.

               “Oh yeah,” you reply sarcastically. “Hux and I? Best of friends.” Kylo emits a good-natured snort, but otherwise says nothing as Hux stares them down. Sadie’s expression has not changed, and Ladson rubs her back comfortingly in an attempt to console her. You feel a small hint of guilt rise up in your chest, but you have absolutely no intention of apologizing for what you did in front of Hux and Phasma, especially when it was Hux’s presence that seemed to be triggering her more than anything.

               “Calm down,” you tell her as gently as you can while still sounding firm. “You know I had no intention of hurting you, and I’m not going to let Hux do anything to you either.” Sadie doesn’t make any sign to show that she heard you, and Ladson simply casts a nasty look in your direction. You had to admit, telling her to calm down hardly seemed like the most appropriate thing to do in this situation, but then again, the situation had elevated so far beyond the norm of appropriate that you doubted there was any way to redeem yourself in their eyes after this visit, not that you really had to be concerned with what they thought of you when they weren’t the ones safeguarding your future. No, you had to show Hux that you could handle this, show that you had no ties to the Resistance once and for all.

               “How much of the conversation have you heard?” Kylo asks Hux and Phasma, although he doesn’t turn to face either of them.

               “All of it,” Hux responds simply, and you can’t help but roll your eyes. You should have known that Hux was there listening all along, but you couldn’t deny that you were at least slightly annoyed that you had been so distracted by Sadie and Ladson’s arrival that you hadn’t sensed his presence listening in mere feet behind where you had been standing.

               “I believe it would be best to leave immediately,” Phasma says suddenly from the other side of the room. “My troops indicate that there are no shuttles parked nearby, but a Resistance transport was seen entering the planet’s airspace about an hour ago. It won’t be long until more arrive, and the entire fleet with them.”

               “So Poe sent you as the welcoming party?” you ask them. “Nice distraction. Send you in as the bait, keep us talking until we’re surrounded, but try to get me and Ani out of harm’s way first. Nice ploy.” Neither of them says anything, and for a moment you almost wonder if the Resistance hadn’t told them any of what you had just deduced. After all, they had sent you onto the Starkiller Base with no thorough knowledge of your assignment there, and perhaps this was no different, especially considering that you would be able to discover that plan if you happened to probe their minds.

               They were victims of their circumstances, again, caught up in something much larger than they could control, and while you felt a pang of sympathy for them, it was their own fault for trusting an organization that seemed to want nothing more than to serve their own agenda. Not only did this further your resolve to never, ever be made an unsuspecting victim yet again, but it also cemented the notion that everyone in the galaxy was going to be as selfish as they could as they pursued their own self-interests, and no one could fault you for acting any differently.

               You decide to rephrase the question into something they could definitely answer. “Did you fly here yourself?” They don’t answer, and for a moment you wonder if they were simply giving you the silent treatment in response to what you had done. You take a step forward, the sheer thought of how much that annoyed you echoing through your features. “Let’s try again. Who else came along with you?”

               “No one,” Sadie cries out, holding up her forearms in front of her face as though she’s prepared to be struck. You weren’t close enough to reach her, but considering what you had just done, you didn’t take her fear personally. “No one came with us. We were just sent here to ask if you and Ani wanted to come back, but we’ll tell them that you don’t and we won’t bother you again, so, please, please, just let us go.” She seems to be on the verge of some kind of breakdown, and that in itself is more frustrating than anything. You roll your eyes in Kylo’s direction, but he seems to be watching you curiously for some reason, lips pursed and one eyebrow raised. You peek over at Ani, who just seems to be confused and frightened by the whole affair, and you were almost grateful that he wasn’t finally getting a glimpse of how morally complicated the galaxy could be. Just because someone used to be your friend didn’t mean that they would still serve your best interests years later, and vice versa. Right now, you had no problem admitting that your presence around them would be just as detrimental as their appearance was to you.

               “They’ve come for you, specifically,” Phasma says as she turns to you, her voice echoing slightly underneath her chrome helmet. “I suggest you take the child and leave Naboo immediately. The rest of us will follow once we’ve dealt with matters here.”

               “No,” Hux says immediately, and you sigh as you roll your head around to look at him. “No, they both stay here. They are the ones the Resistance wants, and it’s clear that they want them alive.”

               “So what? You plan to use them as bait to lure the Resistance fighters into some sort of a trap?” Kylo asks, and you can feel his flash of anger through the bond in response to Hux’s sneer. “No.”

               “We need to figure out a plan,” you insist, holding out your arms between them. “If one of us goes down, we _all_ might go down, and we can’t risk that.” You pause, changing your mind almost instantaneously, although you couldn’t be sure exactly why. “Then again, the First Order needs to have someone in charge, and there’ll be no one left to lead if all five of us are captured by the Resistance and held hostage there until we’re extradited to the Republic for our subsequent _execution_.” You draw the last word out slowly as you shoot a glare in his direction, and Hux seems to consider what you’re saying as he gives you a firm nod. You just bow your head forward in response, immediately surprised that for once you and Hux seemed to actually agree on something. Did that say more about you or more about him? Honestly, you weren’t quite sure.

               “We have Ani to think about,” Phasma reminds you. “From what you’ve said, Commander Dameron is sentimental. He didn’t just escort them to this planet and wait to see how things played out. He’s nearby, with who knows how many other ships. If he’s in his X-Wing, you know he’s faster than us, and he will be able to track us down immediately.” You tilt your head to the side as you consider her point and think this over. It made sense, it made perfect, logical sense, and you absolutely hated that. Of course Poe was nearby, waiting to see how things played out, and if he was, it meant that he was going to stop at nothing until you were captured. Even if he didn’t blow you out of the sky, he could still follow you to whatever planet you happened to land on when you ran out of fuel if he managed to follow you through hyperspace. If you didn’t fight now, you were going to fight later.

               “We need to send out a decoy,” Hux says firmly. “Someone they can give chase to while the rest make it out of Naboo safely. Even if they follow us both, they’ll have to split up their resources.” He finally peels his eyes away from the couch to glance at Phasma. “Is Omega Wing on standby?”

               “Yes, sir,” Phasma responds. “Air and ground forces are at the ready.” Honestly, you had always suspected that you had never lived completely _alone_ on Naboo, that there were other troops in various hidden locations nearby just in case the Resistance or the Republic did show up one day with an army, and you were silently glad for that now.

               “So then,” Hux says with a sly smile playing on his lips. “Any volunteers as to who will stay behind to serve as the bait?”

               Kylo lets out a sigh as he steps forward. “I’ll do it.” You spin around to gape at him, but he simply regards your reaction with weary annoyance. “The General of the Resistance has a special interest in capturing me, most likely, alive,” he explains. “I can distract them while the four of you escape.” You grit your teeth together as you shake your head from side to side. You understood his point, that of course Leia would want him captured alive, but that didn’t mean you were about to let him out of your sight.

               “No,” you say immediately, as the memory of your dream comes back to haunt you. If this was what Anakin had been warning you about, then you were not going to let it come to pass. You can honestly feel your heart thumping and shuddering around in your chest, as if it was coming apart at the seams at just the thought of being separated from him again. “No, Kylo, you are not leaving my side.”

               “I have to agree with mother on this.” You’re honestly almost surprised as Ani steps forward, his face set, no longer looking fearful. Instead, he was wearing a look of maturity that you hadn’t quite seen from him before. “You heard what they said. The Resistance came here to bring me back, specifically. I can distract them and escape when-“

               “No,” you and Kylo say at the same time, although his tone is far more dismissive than yours. You were not going to risk losing your son to the Resistance, not now, not ever.

               “It’s a solid plan, Ani, but no,” you say firmly. “No, we’ll figure something else out.” You turn to Phasma. “Any chance that you want to stay behind? With your troops?”

               “I will do as I’m instructed,” is Phasma’s automatic reply, and you can’t help but let out a breath. You didn’t want to leave Phasma behind, she was your friend, and yet your options of who was going to be the bait in this possibly inevitable death trap were running slim.

               “I’ll do it,” Hux says at length, and at first you think he means that he’ll be the one to order Phasma to stay behind before you catch onto the true meaning of his words as you turn to stare at him in shock. You had known Hux to be a great many things, but selfless was not one of them. Even Kylo himself seems perplexed by this as he stares him down, but as Hux looks back at him, a sort of understanding seems to pass between them before Kylo visibly relents. “Trust me when I say that I have certain resources here that I have yet to take advantage of.”

               You have no idea what he’s talking about, but you don’t argue with it all the same. “Would you like me to stay behind with you, sir?” Phasma asks.

               “No,” Hux responds sharply. “Make sure to escort Ren and the rest of them to base.” He exchanges another look with Kylo again, who simply nods his head in apparent understanding.

“We have a small shuttle waiting in the back,” Phasma says to no one in particular. “It will be ready to leave whenever you are.”

                “Most of our stuff is packed upstairs,” you tell her. “We can grab it and go.”

                “Go,” Phasma says quickly. “Go get your things, but go quickly.” You give her a quick nod as you signal to Ani, and you quickly race upstairs with Ani following at your heels. You say nothing as you burst into your own room and throw your and Kylo’s packs over your back, making sure to grab your lightsaber from where you had left it on your nightstand. Kylo, of course, had taken his as soon as he had heard Ani’s cry, but you had simply run with a fearful mother’s maternal instincts. Regardless, you pick up his helmet and hold it under one arm, making sure that didn’t get left behind. As you head back towards the doorway, you stop and turn around, letting a sentimental feeling wash over you as your eyes sweep over the bed, the balcony, the couch where Kylo used to sleep, hell, even the bathroom. It was a really nice bathroom, a really nice bedroom, a really nice place to _live_ , and now it was no longer safe for you to be there ever again, not when the Resistance knew its exact location and would no doubt be monitoring it at all times.

                “Mother,” Ani says with some urgency from out in the hallway, and you nod your head as you turn back around and follow him out and down the stairs, turning to go back into the living room where everyone was still waiting.

                “I believe this is yours,” you say as you present the helmet to Kylo, and he locks eyes with yours and gives you a quick nod before he slips it over his head, his expression disappearing behind the familiar metallic slit in his helmet.

                “Are you ready?” he asks, his voice muffled by the rumbling distortion of the mask, and out of the corner of your eye, you can see Sadie’s and Ladson’s eyes flash with recognition. In the back of your mind, you silently hoped that this wouldn’t cause Sadie to have another breakdown as well, not when you needed to leave as quickly as possible.

                “Yes,” you reply simply, but you’re suddenly distracted as you feel someone grab your wrist urgently, and you spin around to see Hux looming over you.

                “Leave quickly,” Hux urges. “And be prepared to do whatever you need to in order to escape. The First Order must live on.” You’re surprised that he’s saying this to you, not to Kylo, but you’re even more surprised as he takes your hand in his and raises the back of your knuckles to his lips in an unfamiliar, remarkably genteel, gesture. Your jaw drops slightly, and for a moment you’re too flustered to get your mouth to work, as you just bob your head up and down in a quick series of nods. Kylo thankfully puts his hand on your arm to steer you away, but you pull back.

                “Wait,” you insist, grabbing hold of his arm. “What about _them_?” Kylo turns back around to face Sadie and Ladson, who are hovering hesitantly on the edge of the couch, as if they’re not sure whether or not they should try to make a run for it. Phasma had since headed out the back, but Hux was still there holding his blaster, and you knew they wouldn’t even make it to the door if they tried to escape. Kylo looks uncertain for a moment, and you can’t help but make a face. “We’re not going to kill them.”

                “We’ll knock them out,” Ani offers. “Just leave them here. The Resistance is going to search the place; they’ll find them eventually. They have no idea where we’re going, and by the time they find them, we’ll be long gone.” You turn to Kylo for approval, who just rolls his eyes and nods his head reluctantly. You knew that Kylo wasn’t serious about killing them, it was as much of a show for Hux as the one you were putting on, but a part of you almost regretted that Sadie and Ladson couldn’t see the side of him that you could.

                “Make it fast,” he warns you, and you nod your head as you and Ani step forward. You turn to him first, signaling for him to go ahead. With a firm nod back towards you to show his confidence, Ani raises his hand to Sadie, who covers her face with both hands before she soon drops into a dead faint, although you assumed that this had more to do with her emotional state than Ani’s abilities. Still, he had to learn sooner or later, and practice was practice. It was a useful skill to learn, and you hoped that there would be plenty of weak-minded Storm Troopers to practice on when you got to whatever base Hux was talking about. Ani turns away quickly, and while you know that you’ll have to talk to him about everything that had transpired today later, you mentally project your pride in his ability to do what needed to be done despite what obvious reservations he had about hurting Sadie, and you could only hope that Kylo was doing the same.

                As you stand over Ladson, you can see him slowly tilt his chin upwards to meet your eyes. He knows what you have to do, that this is necessary, that he is not holding this one specific act against you. The rest of it, though, how you had treated Sadie? That you couldn’t be sure either of them would ever forgive you for, but it’s nothing that you can worry about now.

                “Give Poe my best,” you say quietly, and there’s something either in your tone or your expression that Ladson picks up on. He knows it’s sincere, but you’re hoping that he’s the only one who’s able to sense it as you put two fingers against his temple. He looks searchingly into your eyes for a moment, trying to ascertain how much of his old friend was still in there, before his eyelids flutter shut and he slumps down beside Sadie on the couch. You turn back to Hux with a new, calm sense of authority in your voice. “Leave them. You will not touch them in any way, or I swear that I will turn the air in your lungs to acid and watch as you choke on your final breaths before your body corrodes from the inside out. Do I make myself clear?”

                “Of course,” Hux replies with good humor in his voice, but you’re taking too long as Kylo grabs your arm and almost physically drags you out of the room. Even still, it doesn’t feel right leaving them like that, and you can’t help but turn back as you follow Kylo out. Hux raises his hand in a parting gesture, and you suddenly couldn’t help but wonder if he didn’t honestly think that he was going to make it off Naboo alive. Was that his whole plan? The captain goes down with the ship? Was he really making the sacrifice to stay so that the rest of you could escape? It didn’t seem like something Hux was capable of doing, but maybe you had been so blinded by your hatred for him that you failed to overlook that he was still human, that he could still have moments of kindness and moral decency, even if those moments were few and far between.

               “Good luck,” you call back to him. It seems like a stupid thing to say, but you can’t help it. Despite your errant thoughts, now was not the time to get sentimental about anything or anyone, and you were determined to see this through to the end. You had to escape Naboo with your family still intact, once and for all.

                Unfortunately, you knew immediately that it wasn’t going to be as easy as it sounded. As soon as you started walking out towards the tree line behind the house, you couldn’t help but hear a familiar series of beeps coming from somewhere beside the house, and Ani immediately stops in front of you to spin around. “BB-8!” he calls out excitedly, and the rest of you quickly spin around to see the familiar white and orange droid give out a long whistle. You still couldn’t be sure exactly what it was saying, but somewhere in the back of your mind you recognized that Ani could.

                “Destroy it,” Kylo commands immediately, and Phasma obediently raises her blaster without hesitation and fires a quick shot at the droid.

                “No-“Ani calls out suddenly, and you watch as he throws out a hand, stopping the blaster bolt in mid-air to give the droid time to roll away and escape. At first you’re impressed with his ability, but the feeling quickly ebbs to Kylo’s anger, which mixes with your own frustration.

                “Anakin!” You and Kylo both yell at the same time, and Ani lets the bolt dive into the ground as Kylo grabs his arm and starts pulling him along.

                “That was the droid that gave me so much trouble before, wasn’t it?” Kylo asks crossly, and you nod your head in confirmation as you take long strides into the relative safety of the trees.

                “It was,” you confirm bitterly. “I knew I should have dismantled that thing and sold it for parts when I had the chance.” You can see Kylo shoot a quick smirk in your direction, but you’re still not done. “What the hell were you _thinking_ , Ani?”

                “He was my friend,” Ani tells you. “I couldn’t just let you destroy him.”

                “It’s a droid,” Kylo snaps. You knew he hadn’t been there on the Resistance base to see how close Ani and BB-8 had gotten, but even you found his sentiments to be exasperating considering the circumstances.

                “Moreover, it just put us all in danger,” you tell him. “You know whose droid that is. Clearly Poe _is_ here. He knows the direction we’re headed in now, and he knows that it’s just the four of us.”

                “That might offer Hux some time,” Ani offers. “If they think it’s just the four of us leaving, they might not know he’s here and he can escape the planet unharmed.” You know that Ani doesn’t really care for Hux’s survival any more than you do, and the fact that he’s using it a weak attempt to justify his point makes you more annoyed than anything else.

                “That doesn’t matter,” Kylo snaps angrily. “I gave you an order, and I expect that order to be followed. I wanted that droid destroyed.”

                “And I wanted it to live,” Ani argues, but his childishness is angering even you now.

                “This is no time to be sentimental,” you insist. “Our _lives_ are at stake here, Ani. What happened to putting family first?” You were almost surprised that Ani seemed to be more conflicted over the life of a droid than he had been about Sadie, but you supposed that BB-8 represented a sense of childhood nostalgia that he presumably regretted losing. To you and Kylo, BB-8 was just that, a droid, but to Ani, it was apparently a long lost friend whose life had to be spared even at the cost of his own safe passage. It was frustrating to watch, to say the least, and you hoped that Ani’s decision wouldn’t be at the cost of your own lives later.

                Even though he did what he still believed to be the right thing, Ani just bows his head reluctantly as he nods his head and apologizes, but Kylo doesn’t seem to be in the mood to hear it as you emerge into a clearing surrounded by a dozen Storm Troopers who all salute you as you approach. There is a small transport shuttle sitting in the middle of the clearing, a different one than you had stumbled across with Ani when you had explored the area years ago, and Kylo quickly gestures for you to get on board with him as Phasma stops to talk to her troops outside. It’s small and cramped inside the shuttle, with room enough for only six seats, including the pilot and copilot. Kylo immediately leans over to the pilot’s chair and starts scanning through something on a console, and almost instantly you can hear the familiar hum of the ship as it turns on. Kylo slips into the copilot’s seat as he starts to run through a sequence on the panel against the side wall as you make sure Ani secures himself into the seat behind him.

                Kylo quickly takes off his helmet as he turns around to face you and presses a quick kiss against your lips. “Stay here,” he commands as he slips his helmet back on over his head, and you can’t help but stare after him in confusion as he turns and walks off the boarding ramp. Even despite this order, you can’t let him out of your sight, you just can’t, and you quickly follow after him, hovering in the doorway as you watch him say something to Phasma and the two Storm Troopers that she was talking to. The hum of the engines makes it almost impossible to hear what they’re saying, but you can tell by the way Kylo keeps looking back towards the house that they’re either talking about Hux or the location of the Resistance forces that were no doubt already scouring the planet.

               You hadn’t actually believed that Poe had just left Sadie and Ladson on your doorstep, now that you really thought about it, and the appearance of BB-8 confirmed that Poe was definitely on the planet somewhere. This was the closest you had been to him in ages, and you could only imagine how he might react to seeing you again after all this time. Maybe he had even brought Finn along with him, or Rey-

               The thought suddenly makes your blood run cold and you immediately reach out to Kylo with your mind. _Kylo, we need to go. Now._

Kylo turns to look at you, and you’re oddly comforted just looking at him through the slit in his dark mask, even if you can’t properly read his expression. _What’s wrong?_ Strangely enough, you hear his voice inside your head complete _with_ the voice distortion, although you were sure your mind only rendered it that way because that was how you were expecting to hear his voice through his helmet.

               _Rey is here,_ you tell him, appealing to his sense of urgency first. _I don’t know for sure but if she can sense us through the Force-_

Kylo looks away from you, and you assume you don’t need to say anything more as he turns and says something to Phasma. She seems dismissive at first, but you can sense the flash of irritation through Kylo’s helmet as he continues to explain, and she glances back up at you before she turns and says something more to the two Storm Troopers, who quickly pull crackling batons from their belts before clipping them back on to be readily accessible in the event that they had to use them if they encountered her. Kylo says something else before he turns and starts heading back up the ramp towards you, and you quickly scurry back up into the ship and into your seat behind the pilot’s chair, but swivel your neck around to watch the doorway so that you can make sure he gets on board nonetheless.

               “Is everything okay?” Ani asks you, and you hesitate for a moment before answering. This was your son and you wanted to be honest with him, but at the same time, he had saved BB-8. If you told him you feared Rey was nearby, would he try to reach out to her with his mind? No, you decided. This was your son, and you had to trust him. You weren’t quite sure what exactly it would mean if you didn’t.

               “I’m afraid Rey might be close by,” you tell him. “Without reaching out to her, can you sense her?” Ani wrinkles his brow and seems to try to think hard for a moment, his eyes looking up and to the left as he focuses his energies through the Force.

               “No,” Ani replies as Kylo steps on board, and you flash him a supportive smile before he sits back down in the copilot’s chair.

               “We all ready to go?” you ask him, and Kylo takes off his helmet before he turns back to you.

               “Yeah,” he says with a breath, and you can tell that he’s trying to be composed for your sake. Whatever Phasma told him, he’s not overly concerned about it, but he’s worried about how you’re going to react to it.

               “Poe’s nearby, isn’t he?” you ask, and Kylo visibly flinches as though you’ve read his mind.

               “We’re not sure,” Kylo admits. “But his X-Wing was spotted on the southern bend of the Keren River. It’s possible that he’s closer and simply parked it there to serve as a distraction.”

               “Or it’s a trap,” you offer. “Either way, the sooner we get off this planet, the better. They can’t make me go back there.” The corners of Kylo’s lips quirk upwards into a smile, and you glance aside at Ani, who looks exceedingly nervous. “Hey, you okay?”

               “I don’t like this,” Ani says immediately. “They were our friends, once. And now, what I did to Sadie-“

               “Sadie is fine,” you tell him, although you weren’t exactly quite sure about how to feel if she woke up and found herself alone in the room with Hux with Ladson passed out beside her. You trusted that Hux had far more important matters to tend to than to worry about her, at any rate, but you knew it was a situation she would _not_ like to find herself in regardless. You’d say she’d never forgive you for it, but considering you had already done enough that she wouldn’t forgive you for, it hardly seemed relevant to dwell on at this point. You were unforgiven, and that was that.

               “She seemed scared,” Ani says quietly as he looks aside at you, and you’re honestly not sure how to reply to that. To tell the truth, you hadn’t actually _cared_ that Sadie was scared, hadn’t cared about anything aside from getting the answers that you desperately needed in order to help protect him and Kylo and get you off the planet as quickly and as safely as possible. Luckily, you didn’t have to say anything as Phasma entered the ship, her heavy boots stomping against the walkway as she takes a seat in the pilot’s chair. You can’t help but notice that two Storm Troopers have taken the two final seats in the ship, and you glance back at them nervously, their expressions hidden by their helmets.

               _Don’t worry_ , Kylo tells you, although he is looking straight ahead of him. _They are only here for our protection._

Nevertheless, you still can’t help but glance down to check and make sure that you still have your lightsaber hilt in your belt. You supposed you didn’t really have anything to fear from Storm Troopers who were basically conditioned to serve you, but you had spent so much time alone with just Kylo and Ani and Phasma that being around anyone else left you with an immediate sense of unease. You weren’t sure who they were, what they wanted from you, or what they were capable of.

               _Stop,_ Kylo urges, and your eyes quickly snap up to where he’s sitting. He’s not looking at you, but you can tell that your stress is clearly affecting him. You close your eyes and take a deep breath in through your nostrils, blowing it out of your mouth slowly.

               _Better?_ you ask, taking a few more steadying breaths, as you wait for Kylo’s response.

               _Yes,_ he replies after a few moments. _You don’t need to worry. I will not let anything happen to you. I will not let you leave my side._

You can’t help but smile as you open your eyes, and when you do, you see Kylo looking back at you. His lip twitches into the semblance of a smile before he turns back to help Phasma, and you turn to Ani, who is looking a bit more composed, but still uneasy.

               “We’re about to take off shortly,” Phasma explains as you feel the ship start to hover in the air. “We’re sending out a much larger ship from Naboo’s atmosphere. Hopefully they’ll think we’re on that ship instead, giving us more time to slip away unnoticed.”

               “Sounds like a plan,” you tell her confidently. “You managed to get us off D’Qar in one piece, so I have the utmost faith in the both of you.”

               Phasma just lets out a snort before a female voice cuts in over the comlink. “Ma’am, Omega Commander. Shipping precious cargo in 5…4…3…2…1…” You feel the shuttle shake as you see a massive frigate rise from the trees in the distance, flanked by a squadron of red-patched TIE fighters as it made its way into space.

               “Delta Leader, report,” Phasma says, her voice as commanding and authoritative as ever.

               “ _Precious Cargo_ aweigh, Captain. No contacts on our sco-“

               The com channel gives way to static as the lead TIE fighter blossoms into a fireball and a squadron of red-trimmed X-Wings races past the frigate. Ani lets out a little gasp of surprise and you gently try to reach out to him with your mind, offering a steady hum of reassurance in the place of words.

               “Delta Two here, Captain,” a male voice says, apparently taking over. “Delta Three and Five, break off and pursue Red Leader. Four to me, protect the bridge at all costs. Delta Six, join Beta Squadron on overwatch. Keep these fighters off of us.”

               Watching the TIE fighters and X-Wings dive and circle overhead, it occurred to you that your training exercise with Poe paled in comparison to what real aerial battle was like. Given their dedication in protecting the frigate, it seemed even the pilots thought you were on board, but then again, you supposed that they needed to make it seem that way in case the Resistance had cracked the First Order’s encrypted channels of communication. The battle continues around the frigate until it slips beyond the clouds and into space, Delta Two issuing frantic orders the whole way out of Naboo’s atmosphere. After a few minutes, his voice comes back over the comlink again. “ _Precious Cargo_ transitioning to lightspeed with Red and Green Squadron in pursuit. Good luck, Captain. Delta Two out.”

               From what you remembered, Starfighters Corps only had Black, Blue, and Red Squadrons when you were on D’Qar, so there were at least two more squadrons still out there, with Poe among them. The Resistance clearly expected a diversion and was holding back. Phasma seemed to sense it too, and retrieved a small holodisk from her belt as the blue holographic figure of a First Order officer materialized in the palm of her hand.

               “Yes, General?” he asks immediately, wasting no time.

               “Captain Giron,” Phasma begins. “Prepare the _Ravenous_ battle group for Naboo interdiction. I sense a trap.”

               “Right away, General,” the First Order officer announces. “We should be arriving in three minutes. Be advised, intel indicates Kuat shipyards vacant as of three hours ago.” Before the connection closes, he turns to someone out of view and is voice is still heard through the fading holo. “Sound general quarters, lieutenant. Prepare for fleet engagement.”

               Phasma looks down at the holodisk in her hand for a moment before she sighs and turns a knob. “As much as I hate using this for everything, we can’t afford to run the risk of open comms.” She turns to Kylo, a bit wearily, as he’s flipping all manners of switches along the side panel. “Do you feel it too, sir? Angle shields for maximum deflection. It seems the Republic Navy has finally decided to show its face.” The disk in her hand beeps, and she answers it immediately. “Go ahead, Omega.”

               “Ma’am, phase two is ready,” the voice responds. “Zeta, Omega, and Black Squadrons on standby. Hold…we have a problem, ma’am. Republic cruisers coming out of hyperspace. _Ravenous_ ETA one minute.”

               “Proceed with phase two, Commander,” Phasma orders. “ _Ravenous_ battle group will be on station before we break atmosphere.”

               “Aye, m’am. All squadrons shift frequency to Seven-Three-Alpha and report.” There’s a brief pause, and then a chorus of different voices checking in.

               “Zeta Squadron, standing by.”

               “Black Squadron, standing by.”

               “Hunter Aces, standing by.”

               The female voice suddenly returns. “Very well, Omega Wing. Form up on _Chrome Yacht_ , Formation Gamma. Expect heavy fleet resistance once we break atmosphere. Aces, stay with _Chrome Yacht_ at all costs. Black Squadron, scramble on my mark and be on the lookout for Black and Blue squadrons. Zeta, form aft screen, and be prepared to intercept Republic fighters with maximum prejudice. Unlike Black Squadron, they will not hesitate to target this shuttle. Black Squadron, 3…2…1…mark.”

               From somewhere nearby, you can see a group of jet-black TIE fighters all bearing the red special forces patch rise from the trees and split up, forming a wide circle perimeter around your shuttle. “Ma’am, _Ravenous_ has engaged Third Fleet. All craft, prepare to move on my mark. 3…2…1…”

               Phasma and Kylo launch into a coordinated series of movements, smoothly bringing the shuttle up into a cloud of TIE fighters. Ahead, you see that two of the fighters have conspicuous red stars painted on either side of the cockpit, and you supposed that these were your Ace escorts. For a second, it all seems too easy, until the comlink comes back to life.

               “Omega, this is Black Leader. Black and Blue Squadrons sighted, circling at one hundred clicks. Shall we engage?”

               “Negative, Black Leader. We’ve lost too many pilots already. Stay with the group. Engage if they close to fifty clicks.”

               “Aye, Omega,” is the Black Leader’s response. “Black Squadron, close formation on me. Hold position above Augie’s Pillar. Close screen on Omega command.”

               Your brow furrows in confusion as you think this over. So the First Order and the Republic were actively engaging each other, but Poe was just having the Resistance circle the battle? What was he waiting for? Was he really just there with the intent to capture you and Ani and bring you back with him? For some reason, you couldn’t help but think that there was more to this than you were aware of, but for the life of you, you couldn’t think of what it could be. As you rise through Naboo’s atmosphere and up into a steadily darkening sky, Phasma switches the central comlink on to listen in to what’s being said, although you don’t recognize any of the voices of the First Order pilots and Commanders that are speaking.

               “ _Mon Mothma_ coming to bear, main guns trained. Maximum port shields.”

               “Starkiller Three, torpedo away.”

               “ _Ravenous_ hull integrity at eighty percent, _General Calrissian_ neutralized, listing five degrees per minute; main reactor compromised. All fighters clear from reactor breach.”

               “ _Maxima_ port racks unresponsive, Tarkin Squadron, move to shield for cruiser reposition.”

               “ _Ravenous_ bow cannon charged and ready.” There is garbled static before a single word cuts through the noise. “-neutralized. Naboo Starfighter Corps responding. Bombers incoming, repeat, bombers incoming.”

               You sit there silently as you listen to the rapid fire exchange of communication, but you couldn’t tell whether the tide of the battle was turning in your favor or against it. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see Kylo fiddling with something on the control panel, and after a moment he turns to Phasma, who nods her head as she flips a switch on the comlink. You’re about to ask what their silent bit of communication means before an obnoxious, irritating voice fills your ears.

               “…here somewhere in this mess. She’ll be defended by the very best, and as always, Commander Dameron defies my orders. Gold Squadron, target the bridge of the _Ravenous_. We can’t afford to lose another ship to their main cannon. Reserve all turbolasers on the port beam for her ship. We’ll only have one shot at this. Rapier Squadron, stand by.”

               After all this time, you almost couldn’t believe that Captain Deso was still gunning for you, specifically. Idly, you wonder what conversations he and Poe must have had in your absence once he had branded you a traitor. It didn’t make sense why Deso hated you so much, considering you had hardly said more than three words to him, but that didn’t seem to matter. He wanted you dead, no matter what the cost. Kylo briefly glances over his shoulder in your direction as he senses your anger, and you cross your arms over your chest as you take in a deep breath and try to calm yourself, trying to make sure that he wasn’t any more distracted through the Force bond than he already was.

               As the blue of Naboo’s sky gives way to the black, starry expanse of space, you see a scene that seems like it’s straight out of a news holo from the Clone Wars. Three cruisers unmistakably belonging to the First Order are facing off against three of what could only be described as the Republic’s version of Star Destroyers, with constant streams of turbolaser fire streaking back and forth between the two trios, as well as the telltale swarms of little dots around them that could only be fighters. It seems that the First Order cruisers have the upper hand, as a fourth Republic cruiser is clearly badly damaged, slowly tumbling end over end, its cannons silenced. Even still, your momentary relief quickly ebbs away as another Republic voice comes over the comlink.

               “ _General Solo,_ this is Royal Leader. Unidentified Omega-series shuttle with heavy elite fighter escort ascending from sector six. Looks like Ace Squadron.”

               Captain Deso was currently commanding a ship named after Kylo’s father? This time, you didn’t even need to worry about your own anger getting in the way of distracting Kylo; you could feel his own anger radiating outwards like a heat wave. Of course, it only made sense that the Republic would name a ship after Han Solo considering the part he played in the Galactic Civil War, but now that ship was being commanded by a person that was intent on killing you and Kylo at all costs, as part of revenge that seemed almost too personal in nature. The irony of that was not lost on you.

               “Royal Leader, that’s her,” Deso barks, and you inwardly gulp. “I knew the frigate was a decoy. Engage _immediately._ Destroy that shuttle at all costs.”

_Shit._

               Omega Commander had apparently been listening as well, since she immediately begins issuing orders of her own. “Black Squadron, move to intercept Royal Squadron. Aces, set warp missiles for cluster detonation; cannons will only pinpoint our position. Do not jettison munitions until just before the jump. Destroy all targets within 400 clicks of _Chrome Yacht._ Zeta Squadron, take point, weapons free. Keep those Republic fighters off us. Omega, to me. Lock shields for blockade run. ETA three minutes to hyperspace distance.”

               “ _Ravenous_ here, we copy, Omega. Hyperdrives on standby, we’ll see you at the rendezvous.”

               Up ahead, you can see the situation start to take a turn for the worse as several smaller ships drop out of hyperspace around the Republic cruisers, adding to the constant cannon exchange above. You watch wordlessly as one corvette dropped out of hyperspace in perfect position to be hit shieldless by a volley of stray turbolaser fire, the wreckage crashing into a Republic cruiser and sending a massive fireball out into space. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be the _General Solo_ , since Deso’s voice could still be heard over the comlink with no alarms blaring in the background.

               “We have her on our scopes. All port batteries, fire on that shuttle. They must not be allowed to escape.”  

               “Someone really seems to hate you,” Phasma mutters through gritted teeth, and you can only screw your face up in disgust in response. You can see blue turbolaser shots streaking past the cockpit windows, and the fighters ahead close formation to form a sort of grid ahead of you, their combined shields deflecting all turbolaser shots that had a chance of hitting you. You knew that fighter shields couldn’t last long against a turbolaser barrage, and you silently hoped that their, and your, shields held just long enough to make it to hyperspace so that you could escape this aerial nightmare once and for all.

               On the combat panel, an alarm started to sound frantically, and you grip the arm rests on your seats tightly as you lean forward, trying to figure out what was going on. “Missiles!” Phasma shouts. “Hold on!” Lucky for you, you were holding on, as she sends the shuttle into a series of wild, twisting spins until the alarm suddenly cuts off. Phasma steadies the ship, and you quickly press your fingers to your temple, waiting for your brain to stop banging around the insides of your skull and for the wave of nausea that had hit you to die down. You’re in such a state that you almost miss the look that Kylo shoots your way before he turns to Phasma.

               “It’s the pilot,” he tells her, and you perk up immediately. “He destroyed the Republic interceptors before jumping to hyperspace.”

               “What’s that mean?” Ani asks, and Kylo shoots you another look before he turns away.

               In front of you, Phasma angles her head slightly towards you both. “It means,” she explains. “That he just saved our lives.”

               “But he jumped to hyperspace,” Ani continues. “Why’d he leave?”

               “He’s signaling the Resistance to retreat,” Phasma says, a touch of amusement in her voice. “Apparently he’s leaving the Republic to deal with us on their own terms. This is a fight that he wants the Resistance to have no part in.” She looks at you like she wants to say more, but she can’t, and you know she can’t, not with Kylo sitting right there. Granted, Poe didn’t know what had happened with your encounter between Sadie and Ladson back on Naboo yet, but he had still decided to risk endangering the Resistance’s relationship with the Republic in order to save you, and you couldn’t quite figure out how to process that yet, not with the battle still raging ahead.

               “Do you think it’s because I saved BB-8?” Ani asks hopefully, and you tilt your head to the side in consideration. You didn’t want to encourage what he had done, but for a moment you were almost glad that he had spared the droid’s life. If he hadn’t, there was no way Poe would have forgiven you for it, and while you weren’t truly all that concerned about his forgiveness, you didn’t want someone like Poe as your enemy. He had told you all about his long history with BB-8 as his friend and companion, and destroying him would have been all too personal in nature.

               “Maybe,” you reply after a long moment, and while Ani looks pleased with himself, you can’t help but notice Kylo’s expression sour. Even still, it couldn’t be helped. Despite your complicated history with Poe, you were reasonably certain that if you had allowed Kylo to destroy BB-8, that he would have shot you out of the sky himself, and that was something that you didn’t want to think about.

               “ _Ravenous_ group, _Chrome Yacht_ hyperspace distance ETA thirty seconds. Prepare to jump to hyperspace.”

               “Yes, General. Transitioning to hyperspace once fighters are recovered.”

               Over the comlink, you can hear the frustration in Deso’s voice. “There’s no time! They’re recalling their fighters. _All craft,_ concentrate fire on that shuttle!”

               Almost directly ahead of you, one of the fighters shatters into a cloud of metal shards under the increased turbolaser barrage, and Phasma barely dodges it in time. Over the comlink, you can hear Omega Commander counting down. “All craft, make the jump in 5…4…3…2…1…”

               Kylo engages the hyperdrive, and the sea of turbolaser rounds stretches and is replaced by the comforting blue swirl of hyperspace.

               “Okay,” Phasma says with a sigh. “I think we finally lost them.” You can feel the muscles in your body relax, but your fingers and toes are exceedingly sore from the contracted position they had to endure throughout the fight. You press your toes into the tops of your boot while you stretch out your fingers and clench them into fists several times as you try to get the feeling back into them.

               _Are you all right?_ Kylo’s voice makes you jerk your head up sharply as you turn to look at him, and you quickly nod your head in his direction.

               “Fine,” you breathe, finding the smallest bit of comforts in the exhalation. You suck air into your cheeks and hold them there for a moment before you finally puff them both out dramatically, shaking your head as you let the muscles in your neck relax. “What about you, Ani? You doing okay?” Ani just gives you a curt nod, and you glance behind you at the two Storm Troopers in the back, twisting in your seat to get a better look at them. “What about you guys? You guys good?”

               Neither of them says anything as they stare back at you with their cold, unblinking masks.

               “Super,” you sigh as you turn around in your seat, and Kylo is almost smiling as he regards you. Apparently he wasn’t going to hold Poe saving your lives over your head after all, although that wasn’t something you really wanted to dwell on in light of more pressing matters. “So then, now that that’s out of the way, where are we headed? And please don’t tell me Tatooine.”

               “No,” Phasma says. “It’s finally finished. Hasn’t Ren told you?” She glances at Kylo, who glances aside, and you quickly purse your lips together as you stare him down.

               “He mentioned it,” you tell her quickly. “I just wasn’t really paying attention, that’s all.” Kylo’s head perks upwards quickly, and he almost looks confused that you would lie for him in order to protect his image in front of Phasma and two of his troops. To be fair, you had no idea why he would be. Kylo Ren was notoriously feared throughout the galaxy, or at least, he was at one time, and you wanted to keep it that way.

               “We’re headed back to the Unknown Region,” Kylo says firmly, his voice full of the calm authority that was more like Ren than Kylo. “You will see it when we get there.”

               “Of course,” you reply respectfully, and from your position you can just manage to catch the corner of Kylo’s mouth pull into a happy smile. He’s not looking at you, but you can tell he wants to. You can tell he wants to hold your hand for reassurance, and you let yourself be comforted by the fact that he wants to. He would probably do it in front of Phasma, but with the two Storm Troopers in the back, he couldn’t risk gaining a reputation that he had gone soft simply because of his association with you. You understood that, although the more you thought about it, the more you had to take into account that your reputation was on the line too.

               You had decided to join up with the First Order, and Hux had been looking at you, specifically, when he had said that the First Order must live on. You knew he disagreed with Kylo on a great many things, but did that mean he was going to accept you into the fold of upper echelons? You had figured that you could help out from where you were situated on Naboo, safely away from the heat of the conflict, but did Hux really want you to get actively involved in the First Order? Were you going to have to start going to meetings and actually doing things around the base? Were you going to get your very own First Order uniform?

               Part of it terrified you. Part of it thrilled you. You had always wanted to be in a position where you could put your skills to good use, where you could truly do the most good. Before you had always thought of the most good as a rule of the universe, but the universe, it seemed, had a penchant for chaos, and the state of the galaxy at large was slipping further and further into entropy each day. It was the nature of life, it seemed, to unravel and decay, and so it didn’t really seem to matter how much good you did when the universe as a whole didn’t seem to benefit in any substantial way. No, instead you had to do the most good for yourself, for your family, to make sure that while the universe collapsed into a heap around you, that you still managed to be standing strong.

               You allow yourself to be submerged in your own thoughts as you travelled further and further into the Unknown Region, and your mood is both somber and reflective before you reach your destination, which was quite hard to miss. You had been staring out into space through the window in the front of the shuttle when suddenly something caught your eye and drew your attention. As your eyes refocused and centered in on the large _thing_ in front of you, you could feel your eyes go wide as your mouth fell open in shock.

               It was a ship, but to be fair, it didn’t look like any sort of ship you had ever seen before in your entire life. It was the size of a miniature planet, at least, and it was surrounded by several heavy cruisers, as well as a heavy fleet of TIE Fighters that seemed to be plugged into the ship to draw from its power at all times, a large detail of troops constantly on standby for defense. Either that, or they had simply received word of your arrival and were waiting for you to approach, but you could think of no other reason why there would be charging ports on the outside of a ship. No, a part of you knew that they were truly there for defense, to disengage their fuel line and take off into space and crush a Resistance threat – or even another threat that the Unknown Regions might provide – before they even got close.

               You wanted to study the ship in more detail, but as you got closer and closer you were soon overcome by the enormity of it, as it was suddenly impossible to take in the whole thing from this distance as you neared the entrance of the hangar. The ship was big enough to have its own mass shadow, to be sure, and you could only imagine what would happen if some unfortunate soul got lost in the Unknown Regions and tried to jump their way into hyperspace, only to drop out near this thing. You could only imagine how much work had gone into creating something of this magnitude, and suddenly five years sounded like no time at all. Heck, from the size of the thing, a part of you assumed that this had already been in construction before the Starkiller Base had exploded. Maybe it had already started to be built before you had entered the Starkiller Base, although you honestly had no idea how to create something that big and that vast and have it be totally undetected by the rest of the galaxy. If it had been picked up by the Resistance, you weren’t quite sure what they would be able to do about it, as it seemed much too large to destroy.

               “It’s huge,” Ani whispers from beside you, and you turn your head to observe your own awe reflected in his eyes. You just nod your head in agreement as you turn back to look out the window and watch the four TIE Fighter escorts ahead part in opposite directions, two flying up and two flying down, in order to let you pass, revealing a large hangar door opening behind them.

               You want to ask what it is. You want to ask how it was built and how they got the materials to construct it. You want to ask how long it took, you want to ask what it’s used for, but as you allow yourself to feel completely dwarfed in its massive presence, only one question escapes your lips. “What do you even _call_ this thing?”

               You can hear Phasma let out an amused breath from beneath her helmet as she turns her chromed, helmeted head back to register your expression. “This,” she replies. “This is the _Propitiate_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note: Remember the "exclusion zone" that Ackbar mentioned all the way back in Chapter 25 of _Candle_? Yeah...it might have endured quite a few, erm, construction delays, but it's finally finished!! The Reader may not have remembered it, but you can bet Ackbar and the rest of the Resistance still do...
> 
> So tons of fun things happened in this chapter, and by fun, I mean absolutely terrible. The Reader leaving unconscious Sadie and Ladson with Hux isn't the best plan, and by "not the best," I mean that if I met her, I'd smack her upside the head. I know there was some discussion in the last chapter's comments about although the Reader "is" us, we may not necessarily agree with the decisions that she makes, and I'm no exception to that! I know I'm writing this story and the Reader is loosely based on me (only my positive qualities, I assure you ;) ) but the Reader has, and may continue to do, things that I don't think are right or justifiable in any way. This has basically become more or less Reader's story, and I'm just sitting back writing it all out thinking, "Damn, you done fucked up. Hope you can talk your way out of this because this is one hell of a shit brew." But it's an _entertaining_ shit brew (at least I hope it still is!) In the interest of full disclosure, I started on chapter 48 last night and we're somewhere around 315k words? I think there'll be about 60 chapters total, but I'm not done writing yet, so don't quote me!! xD (But considering how we're only on chapter 23, you can see we still have a ways to go yet...)
> 
> I think I have more to say about this chapter, (I hope you all enjoyed the aerial battle, that was fun to write!!) but I'm actually heading into the mountains to hike and I'll be gone all day so right now my brain is focused on maps and trails and packing so I'll stop here. Wish me good weather, and I'll see you all on Tuesday!! Until then, cheers!!


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW content ahead  
> [that may make some readers uncomfortable, just a heads up]

               The ship was much bigger on the inside…

               …or at least that was what it seemed like when your tiny shuttle passed through the opening doors only to be greeted by a massive hangar with ships of every shape and size imaginable parked in all directions. Kylo slipped his helmet back over his head, and you mentally made a note that perhaps you should have your own helmet to make yourself seem as dark and formidable as he was. After all, you were as strong as he was, and although you still had not tested your abilities to see if you were any more powerful than he was, you were still stronger than anyone else they had aboard this ship. If you were going to be a part of the First Order upper echelons, you were going to have to instill fear and intimidation into anyone who looked your way by default, unless your goal was to look as unassuming as possible and then crush those who underestimated you. To be fair, you had played that game back at the Resistance, for the Republic, pretended to be a shy, unassuming girl that was entrenched in circumstances way over your head, but you were bored of that role now. You were older, and you were prepared to come into your own and _lead_ , not just yourself, but others, if that was what Hux asked of you.

               Unfortunately, Hux was not here right now to know exactly what he would ask of you, and so you just stayed behind Phasma and Kylo as they disembarked the ship, trying to look every bit as intimidating and polished as they had been the first time you had seen either of them. You could only imagine how you _actually_ looked, probably flustered and unkempt from the journey, although you were grateful that the two Storm Troopers were at least carrying your packs so that you didn’t look like Kylo Ren’s lackey. Instead, you tried to walk tall as you kept your shoulders back and stared straight ahead of you, chin raised, jaw set. You had no idea how many of them would assume that you were Kylo Ren’s wife, but with Ani beside you, you figured that would probably give them a pretty strong hint.

               You suddenly remembered what Phasma had told you years ago when you had first arrived on Naboo, that her troops had told tales of a girl with a glowing amber lightsaber staff. If that really was true, then they should know the rumors about your Force abilities and know firsthand that you were not someone to be trifled with, not just because you were an extension of Ren and his Force choke, but you were someone to be feared in your own right. The only difference was that you didn’t have a helmet like Phasma or Kylo, but then again, neither did Hux, and everyone feared and obeyed him anyway. Sure, it may have been because of his position as General, but he also commanded that authority and respect, and you knew you could have it too if you did the same.

               Even with all that filtering through your mind, though, you still felt more or less overwhelmed by the grandeur of the ship as you glanced about in all directions, trying to take everything in, from the sea of ships in every direction, to the clipped, terse voice of the hangar controller directing their every movement over the PA. A small detachment of six Storm Troopers marched up to Phasma and saluted her with automatic, robotic gestures, and Phasma just nodded at them as they stepped aside to let her pass. “I will take you to your quarters first,” she says, and although you feel like she’s talking to you, she’s looking at Ren when she speaks.

               “Lead the way,” Kylo instructs, and you can’t help but again feel comforted by the voice distortion of his mask. Thinking back, you couldn’t remember a time when you were really ever afraid of it, not even on the Starkiller Base. It had been intriguing, and captivating, there was no question about that, but then again that had been so many years ago you weren’t sure if you could really remember it clearly or the events that had transpired with that much certainty. That was why you had let the past go and focused on the present, on Kylo in the here and now. The past sometimes felt almost as though it was an illusion, but Kylo was a physical, tangible thing to reach out and touch. It didn’t matter what had happened then. You could hear his voice telling you that he loved you now, you could feel his arms around you, you could inhale his scent and see his smile when you told him you were his, and that was all you had ever really wanted, anyway.

               Which is why you were almost alarmed by the layout of the new apartment that you were going to call home. It wasn’t an exact replica of the one on the Starkiller Base, nor could it be, but it looked pretty damn similar. The doors opened into a small foyer that opened up into a much larger living room with a kitchen to the right, complete with a breakfast bar and three stools. Off to your left was another door, and although you had never really seen what had become of the room Kylo had been so secretive about, this door held a small sparring room, and to the left of it a much smaller bedroom and attached bathroom that was for Ani. Your bedroom, again, was just past the kitchen off to the right of the entranceway, the bed in the same position against the wall and the bathroom off in the corner of the room. It was even lengthwise like the old bathroom you had there, and while you tried to tell yourself that they probably just used the same interior designer, or possibly the same floor plan, you couldn’t help but feel a bit off put by what you were seeing.

               “Do you like it?” Kylo asks. He’s slid his helmet off his head and tossed it onto the bed as he wrapped his arms around you, resting his chin against your shoulder. You try to smile, for his sake, while Phasma was off talking to Ani in his bedroom.

               “It reminds me of the Starkiller Base,” you admit, knowing that Kylo was going to read your emotions one way or the other.

               “Does that bother you?” Kylo asks, and you consider his own feelings of nostalgia. That was a place he probably remembered somewhat fondly, a place where he felt that he had truly gotten to know you and love you, but you had always regarded it as a place of uncertainty, of confused feelings, and it was a place that had been long since destroyed, blasted into a billion bits by the Resistance. You did not want that to happen to this new room as well.

               “No,” you manage, safe in the confidence that Kylo couldn’t out you for lying when you didn’t even know if you were lying yourself. You simply couldn’t decide how to feel about this new place, but you supposed you would get used to it in time. “I mean, I guess we have to make the most of it one way or the other. We’re never heading back to Naboo, right?”

               “I’m sorry,” Kylo says softly, but you just shrug your shoulders as you notice that one of the panels of the wall on the other side of the bathroom looks like it has a small crack in it. As you walk closer, you realize that this is actually a door to a closet and you push it open to see a series of First Order suits hanging there, all neatly pressed and without even so much as a crinkle or crease. There’s quite a few of them, but they are all quite black and blend together so well that you can’t quite tell where one suit ends and another begins in order to count them all properly.

               “Does Hux really expect you to wear this?” you ask, finally letting a bit of amusement creep into your voice as you reach out and take one of the hangars in your hand. You pull one out and hold it against yourself, and that’s when you notice that the cut seems a bit too feminine, and it seems considerably too small for Kylo. You, on the other hand…

               “Those are for you,” Phasma says as she enters your bedroom, confirming your suspicions, and you feel your lips purse together as you spin around to face them, still holding the First Order suit against you. Kylo makes a face, as if he doesn’t quite like it, but Phasma nods her head in approval. She has since removed her helmet as well, holding it under one arm, and her wispy blonde bangs bounce against her forehead as she bobs her head forward in a quick series of nods. “Yes, I believe those will fit you well. I took your measurements from some of the clothes you wore on Naboo. They should all be your size.”

               “Uh, thanks for that,” you tell her, making a face to show that you weren’t quite sure how to feel about that. “So I’m guessing that I should wear this around base?” Kylo looks like he wants to say something, and you immediately feel your forehead crease. “Okay, me and Ani are not just going to sit back and lounge around in here all day while you run off barking orders or doing whatever. I’m a part of this now, and I’m going to _be_ a part of it.” You hold up the uniform in front of you. “I even have my own uniform now and everything.”

               “Hux does want her to be included,” Phasma tells Kylo, but you can see him grimace as he considers this. You supposed he was fine with you taking part in things from Naboo when you were a safe distance away, but now that you were here, it seemed that he preferred that you stayed inside your room. Was he ashamed to be seen with you? Did he think you were going to make a mess of things in the First Order? Was he worried that you would embarrass yourself, or worse, was he afraid that you might upstage him? Kylo looks alarmed as these questions flit through your mind, and he quickly turns back to Phasma.

               “Leave us,” Kylo orders, but his voice is filled with a hint of trepidation, and Phasma casts you a weary look as she turns around and slides her helmet on back over her head. Kylo waits until she’s out of the apartment, but closes the bedroom door behind him to hint to Ani that you needed privacy as he turns around to face you. “Are those truly your concerns?”

               “I’m not sure,” you admit, but your voice is quiet. You honestly weren’t quite sure what question you should ask first, if you should ask any at all. But Kylo knew what was on your mind now, and there was no way that you weren’t going to have this conversation. It was either going to be now or later, and you supposed it was best to get this out of the way so there was no chance of miscommunication tearing you apart in the future.

               “Do you think Hux wants me on hand because he thinks I actually have something to contribute?” you ask at length. “Or do you think he just wants me around to annoy you?”

               Kylo narrows his eyes as he studies you for a moment, as if he’s trying to figure out what you’re really asking. “Those are two separate questions.”

               “Phasma said Hux wants me to be included,” you remind him without missing a beat. “But what about you, Kylo? What do you want?”

               “I want you to be happy,” Kylo begins, but it almost feels like a rehearsed, placating response and you’re not giving him the luxury of accepting that this time. If he wanted to have this conversation, then you were going to have it and lay everything out on the table.

               “Do you really want me to be a part of this?” you ask again. “Because I thought that you did but now that we’re here I can’t help but feel like you want me to be locked in my room all day again, and I don’t think I need to tell you that that is _not_ going to happen.”

               “I just want you to be safe,” Kylo says, but these are just recycled platitudes that don’t mean anything. His empty words disintegrate before they even reach your ears, and you can’t help but feel that he might as well not even be speaking.

               “Kylo, answer me,” you demand sternly, a flash of anger bringing heat to your face, and Kylo looks at you curiously, continuing to study you as if he doesn’t understand something. Was it about what happened when you had first confronted Hux about your involvement? Was it about what happened back on Naboo between Sadie and Ladson? He’s reading you like he’s not really sure what he’s seeing, and you can’t adequately describe all the ways that that stresses you.

               “This anger,” Kylo says softly. “Where did it come from?”

               “From you, obviously,” you snap with an irritated shrug of your shoulders, but Kylo doesn’t look too sure, and that only frustrates you further. “Fine, you want to know why I’m angry? Because I thought we were past this, that’s why. For years we’ve been running around from installation to installation, from planet to planet and all of it’s been on your decision to keep us safe and I’ve barely been included in anything, and it’s not fair. You’ve been able to keep us safe but I want us to be a team. I want us to do this together. I don’t want to just rely on your decisions on what to do and where to go anymore.”

               “But we _are_ safe here,” Kylo insists, returning your anger, and his voice is louder than you would have expected. “There is no reason for you to worry any longer. We are safe here. You saw the defenses that we have outside the ship. The Resistance cannot touch us.”

               “I just don’t want to be an extension of you anymore,” you tell him, hoping that the words don’t sound as biting to his ears as they do to your own. “Everywhere I go, I’m treated solely as Kylo Ren’s wife, or lover, or whatever. At least at the Resistance, they saw me as _me_ , and no one really cared about what I was to you, they judged me for what I did, learning how to fly and protect myself. You think it’s like that for me here? No one actually sees me for what _I_ can do, and I can do a lot.”

               “I know you can,” Kylo relents, and his voice is suddenly quiet again.

               “Then trust me,” you tell him, although you can’t help but think that your voice almost sounds pleading in a way. “Or do you think that I’m incapable of fulfilling what Hux would ask of me?”

               “No,” Kylo insists, as if he’s insulted that you would even suggest such a thing. “You are more than capable of fulfilling _any_ task that he may ask, but I don’t know what he will demand of you. It’s no secret how Hux feels about me, yet he seems to have visibly taken a certain…penchant to you.”

               You want to retort that maybe you were just a likeable person, that maybe you had potential within the First Order and Hux saw it, but you finally look past your anger and tap into Kylo’s sense of clarity around the situation. “You think that’s just an act,” you say softly. “You think that he’s using me in some way? To get back at you for something?”

               “Or to get back at you,” Kylo echoes. “He never liked you. He used to complain about you constantly, and I don’t know what he’ll ask of you. I don’t want to be forced to watch him put you in a position where you would feel coerced to follow one of his commands against your better judgement.”

               Something about this strikes you as strange, but you’re not quite sure exactly what, whether it was Kylo’s tacit admission that when it came down to a stalemate between you and Hux that Kylo might not choose your side and defend you, or something else. “When did Hux complain about me?” you ask at length. You had known implicitly that Hux had never liked you, considering that little detail that he had left you to starve to death back on the Starkiller Base, but the rest of the times that you had seen him or spoken to him there were few and far between. Why would he even have reason to _constantly_ complain about you?

               “He only did it to goad me,” Kylo says as he shakes his head and steps away from you, but you can’t help but think that it’s more than that. You think of the way that Hux had dramatically kissed your hand before you left, and combining that with Hux’s seemingly selfless decision to stay behind, you reached a conclusion that left a very unsavory aftertaste in your mouth, although, quite frankly, it bordered on the ridiculous.

               “You think Hux is jealous?” you ask incredulously. Even the mere thought that Hux had a thing for you was absolutely absurd, but Kylo turns to give you a scathing look regardless.

               “Not of you, of me,” he replies. “He’s jealous that I get to have a family, a wife and a son, everything he’s always wanted.” To be fair, you weren’t convinced that that was something that Hux had always wanted; he seemed intent on ruling the galaxy and you could only imagine that he would perceive attachments as a weakness, as holding him back. Kylo probably knew him better than you did, but it would make sense if Hux was jealous if he had been telling the truth about his wife and son, and you couldn’t quite be sure that he had been.

               “Well, technically I’m not really your wife, we’re not exactly married yet,” you remind him, but Kylo just looks annoyed that you’re dismissing his point. “So you really think that Hux wants me to join the First Order because he’s jealous of you? Because you have something he wants?”

               “You don’t know Hux like I do,” Kylo tells you. “He’s ruthless, and vindictive, and I am just trying to keep you safe. The less contact you have with him the better.”

               “What if he actually likes me?” you ask, and Kylo gives you such an extreme eye roll that it’s almost groan worthy.

               “Hux doesn’t like _anyone_ ,” Kylo replies firmly, but even he can’t help disguise the fact that his mind went to the same place that yours did.

               “Not in the gross way,” you say without even trying to hide how much the thought revolted you. Truly, Hux had abused Sadie, and while you had forgiven Kylo for plenty, you were completely incapable of seeing past Hux’s faults. You could possibly bring yourself to work with him, but you would never be friends with him, nor would you ever be able to like him to the point of acquaintance. “But maybe Hux actually thinks that I can contribute something to the First Order. Okay, maybe he just wants to use me for my skills and abilities, but isn’t that true of everyone here? If he thinks that I can be of some use to the First Order, he’s not just going to let me just sit back and hide in here all day doing nothing when I can be contributing at least something to the cause.”

               “But you are not just anyone,” Kylo says firmly, and if you’re not mistaken, a little viciously. “Like it or not, Hux will always see you as beneath me, in the same way that he sees Anakin as an extension of me. He can use you to get to me, and he knows that. It’s the only reason he has not been anything but terrible towards you.”

               “Perhaps,” you say with an idle shrug of your shoulders, and Kylo stares at you incredulously. “No, I believe you, I see your point, but I just don’t see how this really changes anything.” Kylo looks like he’s about to argue, but you keep going. “We’re here now. I’m here now. I don’t think either of us is really stupid enough to believe that the Resistance is actually going to capture Hux on Naboo, and when he gets back, he’s going to want my input on things, and I don’t think I can just stay here hiding away on his ship and refuse to give my assistance when he asks for it.”

               “I can try-“ Kylo starts, but he just shakes his head as he accepts your point. You can sense his resistance growing, and you quickly hang the First Order uniform that you had forgotten you’d been holding back up as you go over to stand directly in front of him.

               “Listen to me,” you say as you take his face in both hands. “We are a team. We will do this together. Nothing’s changed. Hux is Hux, but you and I are far more powerful than he is or hopes to be. Hux calls me to go anywhere, and I expect you to be right by my side.” You cast a small, sly smile back up at him. “You’re the last Knight of Ren still alive, right? So you can be, like, my protector. My dark knight.”

               His eyes spark with good humor at the title. “You do realize my mother was once a princess of Alderaan, right?”

               “What?” you ask, your eyes going wide. “Leia was a princess?”

               “General, now,” Kylo tells you, and you assumed it must be easier for him to deal with her title rather than her name.

               “But does that make you a prince?” you ask, and you can’t help the fact that you’re grinning.

               “Technically no,” Kylo tells you. “You can’t hold that distinction for a planet that no longer exists.”

               “Yeah, but if it did,” you reply, and you just shake your head from side to side as your hands trail down his chest. You gnaw on your lower lip, trying to think it over. “So if we _did_ get married, and if Alderaan still existed, would I be, like, your princess?”

               “The title doesn’t apply,” Kylo insists, but there is still a note of humor in his voice. “And even if it did, you can’t be princess to a planet if you aren’t from there.”

               “Fair,” you reply evenly, but you don’t have time to dwell on it further as Kylo presses his lips to yours. The gesture is more than comforting, and you run both hands through his wavy dark hair as you push yourself against him, desperate to feel as much of him as possible. “Holy fuck,” you whisper as you pull away slightly, and you feel almost dizzy as you slump your forehead into one hand. “Did all of that really happen today?”

               You let everything roll back through your mind, Sadie and Ladson showing up at your door, the threat of the Resistance approaching at any time, using your Force abilities on Sadie, running away, Ani stopping Kylo and Phasma from killing BB-8, and of course, your harrowing escape from Naboo before Poe saved your lives. It suddenly becomes too much for you and you feel almost dizzy as you think back to how close you had all honestly come to dying right there and then. You could have just as likely been captured, and you honestly wondered why you hadn’t been. The Resistance could have easily had you surrounded while you were distracted by Sadie and Ladson, and yet-

               “You think it was the pilot?” Kylo asks, and you can’t help but look at him uncertainly.

               “Do you think he really let us go?” you ask. “Honestly? I know he saved our lives from fucking Deso, but he could easily have surrounded the house and taken us in by force if he really wanted to. He knew where we were, but he basically just let us go.”

               “Honestly,” Kylo replies as his hands find your waist. “I think he wanted to give you the chance to come back to him before he tried to capture you under threat of violence. If he did, that would make him no better than me.” He shrugs his shoulders as if he really couldn’t care less. “I doubt he will give you a second chance.” You puzzle this over for a moment, trying to figure out exactly how you should feel about it, but Kylo doesn’t give you the time. “You are mine,” he tells you firmly, and as his hands sneak around to your back, his fingers dip into your pants to squeeze your ass. You can’t help but laugh at his playfulness, and you quickly reach up to kiss him again, the fingers of one hand slipping into his thick hair as the other reaches around to caress the nape of his neck.

               “Then make me yours,” you murmur against his lips, and Kylo lets out a small noise of appreciation from deep in his throat as he continues to massage the muscles of your ass with his hands. It honestly feels better than it should, or maybe it just did because you had been sitting so long, but either way he continues to kiss you and keep up the steady, rhythmic movement until you can honestly feel yourself building for him. You want him, you want him almost as badly as he wants you, and you can’t help but giggle as you pull away slightly.

               “I wonder what Hux would think if I got cum on my brand new uniform,” you tell him, and Kylo smiles good naturedly as he pulls away slightly more than you would like.

               “Are you really going to wear that?” Kylo asks, and you just shrug your shoulders absent-mindedly.

               “I mean, they’re not as flattering as my tunics,” you admit, looking down at yourself, and you can’t help but grin as you notice Kylo’s eyes sweeping your body. “Then again-“ You quickly pull your clothes off as fast as you can so that you are standing in front of him, stark naked, letting him appraise the curve of the muscles in your arms, the narrow line running down your abdomen, the little pooch of your uterus just below your abdomen that trailed down to your clit. You were not shy in front of him, never would be, not when Kylo looked you over with that hungry stare that meant he wanted to consume you whole.

               A small sound of lust escapes him as he pushes you backwards onto the bed in a seated position, and you spread your legs for him as you watch him undress quickly, trying to stumble out of his clothes as quickly as possible. “I’m waiting,” you tease, and it doesn’t escape your notice that you had once teased Poe in a similar fashion, oh so very long ago.

               “Then don’t wait,” Kylo says simply, and all of a sudden you can feel yourself being pushed backwards onto the bed using the power of his Force as your hand suddenly drapes over your body, running over the curve of your breast, down your stomach, to where your fingers gingerly probe over your clit. You bite your lip and try to suppress a moan, but a part of you was more confused than anything. Was Kylo really using the Force to make you touch yourself? A part of you was too turned on to care, but as you felt your hand inexplicably thrust a finger inside yourself, you couldn’t help but bite your lip to suppress the moan that was forming in your throat.

               “Do you like that?” Kylo asks as he pulls his shirt off over his head.

               “Unsure,” you reply. While it _felt_ good, you had suddenly become cautious of Kylo’s hold on you over the Force. Was he truly more powerful than you? He was strong enough to control your movements, and while you weren’t exactly resisting him, it still seemed to indicate that he was more powerful than you were.

               _Does it matter?_ You hear Kylo’s voice inside your head and you immediately flush as he knows what you’re thinking.

               _No,_ you reply, but there is still an element of uncertainty in your voice that you can’t truly eliminate. You weren’t sure how to feel about Kylo’s level of control over you, but he himself seemed completely unconcerned with your thoughts or how you felt about it as you removed your fingers so he could tease the area with his mouth instead. You let out a gasp as you sunk your fingers into Kylo’s hair, and there was no mistaking your pleased reaction as he applied a rapid burst of suction to your tender clit before teasing the area with his tongue. You bucked your hips up towards his mouth, but the motion only caused Kylo to pull away as he started to place gentle kisses up your groin towards your abdomen, working up towards your breast.

               He slipped a finger inside of you the same moment that he captured your nipple between his teeth, and you couldn’t help but let out a cry from the sheer burst of sensation that flooded through your veins. You whimpered beneath him and tried to reach up to grab him again, but suddenly your body couldn’t move. You tried to move your arms, even kick out your legs, but you were a victim of Kylo’s fingers pulsing in and out of you at a deliciously fast pace as he licked and sucked at your breast, leaving you incapable of resisting him even if you wanted to.

               He had done this before. You had liked that he had done this before, and you weren’t exactly sure why you didn’t really like it now. Kylo was in control, but then again, Kylo was always in control. He was always the first one to make decisions, to dictate where you should go when you were running from the Resistance, to be on top while you fucked, at least usually, anyway. It seemed he always wanted power, always wanted to be in charge, always wanted to have the upper hand, and suddenly you realized that maybe Hux’s and Kylo’s disagreement didn’t have anything to do with the topic they disagreed upon, but were a result of Kylo not realizing that he wanted to usurp as much power from Hux as he possibly could without even consciously recognizing that he was doing so.

               That was why you had a surprise in store for him today. As Kylo pushed into you, he released his hold on you, and you took that opportunity to wrap your legs around his waist and flip him over onto the bed, placing both hands on his chest as you concentrated and concentrated _hard_. Kylo looked like he made some attempt to move, but now you were the one pinning him down with the Force, and as you slowly moved yourself up and down along his shaft, Kylo looked strangely vulnerable beneath you as he tried to figure out what you were doing. He had held you down with the Force plenty of times before without complaint, but it was the first time you were ever doing it to him.

               _What are you doing?_ Kylo asks, and for some reason you feel like you’re about to enter a conversation that didn’t seem appropriate to have while you were grinding on his dick. Even still, you slowed the pace, not sure if you should stop completely or dismount.

               _Holding you down_ , is your reply. _You did the same to me._

               Kylo’s looking at you like he doesn’t quite understand what you’re trying to do. _You didn’t ask me to stop_ , he tells you, and you can almost feel your face flush with some hidden emotion. You hadn’t wanted him to _stop_ , per se, you just wanted to show him that you could be just as powerful and as strong as he was without even trying.

               But the problem is that Kylo is trying now, you can sense his resilience against your grip, and you close your eyes as you concentrate and try to focus. You were stronger than him, you were, you had to be, and although you weren’t quite sure if testing your energy levels while you were riding on his dick was the best idea, at least by the end of this you would finally know whether or not Kylo was truly stronger than you and what that meant. You can sense him pushing against you with his full mind now, and as his body wriggles underneath you, you scrunch your face tight as you concentrate as hard as you can. You had to be stronger than he was, you had to be more powerful than he was, you had to be better than he was-

               _Why?_

Kylo’s question flits through your mind and he doesn’t seem angry, just confused. You blink suddenly, but it’s enough to break your concentration as Kylo sits up suddenly, sweeping his arms around you as you maneuver your legs back around his waist. You’re straddling him now, his dick still inside of you, feeling nothing less than embarrassed at your outburst. To his credit, Kylo pushes his lips against yours in a soft, supplicating gesture and you can’t suppress your moan as you lean into him and feel the heat from his hands as they glide along your back.

               “Is that what you want?” Kylo asks softly against your lips. “To control me?”

               “I think we both know by now there’s no way I could ever possibly hope to control you,” you murmur against him. It’s supposed to be a joke, but you can’t deny the truth in that statement. Kylo just pulls away slightly as his dark eyes burn into your own, and you can’t help but frown back at him, suddenly unsure where that sudden burst of animosity had arisen from.

               “What can I do?” Kylo asks softly, his eyes looking searchingly into yours, and you can’t help but lean forward and kiss him gently as you wrap your arms around his neck, pulling him closer into you. In a way, you didn’t answer his question, but in a way, you did. You had nothing to say to him, no response to that, because you didn’t know what he could do when he hadn’t even really done anything all that wrong in the first place. It was you who was confused, you who was suddenly on edge, and although the stress of the day made sense, you knew you needed to work _with_ Kylo, not against him. Did it really matter who was the most powerful out of the two of you? You had nothing to fear from him, and he was only trying to protect you.

               As if picking up on this sudden thought, Kylo deepens the kiss as he puts his hands on either side of your face, guiding you onto him. You move your hips slowly against his length, and Kylo emits a hungry growl as he pulls you closer to him, one hand trailing the length of your body before it rests on your hip. It’s enough to spur you on as you push against him with more confidence, grinding up to a solid rhythm. Slowly you begin to pant against his lips as you feel yourself starting to build again, starting to get swept up in the familiar sensation of being his.

               “Mmm, Kylo,” you whimper. Your arms are wrapped around him as tightly as they possibly can, and Kylo just grunts your name in response as you start to get closer and closer. Kylo’s one hand wraps around to the back of your head as he kisses you again, sinking his teeth into your bottom lip as he sucks it between both of his. For a moment you’re so overwhelmed by the sensation that you don’t even realize what’s happening until you feel the familiar shudder run through you, and your head involuntarily snaps forward as you brace your forehead against his shoulder. Kylo puts his hand on the back of your head, smoothing down your hair, and you let out a soft moan as you cuddle into him, still grinding in a slow, languid rhythm against him to ride it out for as long as possible.

               Eventually though, you ease off of him, but Kylo does not let you go. Instead, he simply pulls you into his arms and holds you against his chest like he would hold a child. You simply cuddle into him, cheek pressed against his warm skin, inhaling the smell of him. “Are you all right?” he asks softly, and for a moment you’re so caught up in your euphoria, you totally forgot about your power struggle from earlier.

               “Mmhmm,” you reply sleepily, although the true meaning of his words are starting to hit you now, and you still aren’t sure how to answer him when you’re not sure what specifically had brought it on. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

               “If I ever do anything that makes you uncomfortable, just tell me to stop and I-“ Kylo starts, but you know this, and honestly, him saying it makes him sound like the much better person. You were the one who hadn’t killed anyone, hadn’t tortured anyone, hadn’t caused anyone pain or physically harmed them in any way if you could help it. If anyone was supposed to be the better person in this relationship, it was supposed to be you.

               “It’s not that,” you say quickly, although of course now Kylo is wondering what really is wrong, and you can’t tell him when you don’t know yourself. “I just want to make sure I’m strong enough to defend myself. That’s all.”

               “But you don’t have to defend yourself from me,” Kylo says, the bewilderment apparent in his voice. You don’t angle your neck up to see his expression, afraid that you may see the hurt on his face. That, you know, you cannot see, unsure of how you would react or what it would mean if you did.

               “No, I know that,” you say quickly. “We’re a team. We’re in this together. We look out for and protect each other. I just, I don’t know, I couldn’t help but wonder who was stronger for a second. You control everything, and I just-“

               “Does that bother you?” Kylo asks, and you immediately feel your frustration flare at the interruption. Kylo notices this immediately and turns to look down at you. “You act as though I’ve done something to upset you.”

               “You haven’t,” you say quickly, and now you’re frustrated with him and yourself and you’re not even sure why. You honestly couldn’t help but feel like you had been infected by some bug that made you cranky and irritable at random intervals without even knowing why. Not that you were pregnant again, you knew better than that, but you weren’t sure why you kept feeling this way. “I think I’m just stressed, Kylo. Seeing Sadie and Ladson show up like that again? I just…” You let your voice trail off as you shake your head from side to side as if to clear it, and Kylo holds you a little bit closer as he looks up again.

               “I know,” Kylo says softly. “I can’t imagine that any of that was easy for you. You concealed your emotions well.”

               For a moment, you accept this as praise, as a compliment, before you realize that Kylo thinks you hid your nervousness or your trepidation from him. You didn’t know how to tell him that he didn’t sense any because you didn’t experience it at all. Maybe part of you was still in shock from the day’s events, although you couldn’t say for certain that it had come out of nowhere. Anakin had given you that vision, quite clearly, for a reason, and so their arrival was nothing short of a confirmation that Anakin’s warning should have been heeded in a much more timely manner.

               “I think I’m just stressed,” you eventually repeat, as if trying to confirm this for yourself. “Things today could have ended quite differently than lying in bed with you. If the Resistance had stormed the house, or if Poe had shown up on our doorstep instead, I don’t know how it all would have went down. Ladson and Sadie are more an extension of me, they don’t really have any strong ties to the Resistance, but I feel like Hux would have shot Poe on the spot the minute he saw him.”

               “You would have stopped him,” Kylo says quietly, in an almost resigned tone, and you can’t help but be confused.

               “I don’t still have feelings for him,” you insist. “I don’t want to go back.”

               “I know,” Kylo says softly, but his tone still contains a note of resignation, and that confuses you. “You still wear the stone he gave you. You may not still harbor feelings for the pilot, but that doesn’t mean you don’t care for him.”

               You let out a sigh. “I wouldn’t let Hux kill Poe just for the, I don’t know, civility of it. You don’t kill a guest in your home, no matter what the circumstances. It’s just one of those things that you don’t do.”

               “I’ve broken a lot of those codes,” Kylo says pensively, but you ignore him as you reach up to kiss his cheek.

               “And I don’t care about any of that,” you tell him, not to pacify him, but because you truly didn’t. Somewhere along the line, whatever he had done in his past had truly stopped mattering to you, although you still couldn’t be sure exactly why. You just knew that it had, and you hadn’t really questioned it further. Maybe murder was a crime that time truly could erase, maybe not for the victims, but for you. The fact that he had tortured and attempted to murder your friends, the fact that he had killed his own father, stood out in your mind as objective facts, but they lacked most of the emotional weight that had previously come with them. No, you assumed that you had just forgiven him for everything that had happened long ago, and there was nothing else to really say on the matter. If Kylo still harbored guilt over what he had done, then it was up to him to resolve it. The situation did not concern you in any way.

               Kylo smiles down at you, and it’s a soft smile that reminds you that he was capable of being cute, amongst all things, although you doubted if he would like hearing himself described this way. “If there is anything you need from me,” he begins softly, but you just smile up at him as you shake your head.

               “I’ll ask,” you tell him firmly. “Seriously, though, I am okay. I just got stressed out from earlier between seeing Sadie and Ladson again, and the escape, and coming _here_ of all places, like, it’s overwhelming. But trust me when I tell you that I’m fine, Kylo. I am. I’m okay.”

               But you weren’t okay. Not by a long shot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So maybe I'm actually more squeamish than the rest of you, but that was actually super uncomfortable for me to write, the Reader forcibly holding Kylo down while he made it kinda clear he didn't really like it...and if I was uncomfortable writing it, then I can imagine how some of you felt reading it, so if it made you uncomfortable, I'm sorry about that. =( Obviously this is a sign that things with the Reader are going from bad to worse, especially if she's getting so obsessed with her own power that she's willing to risk where she stands with Kylo because of it. Like, she keeps saying she wants to be a team, and yet her actions and her words don't seem to be lining up as of late...so whatever's going on with her, it's a lot more worrisome than we initially imagined. D= We _will_ figure out what that is...in good time...but let's just say it doesn't look like the _Propitiate_ is actually a safe place for any of them to be......
> 
> Also...I apologize, but there isn't going to be any new chapter Thursday and updates will resume again on Saturday. Reason being is I'm going on an overnight camping/fishing trip Wednesday - Friday and I won't have Internet access and editing's been kind of slow what with graduation and birthday parties and all of that. Winter was cold and I could just sit inside all day and write but the world is calling to me again and it's harder for me to just sit inside for 8+ hours a day like I used to do to just sit and write this. 
> 
> To be clear, I am _not_ getting bored or fed up with this story!!!!! It's not that at all, but I just have other real life things to do and I can't devote as much time to the story as I did before, which, as you can tell, was a lot. The story is at 322k words now, but I want to make sure I'm actually writing a _good_ story, not just a long one, so I really appreciate your patience in sticking with me so that I can tell this epicly long tale that you all will enjoy reading!! ^_^ 
> 
> EDIT: My editor's said to blame them because while I've written up to Chapter 48, as of yesterday Chapter 24 was only halfway edited. (Not their fault, summer jobs, graduating, moving...plus me moving so far away really put a whole damper on our whole edit-and-chill Sundays. =/) But don't worry, it's being done, we just all want to make sure it's a good, quality story that you all will enjoy reading which is why each chapter passes through three revisions before I look it over a final time and post it. (I think I explained my process before...right? Maybe.)
> 
> So that said, sorry about Thursday, but major shit is going to go down in the next chapter, (and I mean _MAJOR_ , so maybe it's better we get a little reprieve after all the shit that just happened back on Naboo. xD Besides, we still have over 560 days until ep8. I'm in no hurry to go Star Wars-less for quite a while (although after this I do have a Poe Dameron story and a queue of one-shots that are waiting to be written...so I have quite a bit to keep me, and you, if you want to stick with me!, busy until December 2017, don't you worry.) 
> 
> So...until Saturday, cheers!!


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW content ahead
> 
> Warning: Canon-Typical Violence Ahead

               The next two days passed without incident. Phasma took you and Ani around the ship to show you where everything was, although Kylo elected to stay behind. It was almost funny to you that he preferred to simply stalk around the base and figure out where everything was himself without explicitly being shown, but you could only imagine his embarrassment at being seen with you and Ani in your casual attire while he was in his full armor and signature helmet. You definitely would have made a strange little tour group, and although you walked with your shoulders squared and your head held high, you were still dwarfed by Phasma’s size and the authority that radiated from her argent armor.

               You knew that, now you were here, things were definitely going to change between you and Kylo whether you wanted them to or not. Although you had gotten past the awkwardness of the first night on base, Kylo was no longer free to be, well, Kylo. Now he was Kylo Ren, the powerful and feared figure of authority that stalked about and was prone to random fits of rage. You hadn’t ever really seen them from him on Naboo, but you felt them, from time to time, little flares of annoyance that radiated into something bigger. You had assumed that you would feel them here as well, and you did, without question. Kylo had Force choked three people within a day, either because they ignited his temper or just to reestablish his authority, and while you weren’t exactly keen to do the same, you knew that something would have to change if you wanted the First Order to take you seriously.

               For one, you knew that you and Kylo could not be as openly affectionate with each other as you had come to be back on Naboo. While a large part of you resented it, you were still free to be affectionate with each other from behind closed doors, or when no one was looking, and it was looking forward to those little moments of secret romance that almost made things more exciting in a forbidden sort of way. Phasma explained that attachments were generally discouraged in order to make sure that people were loyal to the First Order ahead of any one person, and you knew that Kylo feared that others would see it as a sign of weakness. You didn’t see how, but did consider it a bizarre double standard that others would see you as strong for being able to stay with him knowing what he was capable of, but would view him as weak for having a sentimental attachment to you. Then again, he was Kylo Ren, one of the most powerful men in the galaxy, and you figured while being attached to him made it seem like you gained a valuable ally, they assumed you had nothing to offer him except, well, _release_.

               You hoped to prove soon that they would all be sorely mistaken, and you would soon get that chance when Hux returned a few days later, no worse for wear. Phasma didn’t tell you what he had done in order to escape Naboo, but apparently he was quite pleased with the amount of Republic casualties compared to the ones the First Order had suffered. She made sure to relay the information that neither Sadie nor Ladson was among them; that Resistance troops had eventually raided the house and found it empty, except for them, still lying unconscious on the couch right where you had left them. She had no idea if Finn or Rey had even been on Naboo, but you were sure that they were both probably alive and well. They were far too skilled and too strong to fall to any one Storm Trooper, or even a group of them.

               “Hux has a meeting later on today,” Phasma tells you. You are all sitting around in your living room, and Phasma has since removed her helmet to make speaking easier. The living room was still not altogether comfortable to you, you simply hadn’t gotten used to it yet, but you sat next to Kylo while Ani sat in a neighboring arm chair around a small coffee table. Kylo’s shoulders were stiffer than they usually were; he had been more than happy to put his arm around you while you were around Phasma on Naboo, but you supposed things were different here. He had to remind himself that you were again among the ranks of the First Order, not amongst friends, and he had to remind himself to act accordingly. “He is meeting with other lieutenants and captains to go over the necessary arrangements for overtaking the resources on various planets, and would like you to be there and explain your perspective as you did back on Naboo.”

               “Hux wants her to lead a consult?” Kylo asks as he leans forward, resting his elbows against his knees. “No. You know as well as anyone that they will not listen to her.”

               “Hux requested it,” Phasma says firmly as she gives him a look to indicate that she is merely following orders.

               “Um, what exactly does Hux want me to do?” you ask quietly, glancing between them.

               “Remember that speech you gave us back on Naboo?” Phasma asks, and you incline your head in the briefest of nods. “He would like you to do that again, for some of the senior officers of the First Order. It won’t be as bad as Ren makes it out to be. The worst they will do is ignore you.”

               “Are they anything like the Republic?” you ask cautiously, and Kylo turns his head to study your face.

               “I don’t want you to do this,” he repeats, as if that wasn’t clear the first time, and you turn to glare at him.

               “Okay, what’s changed in two days?” you ask him. “I thought you said you were going to support me in whatever I chose to do, remember?”

               “Within reason,” Kylo replies tersely, although you can see that he’s clearly embarrassed to be having this conversation in front of Phasma, almost to the point that you’re starting to think that they had some sort of conversation about you from behind closed doors.

               There’s a brief moment of silence before Phasma leans over to you. “It’s not that bad,” she repeats. “Just say what you said before, and then you can leave if you wish.”

               “Will you be there?” you ask, hoping there would be at least someone on your side there if Kylo wasn’t going to support you. Not that you needed him to hold your hand, but you knew that the intimidation that Kylo provided could only benefit you.

               “No,” Phasma replies. “Unfortunately I have been roped into _other_ engagements.” She glances aside at Ani who cracks a grin, and you stare between them, the confusion clearly evident on your face. “Didn’t Ren tell you?”

               You glance back at Kylo who now has contented himself to look away, refusing to meet your eyes. “Blaster training?” you ask as you turn back to face them, and you’re secretly pleased when Ani nods his head forward. In truth, it wasn’t a terrible guess, but you were still upset that Kylo hadn’t told you about it all the same.

               “Among other things,” Ani says with a mischievous grin on his face. “I want to get as good with my staff as you are.”

               “Train hard,” Kylo advises. “Her skills are unmatched, especially considering the focus she’s achieved from learning how to wield a lightsaber staff.” You know what he’s trying to do, but you don’t really want to deal with it right now. Kylo complimenting you when he had previously just insinuated that you didn’t know how to handle yourself in front of Hux was embarrassing in itself. He didn’t need to champion your skills, especially not when everyone in the room knew what you were capable of. They had all seen the holo of your fight against Rey, and while that had been years ago, you knew that you had not gotten any weaker. You simply wouldn’t permit yourself to be.

               “So if you’re not going to be there, who is?” you ask Phasma at length. “Hux, I assume, and who else?”

               “A few others,” Phasma replies casually. “It’s probably not worth learning their names, assuming Ren is probably going to murder at least half of them by the time the week is out.” Kylo just narrows his eyes at her but says nothing, and you just shrug your shoulders.

               “If he does, I assume he had good reason for it,” you reply dismissively, and Kylo’s head snaps around to gaze at you curiously. Still, you couldn’t really be concerned with who Kylo was or wasn’t murdering when you had a meeting with Hux to go over something you didn’t really know too much about. “Listen, I know I _sounded_ confident the other day, but that’s just because I was frustrated. I don’t think I’m going to do it again. I’m not really an eloquent speaker. Can’t I just, I don’t know, write a proposal and submit it to them so I have time to review it and make it at least sound like I’m smarter than I actually am?”

               “You think any of them would rather read a proposal?” Phasma asks dryly, and you shrug. You assumed they just did whatever Hux hold them to do without question, but maybe that wasn’t exactly the case.

               “Maybe Kylo could read it to them,” you offer, but Kylo just shakes his head. “Okay, you know what, you said you didn’t want me to do this but I don’t see you offering any other options here.”

               “Just tell him you won’t do it,” Kylo says, as though it’s really that simple.

               “He may tolerate that from _you_ ,” you tell him. “But Hux is not going to be as lenient towards me.” You look towards Phasma for support, but she doesn’t look like she wants to get involved in what’s clearly a lover’s quarrel, and so you continue. “Look, it may not be the best of circumstances but if I’m staying here, Hux wants me to pull my weight and I have to convince them that I’m capable of doing at least _something_ on this base, or we may end up having more problems.”

               Kylo takes a moment to consider this, and Phasma finally steps in to intervene. “I think Ren’s concern is that Hux is luring you into something far beyond your level of comfort in order to make an example of you,” she says before she turns her gaze back to you. “But I’m sure you will have no problem holding your own.”

               You mull this over as you turn to Kylo. “You’ll be there though, won’t you?”

               “Ren doesn’t typically attend these sorts of meetings,” Phasma replies dryly. “Not since that incident with Lieutenant Mitaka.”

               “Is he still alive?” you ask dubiously, and Phasma just shrugs her shoulders.

               “Depends what you mean by _alive_ ,” Phasma counters, and you feel an involuntary shiver run up your spine.

               “She’s being dramatic,” Kylo chides. “He’s fine.” He reaches over to put a hand on your knee as he turns back to look at you. “If you really insist on going, I’m not letting you go alone.”

               “Good,” you reply simply. “Because I _am_ going, and you know for a fact that no one is going to heckle me or give me any trouble if you’re there.”

               “Good,” Phasma echoes. “Then it’s settled. Ren will accompany you to the meeting with Hux this afternoon, and Ani and I will have a fun afternoon together. Are you ready to go?”

               “Always am,” Ani replies, and something about that expression sounds strangely familiar to your ears as he gives you a quick wave before he follows her out the door, using the Force to close it behind you.

               “Let me be clear-“ Kylo starts, and suddenly you feel a flash of anger run through you.

               “No, let me be clear,” you tell him. “I am nervous about doing this, you know I am, but I also think it’s pretty damn clear that I _have_ to do this, so I would appreciate your support in helping me just get it over with instead of trying to convince me not to do it, because I can guarantee you that it’s going to have the opposite effect.”

               “Apparently,” Kylo says bitterly, and you roll your eyes.

               “Please, let’s not argue,” you say as you take one of his hands in both of yours. “Please, please, please, can we not argue? I don’t want to fight with you, especially not over this, not over Hux. I don’t want the First Order to come between us again.”

               “It won’t,” Kylo says firmly. “No matter what disagreements we have, nothing will change how I feel about you.” He seems to consider something before he decides to speak again. “But I am concerned about you. You’ve seemed different over the past few days. Distant.”

               “I’m distant?” you ask in disbelief. “You’re the one who wouldn’t even come to tour the base with us when Phasma suggested it.”

               “I told you I had other things to attend to,” Kylo insists, and you can’t help but roll your eyes.

               “Look, I know this isn’t easy,” you say at length. “I know the Storm Troopers have a certain perspective of Kylo Ren as this scary, menacing figure in a mask, and that’s fine, I understand that, but when we’re here and we’re together and no one can see us except Ani and maybe Phasma can you please just be, I don’t know, more Kylo and less Ren?” Kylo manages a smile at that. “I don’t want to lose you to the First Order again.”

               “And I don’t want to lose you to the First Order,” Kylo echoes. “You’ve never truly been involved in this war, neither here nor at the Resistance base. I don’t want you to get involved with something you’re going to regret later.”

               “It’s just this one thing,” you tell him, although you stop when you see the look on his face. “Unless you think it’s going to be more than one.”

               “Hux never just stops at one thing,” Kylo tells you, and you can’t help but smile at this.

               “You’re worried that he’s going to steal all my time away from you,” you say as you rub the outside of his arm. “That’s cute, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it. _Nothing_ is going to keep me from spending as much time with you as I want to. Remember, I told Hux that I wasn’t going to follow his orders-“

               “And that was fine on Naboo,” Kylo returns, but his expression is serious now. “Do you think with all the majors and colonels there that Hux is going to back down in front of them if you directly dismiss an order that he gives you?” You gnaw on your lower lip as you consider his concerns.

               “Well,” you say at length. “We’ll just have to hope that he’s not going to be as big of an ass as he knows he can be. Or maybe with you there he’ll know to back off.”

               “That just provides him with extra incentive,” Kylo says as he shakes his head, but you refuse to be discouraged. If you truly were going to face the upper echelons of the First Order in a few hours, then you couldn’t allow yourself to be afraid.

               “Then I’m just going to have to be more intimidating than ever,” you say with a shrug. “Or at least more intimidating than you.” Kylo’s lips pull into the semblance of a smirk. “Or at least powerful enough to make it seem like even Hux would do well to stay on my good side.”

               “And how do you plan to accomplish this?” Kylo asks as he raises his eyebrows. There’s a look of good humor playing behind his eyes, and it only makes you feel more confident than ever as you take his hand and raise his knuckles to your lips.

               “I’ll wait for the opportunity to present itself,” you tell him. “Fortunately I seem to have a knack for thinking on my feet.” You stand up from the couch, refusing to let go of his hand. “Now, come on. Help me get dressed in my uniform.”

               It doesn’t take you long to put it on, and as you stand in front of Kylo adjusting your collar, you can’t help but feel like someone who is, well, not quite yourself. It’s a little too big on you, if you were being totally honest, and you couldn’t help but feel absolutely ridiculous. “Does this uniform make me look fat?” you ask teasingly as you pinch the area around the middle and draw it away from you, seeing how far it would stretch before you released it and watched it puff down with an awkward sag in the fabric.

               “It makes you look something,” Kylo replies with a clear note of distaste in his voice.

               “I think it’s the collar,” you say as you grab the stiff bit of fabric and pull it away from your neck uncomfortably. It may have been too loose around the middle, but the area above the neckline did not share the same give.

               “I think it’s the whole uniform,” Kylo replies, and you quickly unbutton the shirt as you pull the stiff fabric away from your body.

               “I can put up with a lot,” you tell him. “But uncomfortable clothes are where I absolutely draw the line.”

               “What are you doing?” Kylo asks cautiously as you fiddle with your belt to retrieve your lightsaber. You don’t answer him as you extend just one of the blades, positioning the top of the uniform off the end of the bed so that you can burn and cut away the stiff fabric of the high collar with the blade. “Well, that’s one way to do it,” Kylo says sarcastically as you work, trying to keep an even line, but you can’t help but think it looks shoddily done regardless as you reattach your lightsaber to your belt. The hem of the collar is no longer crispy stitched, replaced by a crude, wobbly line around the neck hole.

               Even still, you slide it back over yourself and stretch your neck from side to side. “It feels better,” you admit. “Still really weird on the arms though.” You pull at the tight bit of fabric where your shoulders meet your upper arms. “Do you think I should cut out holes for the arms too?”

               Kylo simply purses his lips shut as he raises an eyebrow and looks at you. “Do you think Hux is going to approve of this as it is? And yet you want to persist in making a mockery of his uniform?”

               “Well,” you say as you shrug your shoulders uncomfortably. “I don’t know, it’s just uncomfortable. If I ever need to fight or something, I don’t want it getting in the way. The sleeves are too big and yet it pinches at the shoulders.” You pull at the stitching at one shoulder uncomfortably, and Kylo makes a step forward as if to stop you, perhaps thinking that you were going to rip it from the seam with your bare hands. He was only half right. While the thought had crossed your mind, you weren’t actually going to go ahead and go through with it. Probably. At least, not now. Maybe after the meeting.

               “You can go with Phasma to get it resized later,” Kylo tells you. “But as for now you need to look at least somewhat presentable before I hear from Hux that you don’t know how to dress yourself.”

               “I wish I had your outfit,” you mutter petulantly under your breath before you dare yourself to meet his eyes. “Okay, so I’m going to say a bunch of stuff really fast, and you’re just going to listen to me, all right?” Kylo quirks an eyebrow and you take a deep breath. “I sort of maybe stole some of your scarves when I left Starkiller Base a few years back. I honestly can’t remember if I told you that or not, but I left them in my pack back at the Resistance base, and they’re probably still there now. It was just, I don’t know, nice to have some reminder of you, and it smelled like you, at least for a while.” You shuffle on your feet uncomfortably. “But I was, uh, wondering if I could borrow one of your scarves now? As a sign to show everyone I’m yours? I mean, in truth, and I really do mean this truthfully, I didn’t just cut a large hole in the neck so it’d look ridiculous and I’d need one of your scarves to cover it up, like I literally wanted to ask you before if I could have one to wear, but uh, now that you mention that I should probably cover this up, your scarf would be a pretty good way to do it.”

               Kylo looks down at his feet as he chuckles before looking back up at you, his lips parting into an adorable lopsided smile. “Of course,” he replies, and you just smile as he heads over into a drawer and pulls one out. You had no idea where he got them, or if someone made them or what the case was with his scarves, but you weren’t really in the mood to ask that sort of question as he walked over to you, so close that you could reach up and kiss him if you wanted to. You keep your eyes trained on his face as he adjusts the scarf around your shoulders until it’s draped around you like his is, and he pulls the scarf up and over your head like a hood.

               “Better?” you ask as he takes a step back to get a better look at you.

               “Better,” he replies, but his eyes are trained on your face and you don’t think he’s talking about the uniform. You can’t help but smile as you reach up as if you’re about to kiss him before you run your tongue along his lower lip instead. He blinks, clearly not expecting it, before he takes your face in both hands and kisses you. You let the hood slip backwards as you kiss him back, trying to wrap your arms around his neck, but the sleeves pull weirdly around your arms and you can feel their stiff fabric literally slicing into your forearms as you try to complete the motion.

               “Are you fucking-“ You grab your hand to rip the fabric, and Kylo quickly puts his hand over yours.

               “When you are done today, I personally will tear that off of you so that you can _never_ wear it again,” Kylo assures you, and you can’t help but smirk up at him.

               “I think that’s a fantastic way to explain to Phasma why I need a new one,” you tell him. “I’ll just hand her a bunch of ripped strips of fabric that look like they’ve been put through a shredder and tell her that you did it. Honestly, I don’t even think she’d be all that surprised.”

               Kylo just leans forward and places a chaste kiss against your lips as you lean into the sensation. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks, his voice low and comforting.

               “Yeah,” you say as you glance up at him. “Yeah, as long as you’re there with me, I’ll be fine.”

               Kylo can’t help but smirk. “I don’t know what exactly you expect me to do if Hux starts to disparage you in front of everyone. They are all aware of the circumstances around our relationship, but I don’t know how obvious you want me to make it.”

               “No,” you tell him with a shrug of your shoulders. “No, I mean, just do what you usually do. Standing there and brooding is a perfectly viable option.”

               “Sometimes I sit,” Kylo offers, and you can’t help but laugh as you smack his arm lightly.

               “Sit and brood then,” you tell him. “If things suddenly become too much to handle, then I’ll just reach out to you and you can help me in whatever way you see fit.” You pause for a moment, thinking it over. “But don’t just, you know, sit there if you’re not sure how to help me. Like, if you really don’t know how to help me then say that, don’t just sit there because I can’t see your face underneath your helmet and then I might honestly, I don’t know-“ You shake your head, suddenly feeling overwhelmed by all the ways that this could go wrong. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

               “You were so eager to do this before,” Kylo muses, and you just shrug your shoulders.

               “I was putting on a brave front for Phasma,” you offer, but you tilt your head to the side in consideration. “Actually, I think I’m starting to find that I’m actually a lot less anxious around other people, weirdly enough. I don’t know, I just have to get angry enough to kill someone, and then I shouldn’t have a problem.”

               “Just remember that they’re all beneath you,” Kylo tells you. “They’re not worth it.”

               You reflect on this for a moment, churning the words over in your mind. “Is that what you really believe?” you ask him. “That they’re beneath you?”

               Kylo just shrugs his shoulders, as if it doesn’t make a difference to him. “It’s not about what I believe,” he tells you. “It’s finding whatever you think will help.”

               “I mean, they’re not as powerful as I am,” you say in consideration. “I don’t know, I just need to go in there and do something to establish my authority.” You bite your lip. “But short of Force choking or maiming someone, I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do it.”

               “You might not even need to,” Kylo offers. “They may just think you’re there as a way for Hux to prove some kind of point to me. If that’s the case, they might just ignore you.”

               “Okay, yeah, but see,” you say, shrugging your shoulders to clearly show your discomfort. “That’s not what I want. At all. I honestly think Hux wants me in there because I have some kind of potential, and I don’t want that to be written off as Hux only making it look like he’s asking for my input because he’s trying to make some sort of statement to you.” You adjust the scarf around your shoulders. “No, I need to prove somehow that I’m there because I’m a valuable asset to the First Order.”

               “Then don’t let them hold you back,” Kylo offers. “Remember, Hux will be there. Just fuel your rage for him into whatever it is you’re saying.”

               “Channel my anger,” you say as you let your eyes slip shut. “Channel my anger, channel my hatred, channel my negative emotions.” You peek one eye open. “You know, I’m pretty sure Rey would be quite disappointed in me if she knew I was leaning towards the dark side so much for strength.”

               Kylo lets out a laugh that surprises you. “Do you think she still cares?” he asks, and for a moment you’re thrown by his question. Rey was your friend. They were all your friends. Of course they cared about you. They had just launched an entire rescue operation to try to get you back, and Poe had personally defied Republic Command and endangered his own life to protect you. You couldn’t think of any reason why they wouldn’t care, unless it had really been that long. Sadie and Ladson had been through too much with you to simply turn away at a chance to help you, Poe had other reasons to return, but maybe Rey, and heck, maybe Finn too, maybe they had simply forgotten about you? Rey, especially, had been inside your head. She knew how devoted you were to Kylo, heck, the last time you had physically seen her you were waking up in the med bay in that weird state when you tried to free Kylo. Poe had explained everything to you when things finally settled down, but you had never really gotten the chance to apologize to her for it. Was it possible that she had never forgiven you for it? She knew how close you were to him. Maybe she just assumed that you were happier with him and you weren’t going to fight your feelings for him any longer. Maybe she reached this conclusion and just decided that it was easier to move on. Maybe she had encouraged Poe and everyone else to do the same as well.

               You feel an inexplicable tingling in your fingertips that feels as though they’re about to go numb that accompanies a sinking feeling in your chest, as if someone was pressing down your emotions to a place deep, down and away from you. Kylo seems to sense this as he quickly tilts your chin up towards his face with one finger, pressing his lips against yours before you even have time to process the sensation. “Sorry,” you murmur weakly as you shake your head, as if to clear it. You had no idea what you were apologizing for, but you knew that it had to stop. You could not feel sorrow, or worse, pity, for yourself while you were about to possibly square off with Hux.

               “We should head over,” Kylo tells you. “Are you ready?”

               “Of course I am,” you say as you punch your fist into one hand. “Always am.”

               Nevertheless, you can’t help but feel nervous as you walk side by side with Kylo in the narrow corridors. Occasionally a Storm Trooper would have to pass, and you would submissively slip behind Kylo to allow him or her to pass, letting default instinct that you should move out of the way take over before you had a chance to consciously react to it. You knew for a fact that Kylo would _not_ move out of the way, definitely not to someone who was of lower rank than him, but you weren’t sure where you ranked, exactly. You had Kylo’s scarf pulled up in a hood over your head like his was to show that you clearly belonged to him, but then again, by that same logic, Kylo belonged to you as well.

               Either way, you follow Kylo into a spacious command center that is overflowing with activity from the people walking about, and that combined with the beeping of the consoles in every part of the room and the general clamor and volume that the place seemed to be filled with unnerved you a bit. It was like everything captivated your attention at once, but you kept your eyes trained on Kylo as you followed him into a large meeting room on the far left of the room. You had expected him to maybe stop and impart some words of encouragement before he went in, but if that was what you were hoping for, you found yourself sorely disappointed. Instead, Kylo simply walked straight into the room, his shoulders square, and yet you could clearly detect that he _didn’t_ want to be there. Impressed by how much he could convey by sheer body language alone, you set your face and pressed your hands into fists, letting your short fingernails dig into the heels of your palm as you strode into the room after him as confidently as you could hope to appear.

               “Ah, Ren, glad to see that you have again deemed these meetings fit to attend.” Hux was standing just inside the door so that your back was to him as soon as you walked in, which you no doubt assumed that he had done on purpose. Kylo simply looks at him through his helmet with the dark slit in his mask serving as an unblinking stare and says nothing as you look about the room. There was a large holoprojector in the middle of the room with a curved set of chairs on either side that made a U-shape that let out in the beginning of the room, where you were standing. All of the chairs were occupied, but they all seemed to be older men in uniform with some marks on their lapels bearing more distinction than others. Even still, you sensed that this wouldn’t be anything like the meeting you had with the Republic back on D’Qar. No one wanted to shake your hand or tell you what a good job you did. No, these men looked tired, and weary, the lines in their pale faces told you that much.

               With nowhere to sit, Kylo simply stood against the wall adjacent to the doorway, tall and imposing, and you could tell the effect his presence had by the way some of the men leaned away from him suddenly, or by the way they seemed to shrink as Kylo let his mask settle on each of them in turn. They had no way to know what he was thinking, no way to know his expression underneath that helmet, and for some reason, the thrill of seeing other people shrink beneath his gaze both consoled and fueled you as you turned to face Hux.

               “Good of you to come,” Hux says in way of greeting. “I’m glad that you have decided to impart your knowledge for the good of the First Order.”

               “Happy to help,” you reply coolly. Hux just raises an eyebrow as you stare each other down, neither one of you daring to blink first. Honestly, with his one arched eyebrow and lopsided signature smirk playing on his lips, you couldn’t tell if he was a lion toying with a mouse, or if he was genuinely grateful for your help. You tried to feel something, anything, through the Force, but you couldn’t be sure of what he was feeling either way.

               Hux steps forward to the front of the room to introduce you, and it was almost amazing how the silence in the room became _quieter_ somehow as he made it clear that he was about to speak. You had no idea if it was a trick of your perception, but Hux’s voice rang loud and clear through the room as he introduced you and your purpose there. “She’s trained for years studying the cultures of various systems, and I believe that some of her expertise may be of particular use to us. As you well know, we have suffered some heavy casualties in an attempt to harness resources in several areas of the galaxy, and I would like to welcome her as a consultant to help handle these disputes as effectively as possible so that our soldiers can be used to better means elsewhere. Right now the First Order simply does not have the numbers in order to take these resources by sheer force, and if we continue to sustain these casualties, I fear we will not be able to replenish our supply of troops. Therefore, it is my hope that she will be able to lend us her assistance in order to return the First Order to its days of glory so that we may again have the capability to project our power over the galaxy and bring an end to the wretched Republic and all those who oppose us.”

               There is quiet applause and the nodding of heads that seems more forced out of courtesy than authentic esteem, and you figured that while they might have secretly lost all hope of the First Order actually achieving its lofty aspirations, they were still stuck there regardless. They had probably all been complicit in the destruction of the Hosnian System as well, and were probably also at risk of facing trial and execution from the Republic and the Resistance. They seemed stuffed into this unfortunate position along with Kylo, wanting a life separate from the First Order, but knowing that their very lives were in jeopardy without it. Even still, you don’t have time to think about this in much detail as Hux gestures for you to step forward, and you do so, paying extra attention to your movements, even down to the way your boots clicked against the tile as you plant your feet beneath you.

               You take a moment to let your eyes sweep over the room, and again you couldn’t help but be reminded how tired they looked. Maybe it was because it was already the afternoon and they had perhaps had a busy morning, but something told you it was more than that. Their fatigue seemed entrenched in their souls, but there was also a certain edge about them, a hardness that could not be overlooked. As you lowered your hood so that they could see them more clearly, you couldn’t help but wonder if they were judging you for being a woman, or for being Kylo Ren’s paramour. You remembered way back when you first arrived on Naboo that Phasma had said that she felt welcomed by the First Order because they judged and respected skill and ability over appearance. It may have just applied to soldiers, you weren’t sure, but you knew that if they respected power that they should respect you.

               “Now then,” you say as clearly as possible. “I’m sure it’s no surprise to any of you that the First Order is currently struggling, but there is hope that that can change, and I’m willing to lend my assistance in acquiring the resources that you require.”

               Your eyes shift around the room for a moment. No one seems to be paying much attention to you, but you decide to venture on regardless. “Now, the circumstances are going to change with each planet, as I’m sure you’re all well aware. For example, General Hux has already explained that Rhaesheser in particular has given you a great deal of trouble. The Atthirarqoy that live there do not care about your skirmish with the Republic. The Republic leaves them alone, and they, in turn, are free to carry about their way of life. If you truly seek to gain the resources on their planet, you need to best them in their form of combat. They will not yield to any sort of compromise, quite simply because you have nothing that they truly want. They don’t want any sort of currency and they don’t crave power, they live and die simply to fight. While it would seem wise to try to recruit their best warriors for the First Order, they wouldn’t fight for you. They owe loyalty to themselves, and therefore they-“

               “Why not just keep putting them down with blasters and some heavy artillery?” You blink as you turn to the person that had spoken. The man appeared to be bald under his small black cap, and a bit younger than the rest; you supposed he had to be a bit more brazen than the others if he was daring to interrupt you. “Why should we care how these mongrels live? What we need is to learn the terrain of each planet so we can systematically eradicate their camps while at the same time making sure we also don’t blow up the resources that we need. This is really quite simple.”

               “If I’m not mistaken,” you begin coolly, and out of the corner of your eye you think you can see Kylo and Hux watching you with interest now, waiting to see how you’ll react, but for different reasons. Hux was probably just waiting for you to lose your cool to discredit you, but you were not going to give him that satisfaction. “You have tried that, and quite frankly, you have failed.” You can see the bald-headed man begin to speak again, but you don’t give him the time. “Or are failing, it doesn’t quite matter. If you are losing troops, it means that you have less soldiers to help with the campaigns on other planets where they might be put to better use. It would make more sense to train a select group of soldiers in their specialized way of combat. They respect power in their own way, but that does not mean they are totally immune to reason. If you can defeat their most powerful warriors in _Lajilat_ then you might be able to work out a deal to get the resources you need.”

               “That seems like a complete waste of time,” the bald-headed man interjects, and there is a small chorus of agreement and a nodding of heads. “As I have stated, we need to be working on developing heavy artillery so that we purge the planet of their kind once and for all. Once they are no more, we can begin to not only recover these resources, but we can also set up new bases to-“

               “I’m sorry,” you say, your voice too loud even to your own ears. “But it sounded to me like you were just suggesting genocide.” You know at once you’ve said the wrong thing by the way the men seem to chuckle in amusement. No one seems to laugh, exactly, but their faces lighten and you can tell that they are not taking anything you are saying seriously anymore.

               “Is that a problem?” someone else asks, and it’s only by the mercy of the Force that you couldn’t tell exactly who. It was someone off in the far right corner, you had it between two people, but you couldn’t really choke anyone specifically without knowing who had said it. If you picked the wrong person, you would just have looked stupider than if you had simply done nothing.

               “Is it quite necessary for the First Order to always resort to violence in order to achieve its goals?” you ask testily. “I was under the impression-“

               “General Hux,” the bald man interrupts again. “I could see why you would have thought that this girl could have some knowledge to bestow, but she seems curiously sentimental for someone who has spent so much time around Ren.”

               And that was that. Now they weren’t looking at you as an ally, now they were looking at you as an affiliate to Kylo. _Oh, look how cute Ren is, trying to bring his little wifey along and making her seem like she could be so important to the First Order._ The very thought brings your fists up to your sides. “I would take care in how you speak of him,” you say testily. You can hear the shuffling of fabric as Kylo crosses and uncrosses his arms, and a few of the men bow their heads, as if they’re afraid that they’ll be the next target of his anger, even if they hadn’t said anything. Maybe they had spoken out of turn at other meetings, but you just had only one target here, and he was _your_ enemy. Honestly, the way they were all quivering at the way Kylo shifted made you almost physically sick to your stomach. They were so in fear of him that they would humor you simply for his sake. No, you wanted them to be intimidated by _your_ presence, by _your_ power, and your resolve hardened as you felt a new rush of cold fury sweep through you.

               “I’m so glad that you all think that my intelligence is merely a happy byproduct of my alliance with Kylo Ren,” you say stiffly. “Instead of the years upon years of rigorous study and examination that I endured even before stepping foot on the Starkiller Base. General Hux asked me here as a special favor because of _my_ skill set, which has nothing at all to do with the Force or Ren, a skill set you would be wise to take advantage of while I still deem the First Order worthy of sharing it with.”

               Too much damage has already been done though. They are still not taking you seriously, and your tirade is now being clearly viewed as an emotional outburst from an overly sentimental woman. You could feel your hands literally tremoring in your wrists. Kylo was right. Hux had called you up here to embarrass you, to humiliate you, and even if that hadn’t initially been his intention, that had been the result all the same. Maybe Hux had asked you here as a test, to pile his most loathsome officers into a room to see how much you could take, but you weren’t going to give him or anyone else the satisfaction of viewing you as inferior.

               You were not going to let anyone in that room so much as sniff at the implication that you were weak.

               “Okay,” you say as you clap your hands together. “I think we got off on the wrong foot, and that’s my mistake. Obviously I should have known better than to come here like this. You all seem clearly distracted by the fact that I’m either a woman or because of my relationship, but either way I don’t really find myself caring much either way.” You place both hands on your chest as you run them slowly down your body as you talk, and you can tell you have the attention of everyone in the room. “See? Look at that. I’m here lecturing you on information that no one in this room knows better than me, and yet the most attentive you’ve been all day is when you’re trying to picture what I look like underneath this uniform.”

               You start to pace around the room, walking behind the men who have now decided that they _don’t_ actually want to look at you. “And it’s interesting, really, why there’s no women at this table. Why there’s no aliens, either, for that matter. It’s because you’re all so clever, is that right? You’re the best of the best, the real go-getters, so of course no one else was able to make that cut. It was close, though, wasn’t it?” You grab one of the men’s shoulders and shake it violently, yet reassuringly. For a moment, you think you can feel his heart stop beating in his chest. “Yeah, I’m sure you all made the top twelve, but everyone beneath that mark was just, ooh, so close.”

               You can see the man with the bald head glaring at you, but wisely keeping his mouth shut. Unfortunately for him, he had said far too much already. “Now, I’m sure you’re all wondering what my point is, and believe me, I do have one. The point is my knowledge is in my head, not in my tits or my ass, but in my years of experience and you would be wise to benefit from it. But if you don’t want to listen to me, well, I can’t exactly force you, now can I?” Your question is met with silence, but that suits you just fine. “I mean, sure, you can ignore my help and keep on doing what you’re doing. I mean, I’m sure the First Order will be fine. I mean, you’ve been in hiding the past few years, scattered, quite literally, all over the galaxy, but just keep looking the other way and pretending that you can make all your dreams come true if you just close your eyes before you turn in for the night and wish real hard, right?”

               “General Hux-“ The bald man finally cracks, and you hone in on him, trying not to walk too quickly towards him. Instead, you take your time as you walk towards him, building up anticipation for the moment until you’re standing directly behind his chair.

               “What’s wrong?” you ask dryly. “Are you concerned I’m making a mockery of the First Order? If so, you should get used to it. I have been to the Resistance base and I have seen the way they speak of the lot of you. They have far more experience, far more resources, far more ships, far more troops, who are not only loyal to the cause, but they _want_ to fight because they are fighting for something they believe in. Your soldiers might as well be drones, right? You don’t need them to be people under there, you just need them to be submissive and silent, following your every order without question, even if that means dying under your falling banner.”

               You stop in front of the man now, but he doesn’t spin around to face you as you drape an elbow over his shoulder, resting your chin in one hand. “You know, I’m really curious about something,” you tell him. “You don’t want your soldiers to think, right? You want them to just stand there and then do what they’re told when you’re finally ready to acknowledge them? Is that what you want me to do? Hmm? Just stand there and look pretty until you clap your hands when you’re ready for me to have something useful to say?” You make eye contact directly with Hux as you say this, and as you stand back up, you knock the bald man’s hat off his head, swatting it away with one hand as you start to walk away.

               “Well, let me tell you boys something,” you say as you start to walk back to your original spot. “There’s a new player on the field, and that player is me. The way I see it, Hux called in a personal favor, asked me to play his game, and I told him I’d play. You need information that I have, so I suggest you stop seeing me as an extension of _anyone_ and start seeing me for the potential that I could really bring to the First Order. I don’t just have ideas about how to gain the resources you require. I have ideas for how to start colonizing the Unknown Regions. I have ideas on how to discredit the Senate and take down the Republic from the inside out.” Okay, that last one was a lie, but it sure sounded convincing enough, and you were silently glad that you had actually listened to Poe when he told you about his adventures in capturing the _Hevurion Grace._

               You finally turn back around to face them, smirking wickedly as you place your hands on your hips. “So as you can see, I have a lot to offer, and all I’m asking for is a little courtesy from you. When I talk, I expect you to listen. When I am speaking, I expect you to not interrupt me, and when I ask a question, I expect it to be answered. Is that clear?” There is a small chorus of nods and quiet murmurs of assent, but it’s not good enough. Word alone was only so much. You needed to lead by example. You need to capture the same sort of respect and intimidation that Hux and Kylo managed to capture, and there was only one way to do that. You dramatically stifle a yawn, covering your mouth with your right hand as you dramatically stretch your left arm up above your head, stretching out your index finger so that you’re pointing straight up towards the ceiling.

               At the same time you raised your arm, you traced your finger in a small arc in the air, and the neck of the bald man cracked without warning and his head twisted violently to the side. Before you could even straighten your arm as you stretched it, there was a dull thunk as his cheek fell lifelessly into the glass table in front of him. You could see the man behind him cautiously rise up out of his chair and put his fingers against the artery in his neck to check if he was really dead.

               Considering you had just snapped his neck, you sure as hell hoped he was.

               “Whoops,” you whisper sarcastically to no one in particular, before you turn back to face the men who were now eagerly awaiting your next words. “Now then,” you reply simply. “I hope we can all agree to put this whole misunderstanding behind us. I have more to say, but I think right now it would be best if we all just took some time to really think things over and process what we’ve learned here today.” You turn back around. “General Hux.” You just nod your head in his direction as you walk past him. For some reason, you would have expected Hux to be glaring at you for killing what you supposed was one of his top men, but he was just watching you with that same coy smile playing on his lips. Perhaps he didn’t like him either? You were sure there was probably more than one person that was vying for Hux’s position as General, and maybe you had just eliminated his main competition.

               In either case, Kylo’s expression was as unreadable as ever as you followed him out the door, back into the command center, and down the hall. You had hardly gotten two corridors away before Kylo suddenly grabbed your arm and pulled you into a tiny room that looked more like a utility closet. “Kylo,” you whisper crossly as he shuts the door behind you. “What are you doing?”

               “Can’t wait.” In one fluid motion, he unlocks the mechanism at the base of his helmet and drops it to the floor as he grabs your face in both hands and kisses you. You moan into the kiss immediately, wrapping your arms around his neck as you press your body against his. Your mind is thankfully empty as you simply embrace the sensation of his lips against yours, his mouth against your mouth, his tongue against your tongue, and you push your body against his desperately, trying to get as much contact through your clothes as you possibly can.

               Even still, it wasn’t enough, and you found yourself building at an incredibly rapid pace as Kylo jerked your pants down over your thighs as he turned you around. He yanked off his gloves in one quick motion and let them fall to the floor as he wrapped his arm around your midriff, letting his other hand trail to your clit as he sucked and bit at the exposed flesh of your neck. You moaned as you thrust yourself back into him, desperate to feel as much sensation as you possibly could as he worked his fingers against your clit. He was holding you incredibly tightly to him, biting you a bit harder than usual, but your heart was beating so fast from the adrenaline of what had occurred earlier that you barely even noticed.

               Kylo released you briefly so that he could pull his own pants down, but your head was already swimming so much by that point that you barely even noticed. Regardless, you _definitely_ noticed when he thrust into you, arching your back and pressing you forward so that you had to brace yourself on either side of the doorway. Kylo wrapped one arm around your waist again as he held you steady as his other fingers decided to tease your clit again, making you whimper as he moved his full length in and out of you at a frighteningly rapid pace.

               “Quieter,” Kylo urges as he moves quickly against you, but that was something you definitely were unable to do. Between the pulse of his fingers between your legs and his stiff erection that made you dizzier and more lightheaded with each thrust, there was no way that you could be quiet even if you wanted to be. Even though you tried to purse your lips and grit your teeth together, you still couldn’t suppress the sounds that were escaping past your lips.

               “Can’t,” you reply weakly, your voice strained from the myriad of sensations flooding through your veins, and Kylo lets out a grunt as he quickly pulls you back into his arms, holding you flush against him. He moved in and out of you slower now, but picked up the pace against your clit as his one hand moved from your waist to cover your mouth. You licked and bit at his palm, moaning into his warm skin as you let out a large exhale and let your body relax into him. You pushed your head back against his chest as you took him in, the feeling of his hand clamped tightly over your mouth, his dick fucking you senseless, his fingers still massaging your tender clit and suddenly you couldn’t take anymore as you let your eyes scrunch closed as you came loudly around him, your body shuddering as you snapped your head forward as you embraced the euphoria coursing through your body like a drug. You shuddered against him again, and the muscles in your thighs suddenly felt like they had become weak, your toes numb, as if you suddenly couldn’t stand up by yourself anymore. You leaned against Kylo on your tiptoes as your thighs literally shook beneath his stilled hand, coming harder than you could ever remember doing so in your entire life.

               Kylo lets out a heavy breath in your ear, and you were surprised when you realized that you hadn’t even truly noticed that he had come as well. You were too wrapped up in your own release, your head swimming, to really process much more than the quaking in your legs at this particular moment as you let your body droop back into his. You let your eyes slip closed as you lulled your head to one side, wanting to pass out right then and there.

               “I don’t think I can stand up,” you murmur weakly against him. “But I don’t think I want everyone to see you carrying me through the halls.”

               “Catch your breath,” Kylo tells you as he holds you close, smoothing down your hair with one hand, and you let out a soft moan of content as you lean into him, snuggling into his embrace. He felt so good and so warm and you felt pleasantly light, and carefree, and _happy._

               “Mmm, I love you so much,” you murmur into his chest. You want to wrap your arms around him, but you don’t even have the strength to do that much as you nuzzle him instead.

               “Mm,” Kylo echoes as he continues to stroke your hair the way that made you purr on contact. Fortunately, you were so focused on coming down from your release that you barely even noticed the expression on his face, and it didn’t occur to you that he may have had a reason for doing just that. Kylo had been concerned that as soon as you were alone, you were going to dissolve into a frantic puddle of anxiety, much like he had when he had completed his first kill. At the time he had remained composed for as long as he needed to be, but once he had been alone, he had been completely overcome by a crippling sense of guilt. He, however, sensed no such feelings from you. In honest truth, he had been quite a bit turned on by your antics, clearly taking control of the situation and eliminating the fool that dared challenge you. In truth, Kylo had already choked him twice in two days for speaking to him out of turn, and he was already considering taking him out for good. The fact that you did it didn’t faze him much; his only concern was how you were going to handle it. And you didn’t seem to be bothered in the slightest. He briefly considered that you were in shock, but your thoughts were strangely at ease. You killed someone, and you couldn’t really bring yourself to care.

               And that concerned him. That concerned him a whole lot.

               But you were fine.

               Just.

               Fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Krasava will be back on Thursday she is doing ok. Hope you like chapter! Until then, cheers!
> 
> PS: She wants everyone to know she has a present for you next chapter.


	26. Chapter 26

               “I think our priority should be charting the Unknown Regions,” Lieutenant Mitaka offers. “Considering that these areas have been previously undiscovered, it’s possible that we might be able to find other, advantageous assets that we could put to our disposal without the added difficulty of competing with these other species for their resources.”

               “It’s a possibility.” Hux’s eyes sweep the length of the room. You are sitting in a room with eight other lieutenants as you discuss the division of resources among the First Order. While a few wanted to focus on obtaining the resources that you knew about, others, such as Lieutenant Mitaka, felt that it might be better to look further into the galaxy to see if you could acquire other resources without suffering through the frustrations of competition and having to undergo the necessary struggles of making compromises with the pre-existing species on those planets. There was only one problem with that.

               Hux seemed to be looking for someone to counter or rebuke Mitaka’s statement, or in other words, point out the obvious, and today, that person was going to be you. “Lieutenant Mitaka,” you say firmly. “Although these areas of the galaxy have been labelled undiscovered by the _Republic Archive_ , it is possible that there is another species that may be residing there, either because they had to abandon their original home planet for some reason or another, or perhaps it is home to a new species that has yet to discover space flight and thus remains ignorant about the affairs of the rest of the galaxy.” You shrug your shoulders to appear more casual than your lofty tone reflected. “And I don’t think I need to remind you that the Republic and its Senate are full of liars. They may very well know something more about the Unknown Regions that they care not to share. Perhaps they have already depleted the areas of all their resources and are labelling the region uninhabited in an attempt to conceal their treachery, or discovered something about the planets that made them unfit for habitation and thought it would be best to leave the whole area alone.”

               “Two plausible theories,” Hux muses. “If it’s the first and we do encounter a new species, then they shouldn’t have the technology to pose much of a threat and we should be able to seize what we need without too much of a struggle.” He pauses, running the edge of his gloved thumb just under his mouth, tracing the outline of his lower lip. “If it’s the second, as you yourself stated, we cannot trust the Republic and whatever they have to say on this matter; thus, we must investigate ourselves.”

               “Careful General,” you say, unable to help yourself. “You already made the mistake of underestimating non-spacefaring species once. Considering the Republic refused to aid the Lamells in developing spaceflight, the two theories are not mutually exclusive.”

               “Ah, yes, you did mention that, didn’t you?” you could tell Hux wasn’t exactly pleased with his slip, considering how recently you had just chided him for underestimating the Lamell civilization just because they weren’t a spacefaring species. You knew what they were capable of, and you could almost picture Hux ordering in troops by the battalion, only to have them vaporized in a series of gamma flashes before they hit the ground, a phenomenon Phasma had attributed to a precision thermal core detonation. You could imagine him sending in wave after wave, only to face the same dour result over and over again, losing countless companies of troops in the process. Then again, while this method wouldn’t work against the Lamell civilization, it didn’t mean that there weren’t weaker species on other planets where this approach could possibly work.

               “Does the First Order have enough soldiers and supplies to pursue both modes of acquisition?” you ask, tilting your head to the side. One thing you knew first hand was that Kylo had not been telling you as much as you wanted to know about operations within the First Order, and so you resolved to ask as many questions as possible to make sure that you had the answers that you needed, even if they seemed like stupid questions with obvious answers to everyone else in the room. Considering word of what you had just done in your first meeting had spread, rumor had it that you were just as rash and quick to anger as Ren was, and they knew better than to say something that might cause them to be on the receiving end of one of _your_ Force chokes.

               Besides, they all had prior knowledge of the situation from their years with the First Order, and while you had been from jumping from installation to installation, Kylo had kept you ignorant about what was going on, although you almost suspected that had something more to do with the fact that he hadn’t actually shown up to those meetings, even though he had been invited. You knew he didn’t truly care one way or the other; it was up to you and the others to reach a final consensus about which avenue to pursue, so that Hux could have the final say, and then it was up to Kylo to go out and do whatever had to be done in the field. At first you couldn’t understand why he didn’t seem to want a say in what was going on when he was going out there and actually risking his life, but it soon became clear to you that the conversation in these meetings was monotonous that bordered on the line of ridiculous and kept going around and around in circles, revisiting the same odious points over and over again.

               “It’s not simply a matter of soldiers and supplies,” Lieutenant Pastarn says, and you shift your attention over to him. “It’s a matter of feasibility. With our forces spread out like this, we simply don’t have the reserves necessary to form an expeditionary force, nor the time to mobilize them, not with a resurgent Republic fleet to counter. We don’t even know if the Unknown Regions have sufficient resources to justify abandoning what we already have.”

               “Pastarn, might I remind you that it was Dorska’s obsession with entrenchment that got us to where we are, and that line of thinking is what got him killed,” Lieutenant Mitaka mutters under his breath with a nervous glance in his direction, but you just raise your eyebrows and sit there coolly, leaning back in your chair as you cross your arms over your chest. Mitaka seemed to be afraid of you, and while you couldn’t deny the small bit of pleasure that provided you, you were starting to think that he was just a nervous man considering it was no secret to anyone exactly how many times he had been almost killed by Ren. You couldn’t exactly blame him; apparently after one catastrophic mission, he had been confined to a neck brace for the better part of a year. “Even with the resurgence of the Republic, we’re in no position to bunker down and hope for acceptable losses. No amount of duracrete can make up for the fact that our current logistical posture is, well, _disastrous_.” He activates the table’s holoprojector and brings up the galactic map, highlighting a few points of interest with flashing red circles. “Here we have ten thousand troops across thirteen systems, maintaining a _single_ resource – four hundred thousand tonnes of mundane _iron ore_. Here, however-“ he selects a new system on the map, on the edges of the Unknown Regions. “-the Widow’s Veil is home to four mineral rich systems with no indigenous life, and we haven’t been able to send mining teams after the probes since they’re all tied up refining Dorska’s precious iron and vanadium. Why keep a thousand miners to work _one_ resource lode, when you can send the same thousand to secure _dozens_? The Widow’s Veil is just the beginning-“

               “That’s just one star cluster,” Lieutenant Pastarn argues. “No other probes have reported sufficient concentrations, so you’d risk everything for an unknown? You’d risk wasting the two months it takes to set up mining lines when we could be-“

               “I would,” Lieutenant Mitaka responds firmly, and you tilted your head to the side as you considered that maybe he wasn’t so nervous after all, at least, not around the other officers in the First Order. “We made the same bet before, and ended up with Starkiller Base and four new Star Destroyers, even with the time delays of mobile exploitation. Face it, Pastarn, entrenchment is an unsustainable strategy, and you know it.”

               “Starkiller?” Lieutenant Pastarn practically spits the word, and you can’t help but roll your eyes. “Do you really want to bring _Starkiller_ into this, Mitaka, when it was _your_ troops that failed so terribly on Jakku when you allowed that Jedi girl and a deserter to take off with-“

               “All right, enough,” you snap loudly, unable to listen to where you knew this conversation was eventually headed. “We’ve been debating this for hours now. Can we please come to at least _some_ sort of a consensus as to what to do next?”

               Hux quirks an eyebrow as he turns to you, a cold sneer playing on his lips, as if deciding to humor your outburst, considering he knew how personal the nature of the conversation was to you. “Do you have somewhere to be?”

               Everyone in the room knew what you could do, and you were not about to let Hux play games or intimidate you. Hux could control everyone else on this ship, but he was not going to control you; you would do absolutely anything to prevent that from happening. “If I had somewhere to be, I would have just gotten up and left.”

               “Careful,” Hux warns teasingly, with no real venom in his voice. “Ren is not renowned for his patience. I would hate if people were to start saying the same of you.” Considering they already were, you weren’t exactly sure how this was a concern of yours.

               “Believe me, I am far from concerned about what people have to say about me,” you say coolly, staring him down with cold, unblinking eyes that seem to unsettle everyone in the room but him.

               “Quite right,” Hux says as he stands up. “I believe we’ve deliberated this matter long enough and I’ll come to my decision tomorrow. In the meantime…” He lets his voice trail off as other people start to get up, but he keeps his eyes fixed on you. “I would like you to come with me.”

               “Oh?” you ask, with all the nonchalance you could muster. “And where exactly would we be going?”

               “There is someone I would like you to meet,” Hux replies as you follow him out into the corridor, and for a moment you think he’s talking about Snoke before you realize that Snoke was dead and gone. “Although I do believe that you have met before.”

               You purse your lips together, trying to convince yourself that he definitely wasn’t talking about Snoke. “May I ask where I previously encountered this individual?”

               “On the Starkiller Base,” Hux replies. “I believe you two were close, once upon a time.” For a moment your mind immediately jumps to Taro, or perhaps one of the other Tortutaru, and you briefly entertain the idea of simply throwing _yourself_ through an airlock. You didn’t know how to handle it if you happened to find that Taro had been alive all this time, being kept and probably tortured in some First Order institution when you could have possibly used your newfound clout to try to free him.

               “Are you going to keep playing the pronoun game or are you going to tell me who it is?” you ask testily, and Hux smirks as he notices the impatience in your voice. You wanted to appear as unruffled around Hux as you could at all times, but the thought of potentially seeing Taro again, of seeing the disappointment in his large eyes when he found out that you were now in league with his captors was almost too much for you to take.

               “You’ll see,” he replies simply. “It’s right around here.” Hux turns another two corners and you enter a smaller control room that is filled with a great deal of equipment. There are consoles spanning both lengths of the room, and each corner of the room is lit with a different holo, each one projecting a different section of the galaxy. Some are zoomed in to show specific planets, and the screens surrounding each planet seem to be filled with brief excerpts of data about the planet and any surrounding moons, although you were standing too far away to read any of the listed information for yourself.

               “What do you do here?” you ask, your voice losing all irritation as you turned to study the six or so people in the room that hadn’t even bothered to look up as you came in, let alone snap to attention at Hux’s entrance. If you were being honest, they didn’t look like they belonged with the First Order. They were wearing their signature First Order uniforms, and yet for the most part they looked untidy, wrinkled and sloppy and oversized. They didn’t seem to be as uptight as most of the people who walked about in the command center, and you supposed, whatever this little division was up to, that they were left mostly to their own devices unless they had to report to Hux for some reason or another.

               “Warrant Officer Enson,” Hux says loudly, and a stout man with dark hair and piercing dark eyes turns to face him, as does the rest of the group, treating Hux’s presence as an almost unwelcome intrusion. You didn’t know who this group was, but you liked them almost immediately if they made their dislike of Hux as obvious as they did. It also meant that they knew that Hux couldn’t really do much to them, and you were intrigued to see what exactly they did for the First Order that made them valuable enough to make their contempt of Hux as obvious as they did without fear of any retribution. “A word with you outside, if you please?”

               “Of course, General,” Enson says as he turns back to face the rest of the group. “Please continue with your work. I will return shortly.”

               You follow Hux back out into the corridor, which opened into a space that was a bit wider considering it was at the end of the hallway, allowing you to stand and chat without the concern of being in someone else’s way, or worse, risking being overheard. Enson comes out to meet you almost immediately, and you couldn’t help but think that there was something familiar about this man that you couldn’t quite discern at first glance. Hux says your name as he gestures to you with his hand, introducing you to this familiar stranger. Enson, to his credit, seems to ignore him as he shoots you a tight lipped smile and extends a hand for you to shake.

               “Of course,” he replies in response to Hux’s introduction. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

               “Likewise,” you echo, although you were still searching his face, still trying to place it among the dozens of others that you had seen during your time on the Starkiller Base. Was he someone in one of the self-defense classes that you had taught? Was he a Storm Trooper that you used to interpret for? Hux, of all people, knew that you knew him, and you didn’t think that Hux had really cared about your friendships on the Starkiller Base. No, he just knew that you had arrived there with B, and C, and Sadie, and Ladson, and

 _“Shayne?”_ you exclaim suddenly, all composure gone from your face, and it’s all you can do not to grab him and squeeze him into a hug right then and there. Shayne was dead, somewhere along the line you had convinced yourself of that fact. You had assumed that he had gotten himself thrown off Starkiller Base or he had died when it had exploded, or perhaps even escaped and made his way to some far off planet, but you never expected that he had somehow worked his way into the upper echelons of the First Order. You had a million questions, but for some reason you couldn’t quite get your brain to work as you opened your mouth and shut it again, trying to force your brain to remember how to speak.

               “In all fairness, I never expected that I would see you again either,” Shayne replies. “Word reached my ears that you had headed back to the academia along with Ladson before the Starkiller Base exploded. Lucky you weren’t around for that. The place was in chaos.”

               “Yeah,” you reply, although you’re still gobsmacked by the fact that Shayne was standing in front of you, alive and well. You remembered him as short and portly, but he clearly wasn’t as short as you remembered, although maybe it was the hat that gave him a little extra height. His shoulders were still broad, but either he had lost the pudge that he had around his middle, or the First Order uniform did a good job of hiding it well. Thinking back, you couldn’t really remember what he had worn previously. Shayne had never really made a strong impression on you, and the fact that he had died without you knowing what had really happened to him was something you had never quite made peace with. You knew that in all the chaos and confusion regarding your circumstances that it was extremely doubtful, a one in a million shot, that you ever would have seen him again, but apparently the stars aligned in such a way that your fates would intersect again after all.

               “Warrant Officer Enson is responsible for data analysis,” Hux tells you. “He first served as a communications specialist as well as a logistics tactician, working with a specialized selection of troops on briefing survey teams on the different cultures and customs of other planets so that they may slip in and out easily on covert assignments.”

               “So, in short, you’ve been helping train spies?” you ask as you turn back to Shayne.

               “For a while,” Shayne replies. “Over the past several years, the affairs of the Republic were more transparent after the destruction of the Hosnian System, rendering clandestine intelligence-gathering essentially useless, which is why the General here created this branch, to extend the Imperial Archive so that we can complement data on the different planets in the galaxy with as much information as we possibly can for easy reference, including the resources that each planet holds, the creatures that live there, and distinct information about their inhabitants, including a full dictionary of each language.” You can’t wipe the look of sheer amazement off your face. “Of course, it’s quite a large task and the project is still in its beginning stages, but once it’s finished, we will have the biggest encyclopedia of knowledge in the galaxy, far exceeding the informative archives of our old academia,” Shayne says teasingly. “If the First Order is to rule the galaxy, then this information would be absolutely beneficial to securing their supremacy. You know many say that knowledge is power, and there is a certain element of truth to that. Knowledge is the cornerstone to securing power, and once we finish compiling the data, the First Order will surely be indestructible.”

               For a moment you weren’t quite sure if Shayne had spent too much time around Hux in order to mimic his confidence in the power and authority of the First Order or if he had been seriously brainwashed with propaganda to the point where he actually believed it himself. If it was the first, then he was still the same suck up Ladson had always believed him to be. If it was the second, you almost wished that he had gone down along with the Starkiller Base. Shayne had never been your friend, not exactly, but you didn’t know if he would have liked the person he had turned into. Even still, maybe he had done it consciously. Maybe he had known that he was going to have to praise the First Order often and loudly in order to survive there, and kept saying it often enough until the words escaped his lips with such confidence that he was fooling himself even better than those around him.

               “And we appreciate the lengths you have gone to in order to prove your dedication to the cause,” Hux replies, leaving you in an even more curious position than before. “But now I have matters of my own to attend to. I’ll leave you two to become reacquainted.” Hux turns back to you. “Feel free to inspect all of the progress that they have made and make your own adjustments as necessary. I will leave him and his team under your charge.”

               “Of course,” you reply, although you can’t help but notice the brief look of confusion flicker across Shayne’s face. You had no idea how long he had been in charge for, but you could tell he wasn’t too happy with the thought of Hux simply passing over the reins of his pet project to you, when you didn’t really have any detailed knowledge of what it was he was doing. You knew generally he what he wanted to accomplish, but he seemed to have a more methodical procedure set out as to how to achieve this lofty goal, and you didn’t want to interfere with that when he seemed to have already done so much.

               “We have another meeting this afternoon to discuss defense doctrine,” Hux tells you. “Please see if you can convince Ren to join us. Captain Phasma has extended her invitation for you to be there as well.”

               “Then I will see you this afternoon,” you say simply, and Hux gives a nod first to you, then to Shayne, before he heads back down the corridor, his boots clicking down the hallway as he walked. Shayne waits until he’s out of earshot before he looks back up at you.

               “I’ve heard rumors,” he says after a brief pause. “That you’re married to Kylo Ren? That you have a child together?”

               “It’s a long story,” you say with a shrug of your shoulders, unsure of where to really begin. Shayne had been totally in the dark about your relationship with Kylo Ren aboard the Starkiller Base back when you worked as an interpreter, and you weren’t sure how much he found out after the fact. You knew from Ladson that rumors had circulated, but you had no way of knowing which ones had reached Shayne’s ears. For all he knew, he might have thought that you had been in the same situation that Sadie had been in with Hux, and you wanted to make it clear as soon as possible that that was _not_ , and had never been, the case.

               “Would you like to get a drink?” Shayne asks, and you nod your head as you follow him down to one of the staff lounges. This one was considerably nicer than the one you had used to visit Ladson in on the Starkiller Base, and you assumed that as a Warrant Officer, Shayne probably got access to specialized lounges that were a step above the ones Storm Troopers and the rest of the personnel were allowed to use, but still beneath Hux. Then again, you felt it safe to assume that Hux probably had his own personal lounge stocked for his own particular use, although you weren’t quite sure what exactly you would find in there.

               After you both have a mug of caf in hand and are sitting across from each other do you finally begin to speak. “The last time I saw you, you were being led out of that cell,” Shayne tells you. “You tried to fight and they put you down. They said they were taking you to be executed and after what I saw next, I never questioned it, especially since B left you locked in your room for quite a while beforehand. I assumed you had done something inappropriate, but I was never told exactly what you had done to warrant such a punishment.”

               You can’t help but smirk at this. “B caught me sleeping with Kylo Ren,” you tell him, and Shayne raises an eyebrow but says nothing as he takes a loud sip of his drink. He still slurped obnoxiously, and you weren’t sure if you should feel annoyed at the sound or comforted by this familiar agitation. “We were involved for quite a while, but B finally caught us.” You pause as you think back. “I remember B explaining everything there in that cell, you were there for that, how we were pawns for the Resistance-“ Shayne nods his head, and you suddenly clue into the fact that maybe Shayne didn’t need to be brainwashed to want to assist the First Order, considering the Resistance had led him into this situation to begin with without his full consent. Shayne had his own reasons to hate the Resistance and the Republic just as much as you did, although he had never quite had your luxury of spending time at both camps and seeing the different perspectives held at each. “Well, after I was dragged from that cell, they brought me to Kylo Ren’s quarters and I woke up on his couch. After he knew for sure that we had no knowledge of anything the Resistance had been planning, we continued our relationship from there. I started to teach the self-defense classes that we used to go to after a while, once he thought it was safe for me to walk around base myself, but I still didn’t go out too much.”

               “But you left,” Shayne says, posing it as more of a statement than a question. “And with Ladson, although I didn’t piece that together until later. The rumors were that you left with a friend that you had arrived here with. I first believed it to be Sadie, but there was no way they would ever train her as a Storm Trooper.”

               “No,” you agree with a small laugh. “No, I was, uh, I was able to convince them to let Sadie go,” you say after a few moments, piecing a more polished version of events together in your head. “They knew she wasn’t a threat to them and she couldn’t contribute much to the First Order so they accepted a large sum of money her father offered for her safe return, and they sent her home. I followed later when Kylo and I discovered I was pregnant. I didn’t want to leave, but he decided it was ultimately safer for me to raise our child there instead of on base, especially with the risk of an attack from the Resistance.”

               “I’m sure he’s thankful that he made that call, looking back,” Shayne says with another sip of his drink, completely unaware of the selective editing you were doing to your own story.

               “Yeah,” you reply. “I stayed there for a while until Ladson and I were captured by the Resistance when they found out who I was, who our son was. Luckily, Ladson and I thought on our feet and we were able to convince them that I had been Ren’s helpless captive on base. Once I earned their trust, I was able to escape and make it back to Ren on his personal flagship. Unfortunately, the Resistance must have hid a tracker in my ship. They followed me there, captured us, and took us back to their stronghold to await a trial set by the Republic. Luckily, Phasma knew where we were and helped break us out, and Ren and I have been inseparable ever since. The past few years we’ve just been hopping from base to base, raising our son and trying to assist the First Order in whatever way we can.”

               “Ah,” Shayne says, and there’s a brief pause. “So when the Resistance captured you, was that before or after you began your affair with the Resistance Commander?”

               You’re lucky you had set your cup down on the table, otherwise you probably would have crushed it into tiny ceramic shards that you would have been picking out of your palms for weeks. “How did you find out about that?” you demand as you feel heat rising to your cheeks.

               “Rumors,” Shayne replies simply. “Word travels fast on military installations, especially where relationships are concerned. You know the First Order doesn’t approve of attachments, and yet you and Kylo Ren-“

               “Hey, I don’t know about him, but this whole thing started back when I was still an interpreter,” you tell him. “I don’t think I have to convince you that I had no idea what I was getting into at the time, especially when I didn’t know why I was actually on base.”

               “That’s fair,” Shayne replies evenly. “But what about the Commander? What happened there? I’m sure Ren couldn’t have been too pleased with you.”

               _It was a ruse,_ you want to tell him. _It was just a façade in order to escape the Resistance. I never had any actual feelings for him, no, that would just be ridiculous. He was stupid, and sentimental, and he couldn’t see past the fact that I was using him, that’s all it was. Don’t debase me with allegations that I could have actually cared about him. He works for the Resistance. He’s the_ enemy _. I’m supposed to hate him. I do hate him. I-_

But the stone on your neck suddenly feels uncomfortably heavy, and you feel a strange sense of anguish swirling around in your chest. You had no problem editing your own history in a way that Shayne would surely find most palpable, but you couldn’t lie about this. You weren’t quite sure why, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to tell him that you hated Poe, that you had never had any feelings for him at all. You just couldn’t bring yourself to do it, and you didn’t want to try and fail and then have him doubt the authenticity of anything you told him.

               “We sort of lost contact after the destruction of the base,” you say slowly, acutely aware of the fact that that wasn’t exactly a lie. “I didn’t know what had happened to him. I thought it was possible that he died, especially after such a long time passed without word.” You shrug your shoulders absent mindedly. “Then I met Commander Dameron and we became friends and things just sort of took off from there. But once Ren got word to me that he was alive, I went to him at once, and like I said, we’ve been together ever since.”

               “Touching,” Shayne replies, and he seems almost bored with your story. You purse your lips together as you try to remember what he was like back on the Starkiller Base. Inquisitive, sticking his nose into business he had no right knowing, and you supposed that much was true now, especially considering his questions about Poe.

               “So what about you?” you ask after a moment. “I know what happened to Sadie after everything went down, and Ladson, but what happened to you? None of us had any idea what happened to you.”

               “They tried to train me as a Storm Trooper as well,” Shayne admits. “But as you know, I wasn’t physically up for the task, and I was a terrible shot as well. Once Captain Phasma determined that I was useless to them as a solider, I had to convince them of my _other_ uses, and that was no easy task. Fortunately, one of the sub-lieutenants took pity on me and my situation and offered to take me under his wing as a communication specialist. He unfortunately passed in the destruction of the Starkiller Base, he wasn’t able to make it out in time, but that allowed me to step up and assume his post. As I’m sure you’re well aware, the First Order scattered all over the galaxy after the base exploded, and I was one of the select few responsible for determining where exactly we set up bases, trying to stay as nondescript as possible on various planets throughout the Western Reaches and beyond.”

               “Well, look at you,” you say, letting your voice swell with admiration. In truth, you had always assumed that Shayne had probably done something incredibly stupid that had gotten himself killed. You didn’t expect him to rise to the occasion as well as he had, but if you could crack and grow stronger under the pressure of the First Order, then you supposed that he had as well.

               “The First Order could have labelled me a Resistance sympathizer and killed me,” Shayne continues. “Hux could have done the same to all of us, well, all except you, if Kylo Ren had anything to say about it, I’m sure.” You just shrug your shoulders uncomfortably. You knew that your relationship with Kylo offered _some_ form of protection and specialized treatment, but you didn’t exactly like to be seen that way. “But they didn’t. Instead they took me in and I am quite indebted to them for that. Since that time, I have learned of the cruelty of the Republic, and while I had never been politically inclined before, I’m glad the First Order took the time to show me the injustice the Republic has inflicted upon the galaxy so that I can help the First Order end the Republic’s oppression once and for all.”

               You can’t help but snicker quietly at this, and Shayne raises an eyebrow in interest. “I’ve met quite a few people from the Republic,” you tell him. “Not all of them are bad, but they made me spar with a member of the Resistance just for their entertainment. They make it sound like everyone in the First Order is vicious and self-serving, but the people that I’ve met at the Republic are just as concerned about their own rank and self-importance. Want proof? One of their leading commanders went to the trouble of sending the entire Third Fleet specifically to kill me during our evacuation of Naboo, because he seems to think that I have personally wronged him in some way. Honestly, the only difference between them is that the First Order doesn’t hide behind pretenses. They make it very clear what their mission is in the galaxy and what great lengths they’ll go to do it, whereas the Republic relies on deception and subterfuge, disguising whatever true motives they have under the guise of protection and keeping the status quo.”

               “Transparency is an undervalued trait, to be sure,” Shayne agrees as he downs his mug, and you sense the conversation is quickly coming to a close. “Now, I know Hux said that he would like you to-“

               “Don’t worry about that,” you say as you finish your own drink. “I’m curious to see what information you’ve compiled, and if I can be of any use to you, please, let me know, but as far as I’m concerned, this has been your project from the beginning and I’m not going to take that away from you.”

               Shayne’s lips press together as he twists the corners of his lips into a pleasant smile. “I’m glad we have an understanding,” he says at length. “A lot of the material we deal with is very sensitive, and I’ve made sure to assemble an excellent team from around the galaxy. Unlike us, they actually _knew_ what they were getting into when they signed on to help the First Order, I made sure of that.”

               “Transparency is an undervalued trait,” you echo. “And I’m sure I’d love to meet them, eventually, but right now I actually have a meeting with Captain Phasma that I have to be off to.”

               “Oh?” Shayne asks as he gets to his feet. “Are you assisting them with their military strategies as well?”

               “Actually, I believe the nature of our meeting might be classified,” you tell him as you head out of the lounge and down the hall together.

               “Even to old friends?” Shayne asks good-naturedly before shaking his head. “No, I’m giving you a hard time. Don’t answer that.” You just laugh, not sure how exactly to respond to that. “Anyway, any time you want to swing by and see what we’re up to, or even if you just want to chat, feel free to drop in any time. I practically sleep in here; ask anyone on this side of the ship, and they’ll tell you.”

               “Sure thing,” you reply quickly as you stop back outside the door to what you assumed you could call his own little office. “I’m honestly glad to see you again, Shayne. I didn’t know what had happened to you, and I’m glad that you made a pretty good life for yourself here, all things considered.”

               “Me too,” Shayne replies. “And I’m glad everyone else made it back safe and sound as well.” He pauses for a moment, and a crease forms in his brow. “Say, do you know what ever happened to the Tortutaru? Toro and the rest?”

               “Taro,” you correct him. “And yeah, they uh, they tried to escape. They didn’t make it.”

               “Ah,” Shayne says with a click of his tongue. “I’d say it’s a pity, but they got what they deserved for trying to play the First Order for fools.” Something about this leaves a foul taste in your mouth, and so you just quickly bob your head forward as you say your farewell, heading quickly down the hall the way you had come. For some reason you feel like you can’t catch your breath, and it doesn’t take you long to realize why as you duck back inside the empty lounge room.

               _Taro._ Your heart was beating so fast in your chest you almost couldn’t think straight, and you raked in a desperate gasp of air. What would he think if he could see you now, working hand in hand with the First Order, with the same people who had murdered him when he tried to escape? He had interpreted your relationship with Kylo Ren to be more out of an instinct for self-preservation than anything else, and while he hadn’t been wrong at the time, you no longer needed Kylo Ren. Now you were with him by choice, plain and simple. For a moment you let everything come flooding back to you as you reached the conclusion that Taro probably wouldn’t be your friend if he met you now. Would he be ashamed of you? Would he view you as an enemy?

               And would you view him as an enemy? If they brought him on board now as a captive, would you have become friends with him? Or would you have treated your assignment with a strict sense of detachment that you failed to apply to your assignment the first time and not cared about what had happened to him? Would you have cheered when you learned that he was shot down, trying to make it back to that vile Resistance camp with all sorts of confidential First Order secrets? You just couldn’t be sure.

               The thought is sobering, but your heartbeat steadies as a creeping sense of numbness crawls up inside of you. An icy, cold sweat has broken out on your skin, beading your hairline and the flesh of your forearms underneath your uniform as you think it over. It didn’t matter what Taro thought of you. Taro was dead, and Shayne had a point. Taro tried to protect you as best he could, but maybe you wouldn’t have needed protection if he had been honest with you from the beginning, if he had been transparent about his motives and his work with the Resistance. No, Taro was hardly as blameless and friendly as you remembered him to be.

               If you met him now, would you be his friend?

               No, you couldn’t imagine that you would be.

               You shook your head and chided yourself for this silly, hypothetical thinking as you went off to meet Captain Phasma. She, you knew, _was_ a friend; she had been back on the Starkiller Base and had remained so ever since, helping you without any regard to her self-interest. People like her were rare to find in the galaxy, and you were glad that you could have at least one true friend here in the First Order, especially when you weren’t quite sure how to feel about Shayne. You had never been that friendly with him back when you had first met him, and you weren’t quite sure if you could trust him now. Your instincts told you to be wary of him, and you decided to listen to that voice and trust the Force. You couldn’t recall a time when it had steered you wrong before.

               You let these thoughts occupy your mind as you walked through the hallways into a decently sized room that was literally lined with fabric. There were two metal bars that ran the expanse of each wall, and there were First Order coats hanging side by side all around the room, making it feel smaller than it probably really was. There were also long tables that ran through the middle of the room filled with different articles, and as your eyes swept through them you noticed pants on some tables and shoes and boots on the other. “Glad to see you finally show up,” Phasma says in greeting, but her voice is alight with good humor.

               “Hux kept me,” you say simply with a shrug of your shoulders. The material pulls at you awkwardly, and you grimace as you point to your shoulders. “See, this is what I mean. It fits fine at the arms, but on the shoulders it fits, I don’t know, weirdly.”

               “Hmm,” Phasma says as she looks you over. _“Marvetchée, Kiema!”_ You wrinkle your forehead in confusion. You didn’t recognize the language she was speaking, but almost at once someone walks out of a corner room that you hadn’t noticed, as the doorway was shielded and obscured by the hanging coats. A short girl with long, straight black hair that trailed to her knees walks out, and you can’t help but stare down at her, dropping your chin to your chest as you consider just how little she was, at least half your height, maybe less. “This is Kiema,” Phasma says by way of introduction.

               “Uh, hi there,” you say quickly as the girl begins to circle you. The girl doesn’t respond, or make any indication that she heard you, and you lift your head as you quirk an eyebrow in Phasma’s direction.

               “She can hear you,” Phasma explains. “But she just can’t speak.”

               “Oh,” you say quickly. You hold up your hands and clench and unclench your fists quickly in a repeated gesture, doing it twice, typically one of the most accepted forms of asking someone in the galaxy if they communicated with their hands. She pauses for a moment as she looks up at you and then goes back to circling you again as you turn back to Phasma. “Does she sign?”

               “I have no idea,” Phasma says, but you can tell by the boredom in her tone that she couldn’t really care one way or the other, and you simply shrug your shoulders as you let the conversation drop. You could only imagine how lonely it must be for this girl to not have any real access to communication, to have no one to really converse with aside from if someone needed something, and for a moment you consider that if you had met her when you had first arrived on board the Starkiller Base that you probably would have tried to befriend her. Now, however, you had far more important things to concern yourself with, and you shrug your shoulders carelessly as Kiema continues to circle you.

               “What is she doing, exactly?” you ask after a moment.

               “Taking your measurements,” Phasma replies. “She is quite skilled at it. She’ll make you a new series of uniforms and they should be done within the week.”

               “Oh,” you say as you glance around at the clothes all around you. “I thought you were probably going to give me one of these to wear, or something.” Phasma just laughs at you as she shakes her head.

               “No, these are for the rest of Hux’s officers,” she tells you. “Ren told me he wanted you to have something special, more distinctive, so that you stood out.”

               You can’t help but crack a grin at this. “Yeah, he didn’t really like seeing me in the uniform when I first tried it on,” you tell her as you pull aside the scarf to reveal the hole you had made in the neck. “I literally had to cut this thing off. I hate anything with a high collar.” Kiema looks up as if she’s making a mental note at this before she finally turns and bows her head to Phasma, apparently signaling that she had gotten all she needed.

               “Thank you, Kiema,” Phasma says politely, and the girl bows to her, the ends of her dark hair sweeping the tile floor as she returns to the back room. You consider thanking her yourself, but you can’t decide if it’s actually worth the trouble to say the words, and before you can make up your mind, she’s already disappeared into the back somewhere as Phasma turns back to you. “Your new uniforms will be delivered to your quarters by the end of the week. She works quickly.”

               “Okay then,” you say with a slight shrug of your shoulders. “So are we done here?”

               “Not quite,” Phasma replies as she pulls off her helmet, and your brow creases in confusion as Phasma takes a seat on a small stool behind her. Even sitting, she is only just a tad bit shorter than you, and you can’t help but get the impression that she was like a parent who was about to give her child a lecture. “I want to talk to you about something.”

               “Okay,” you say with another shrug of your shoulders. “Like what?”

               “I heard about what happened to Major Dorska,” Phasma says solemnly, and you can’t help but shrug. The name doesn’t mean anything to you, and Phasma simply raises an eyebrow as she appraises your lack of a reaction. “The man you killed?”

               “Oh,” you reply loudly. In truth, you had almost completely forgotten about that, and now that you thought back, it _had_ come up at today’s meeting only a few short hours ago. Regardless, you hadn’t made much of an effort to remember it. It didn’t seem to really make much of a difference now, considering he was no longer around to use it. Phasma herself seems to register your indifference before she continues.

               “Did Ren put you up to that?” Phasma asks. “It was my understanding that Ren wasn’t very fond of him.”

               “No,” you reply simply. “No, I didn’t know that Kylo didn’t like him either. I was trying to talk and he kept interrupting me. He kept undermining me and I just sort of snapped.” It occurs to you that your dislike of him might have been heightened through the Force bond you shared with Kylo, but you didn’t see a reason to mention this to Phasma. “None of the men were really paying attention to me, so I had to show them who was really in charge there.”

               Phasma narrows her eyes at you, as if she doesn’t like your tone. “That would be General Hux.”

               “Right,” you say quickly, as if glossing over that fact. “But Hux asked _me_ to speak, and so by virtue of the fact that they were ignoring me, they were basically disrespecting him as well.” Phasma continues to stare you down, and you just shrug your shoulders errantly again. “Look, it doesn’t matter now. He’s gone, and I think the rest of them learned their lesson. They’ve been nothing but civil to me since then.”

               “Careful,” Phasma says. “You don’t want to acquire Ren’s reputation.”

               “Don’t I?” you ask with a small laugh. “Kylo Ren is pretty much a name that instills fear wherever it goes. General Hux. Captain Phasma. You all have really cool, fancy titles and I’m just sort of over here, existing, wearing oversized hand-me-down uniforms that fit me weirdly.”

               Phasma turns her head to the side as she studies you. “Were you treated any differently at the Resistance base?”

               “A bit,” you say with a shrug of your shoulders. “I mean, I wasn’t really involved with what the Resistance did, but I was free to come and go in their command center as I pleased, and I did have my own callsign registered with the base Controller.” Phasma seems to take this into consideration, and you’re thankful that she doesn’t ask what it is. You don’t have the heart to tell her that you had once accepted Poe’s name of _Moonstaff_. Looking back, it seemed even more embarrassing now than it had at the time.

               “Look, am I in trouble or something?” you ask, unable to quell the annoyance in your voice. “Because Ren pretty much rewarded me after, and Hux seemed more or less amused by the whole thing.”

               “Hux would,” Phasma mutters her breath. “Ren, however, is a bit concerned about you.”

               “Concerned?” you echo, blinking dramatically. “Um, Kylo doesn’t _seem_ concerned about me. Like I said, he pretty much rewarded me after and we haven’t talked about it since.”

               “He’s concerned,” Phasma repeats. “He thought you might like to talk to me about it.”

               You scoff, because there’s no other way that you can really react. You felt a tremor run through your upper arms, and you couldn’t believe that Kylo was betraying you this way. Honestly, it felt like he had just turned around and sunk a dagger into your shoulder blade, which was now practically twitching with frustration. If what Phasma was saying was true, he had been unhappy with the way you had handled the situation, and instead of talking to you about it directly, he had asked Phasma to confront you instead?

               “Like he can even talk,” you snort loudly. “He’s murdered scores of people, and yet I take one measly life and suddenly he thinks I’m going overboard?”

               “No,” Phasma says quickly. “No, but he’s informed me that this is the first life you’ve taken, and you don’t seem all that affected by it.”

               “Why should I be affected?” you ask, as if you honestly don’t understand, mostly because you don’t. You killed someone in the First Order. He had no family, and likely didn’t have any friends. Hux didn’t care. You weren’t in trouble. So why were you still talking about this?

               “Does it really not bother you?” Phasma asks, and you can tell by her expression that she’s watching you curiously.

               “It really doesn’t,” you reply honestly. “Kylo’s killed, you’ve killed, Hux has killed. It’s pretty much a rite of passage that if you want to be in the First Order, you have to have at least a little bit of blood splatter on your hands if you want to get anywhere.”

               “Not necessarily,” Phasma says softly, and you can tell by her tone that she truly is troubled by your responses.

               “Look,” you say quickly, trying to wrap this up as soon as possible. “I _appreciate_ the fact that you’re concerned about me, I am, but I’m fine. Really. You don’t have to worry about me freaking out or losing it by taking out my lightsaber and smashing everything around me like Kylo would.”

               “I didn’t mean to suggest-“

               “I know you didn’t,” you say firmly. “You’re concerned, you’re just looking out for me, and I appreciate that.” You shrug your shoulders absent-mindedly, as if trying to physically brush off this whole thing. “I will talk to Kylo, okay? Does that make you feel better?”

               “It’s not about me,” Phasma says simply. There’s nothing more you can say to that, and so you just nod in her direction as you turn on your heel and walk out of the room.

               At first you simply felt disappointed as you walk around and around the ship, letting your feet carry you up and down new corridors that you had never walked through before, but the more you let your mind wander, the angrier you became. At first you were confused as to why they would be worried about you, why they would even care about this man’s death when he wasn’t even all that important to begin with, but your mind kept coming back to the fact that Kylo had told Phasma about it without coming to you first. If he didn’t like the fact that you had killed someone, if he was worried about how you would have reacted, why had he immediately taken you and fucked the shit out of you in a utility closet right after? You could understand why he wouldn’t want to say anything to Ani, but Phasma? Honestly, why would she even care? You had known her for a few years on and off, and you were friends, but she didn’t know you like Kylo did. Was that the problem? Was Kylo afraid that you were secretly more upset about this than you let on to be and would find it easier to talk to Phasma about it? Did he misinterpret your apathy for what you had done by thinking that you had been closing yourself off from letting him feel your emotions? You hadn’t been, but if that was really the case, why didn’t he just _ask_ you how you felt instead of making all of these assumptions?

               You can feel your hands balling into fists at your sides, and you begin to stalk around the ship with more conviction, with more purpose, almost daring anyone, anyone, to accidently get in your way so that you could have an excuse to cut them down. The muscles in your upper arms were literally quaking with rage, the fingers in your hands itching to wrap themselves around the hilt of your lightsaber to destroy anyone or anything in your path. In fact, your mind was so consumed with mentally ripping apart whatever you could find that as you turned a sharp corner you weren’t paying attention to what was around the other side and ran straight into Kylo Ren himself.

               You had been so incensed by your own rage that you didn’t even feel him approaching.

               “What?” you snap angrily, your hands again balling into fists at your sides as you stare him down.

               “I was looking for you,” Kylo says through the grumbling voice distortion of his helmet. You can’t make out his tone, you can’t see his face, and you can’t possibly describe how much that irritates the living fuck out of you right now.

               “Look, I don’t-“ you start, but he doesn’t give you time to finish as he grabs you roughly around your upper arm and guides you into a nearby room. It looks like just a simple meeting room inside, and it’s fortunately deserted. Kylo thrusts you into the room and you stagger a few steps forward before bouncing onto the toes of your feet as you spin around to face him. “Oh, please, just _give_ me a reason.”

               “A reason?” Kylo turns his head to the side as if he doesn’t understand, and your lightsaber flies off your belt and into your hand before you can even realize what you’re doing. You can see the amber glow of the blades reflect off the ridges in his helmet, and for once you let yourself completely succumb to the rage that was swimming through your veins like acid, eating you alive from the inside out.

               “Give me a reason,” you repeat firmly. There were only two things you could do with that lightsaber. The first was to intimidate him, and you were sure that Kylo Ren was not going to be intimidated by you, considering Kylo Ren wasn’t intimidated by _anyone_.

               That only left one other option, and for a moment you let everything fall away until it was just you, and your lightsaber, and your building sense of anger that was pulling you further and further from the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everybody, Krasava here!! I'm back and out of the depths of hell that I crawled out of, I found Shayne and dragged him out with me!! ;) No, really, I just wanted to say, thanks for your concern but I'm back now and I'm doing okay, thanks for the love, I mean it. <3 Shayne's return is something that I had planned out from the end of _Flare_ when I realized everyone really did care enough about him to bring him back, and so I started trying to figure out ways to incorporate him back into the story, and I realized having him become a First Order stooge wasn't just totally in line with Shayne's character but also works as a nice parallel to the Reader's situation now, in a "we do what we gotta do" way. 
> 
> Though, I'm uh, I'm pretty sure that the Reader is taking that sentiment a bit overboard. Like, man, Reader, mannnnn, what the heck is happening to you?? Pulling a lightsaber on Kylo Ren is probably one of the dumbest things you could do in the entire galaxy. Is Kylo going to fight her? Try to talk her down from it? Guess you'll have to check back Saturday to find out. ;) Until then, cheers!!


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So recently I thought that camping in the Adirondacks and hiking 60 miles would be the highlight of my month, but no, because on Thursday, June 9, 2016, I had the _privilege_ of meeting the one and only Chris Hardwick of @midnight and The Talking Dead. You guys know me as being the biggest proponent for Deaf awareness and representation in media, and so I asked him about the chances of a Deaf character on The Walking Dead and he said he didn't know why there weren't more Deaf characters on TV and that he'd pass the word along (although he gave the obvious disclaimer that he doesn't work for them so he obviously can't promise anything but he could maybe mention it and see what happens) and then I showed him the signs for "fucking" and "throw up" and "cat" by his request. I've never met anyone famous before and always thought I'd be too afraid to engage them because of them not being able to understand me (he struggled with my name, but Idk if it's because Krasava is hard to pronounce or I wasn't clear but he like took the time to make sure he understood it and said it was a beautiful name...which is funny because Krasava _is_ the Czech word for beautiful but I didn't even tell him that because I didn't hear him say that at the time, literally my friends confirmed that after the fact and I almost fainted. 
> 
> But they also said that I was really clear and articulate in my signing and speaking and that was an _enormous_ confidence booster to me. Like, I took up over five minutes of Chris Hardwick's life to talk to him about Deaf representation in media which is something that's so, so important to me and if there is a Deaf character on The Walking Dead either next season or the season after, I will literally die of happiness, like, forget this epic that I'm writing right here, I think that will be my greatest contribution to the world that I will ever make in this lifetime. xD If there's any lessons learned here, is apparently one person can make a difference, or not, I don't know, but Chris Hardwick now knows the signs for "fucking" "throw up" and "cat" because of me and that is not something I'll stop reminding people about for the next rest of my life. xD 
> 
> I'm sorry, I just needed to share, that's the most exciting/interesting thing that's ever happened to me in my entire life, especially after I just came from a restaurant where the music was loud and I couldn't understand my friend speaking across the table and I was really bummed about my hearing loss...and then this happens!! Sometimes life hands you lemons, and I'm definitely drinking the lemonade right now, so hopefully this little feel-good story will make your day a bit better as well somehow. ^_^ 
> 
> And now back to your regular scheduled programming of heartbreaking fanfiction.
> 
> (and no I didn't mention this story to him what are you nuts????? xD)
> 
> Btw, NSFW content ahead

               _“What are you doing?”_

               For a moment you freeze, sure that you had heard Kylo’s voice clearly in your head, and not through the rumble of the voice distortion. This thought is only furthered as Kylo quickly fumbles with the base of his helmet, unlocking the mechanism as he pulls it off his head and casts it to the side. You stand there for a moment as you bring your eyes up to meet his face. His hair looks messier than it usually did underneath that helmet, and his dark eyes were wide and _confused_ ; that was an emotion you registered above all else. Meanwhile, you stood there with your arm outstretched, elbow slightly bent, as if ready for a fight. Slowly, you drop your eyes and the amber hue of your lightsaber flickers for a moment before it fizzles out completely, allowing you to tuck it safely back into your belt.

               “What are you doing?” Kylo repeats. His tone is a lot more forceful than it had sounded from inside your head, although he still couldn’t hide the note of sheer, absolute confusion in his voice.

               “I don’t know,” you reply, quickly, loudly, trying to make sure that you were alone inside your own head. “Look, we don’t have time for this right now. Doesn’t Hux have a meeting he wants you to go to?”

               Kylo literally opens his mouth wide as he laughs at this, as if you honestly thought he gave a _fuck_ about what Hux wanted when you had just pulled your lightsaber on him. “Believe me, we have time for this,” Kylo says, his expression sobering as he stares you down. “What is happening to you?”

               “Happening to _me_?” you demand. “You’re the one that ran to Phasma to tell her I killed someone.”

               “I did not _run_ to Phasma,” Kylo says indignantly. “I merely thought that you could use someone to talk to after…” He lets his voice trail off, but you honestly can’t be sure why.

               “After what?” you demand. “After I killed that guy? After I snapped his neck?” Kylo’s face hardens as he watches you now, watches you closely. “If you really cared that much, why wouldn’t you talk to me about it? Why wouldn’t you ask me how I am?”

               “And if I had, would you have been honest with me?” Kylo demands.

               “Yes,” you say defensively as you cross your arms over your chest. “We’re supposed to be a team. If you have a problem with me or something I did, I need to know that you can come to me and talk to me about it, instead of just running off and trying to dump me on someone else.”

               “That is _not_ what happened,” Kylo says loudly, and you can quickly feel his own anger growing in response to yours. “I thought that you might be more comfortable talking to her about it than me.”

               “Why?” you yell back. “Why wouldn’t I want to talk to you? You can get in my head. I can get inside yours. We share everything together. Why wouldn’t you want me to talk about this with you?”

               “Because I don’t care,” Kylo yells, something breaking in his voice as he does, and it makes you flinch, if only for a moment. “Because I didn’t care about him, because I wanted him dead, because I would have done it myself, and I don’t know if you could sense that, but you are _not_ _me_. You are good. You care about people-“ You scoff as you shake your head and turn away. “You care about people, and their lives. Why would you talk to me about it when you knew I didn’t care? Phasma is the only other friend you have on board this ship-“

               “Did you ever think that maybe I didn’t want to talk to her about it?” you demand. “That maybe, just maybe, I don’t want to have to explain myself to her? Or you? Or anyone? I did what I did and I _don’t_ feel bad about it. I don’t know how much clearer I can make it.”

               “Because of me?” Kylo asks, like he’s honestly not sure, and you can feel anger boiling in your blood once again.

               “No, not everything is because of you,” you yell at him. “I know we’re bonded, but am I allowed to have my own feelings, my own emotions, without people trying to compare me to you? I am constantly under your shadow, constantly being compared to you, and I am sick of it. Do you know what Phasma told me today? Do you? She warned me that I’m going to start developing _your_ reputation. Why can’t I have my own reputation? I have the Force too. I can do literally everything you can do and more, and yet I have to work twice as hard to prove that I’m even half as good as you are.”

               “We shouldn’t have come here,” Kylo says firmly as he shakes his head. “I never thought this would happen. I always feared it might, but-“

               “But what?” you demand. “Stop playing games and just talk to me.”

               “You’re starting to become like me,” Kylo yells, and you can’t help but laugh in disgust as you turn away from him again. “The first time I ever felt it was on the Starkiller Base, when you started to get a taste for it, for the authority, the control, the power. Then when Snoke said he wanted me to train you, I knew that you would give into it, and I had to send you away-“

               “Or you could have let me stay,” you insist. “And I would never have left your side. I would never have gone to the Resistance, and-“

               “And I would have lost you,” Kylo says firmly. “Just like I’m losing you now.” He crosses the room with two large strides and plants his hands on either side of your face as he presses his lips into yours. You kiss him back, softly, feeling your resolve weakening, but for the first time it does nothing to dispel the anger or the tension that seems to be winding the muscles in your arms as if they’re attached to taut wires.

               “You don’t want to lose me?” you ask as you pull away. “Then talk to me. If you think I’m not okay, then ask me. Don’t go running to Phasma or anyone else, because there’s no guarantee that I’m going to tell them the truth about how I really feel, so there’s really no point.”

               “And what about me?” Kylo asks, raising his eyebrows. “Will you tell me the truth?” You just shrug your shoulders absent-mindedly and Kylo grabs your shoulders so suddenly that you look up at him, startled. “I lost you once,” he says, almost viciously. “I’m not losing you again. Not to them. Not to the First Order.” You let your breath mix with his for a moment as you each slowly start to calm down, letting the adrenaline simmer down and tuck itself away for when you needed it next. “What can I do?” he asks, his voice still firm but a bit gentler this time. “Just tell me what I need to do.”

               “Just talk to me,” you reply softly. “If you’re worried I’m not coping with something, then talk to me. Don’t go running to someone else and dump my problems on them. I didn’t want to talk to Phasma about it.”

               “Did you want to talk to me about it?” Kylo asks, and you shrug your shoulders again. “I just, I don’t know how to be there for you in the way that you need me to be.”

               “But you don’t need to be there for me,” you tell him. “Not for this. I can try to understand where you’re coming from, but you’re thinking too much into it. I don’t know if you were hoping Phasma and I would have some big heart to heart about me taking my first life, but it doesn’t bother me. I can’t imagine what your first kill must have been like for you, but this doesn’t bother me.” You pause as you look up at him, letting your eyes search his face. “Does that bother you? That I don’t really seem to care?”

               “It does,” Kylo admits after a moment. “It seems…unlike you.”

               You just shake your head resolutely from side to side. “Sometimes people have to change,” you tell him simply. “Things are going to be changing for me, being this involved with the First Order, but my feelings for you won’t. I’m not going anywhere. You aren’t going to lose me.” Kylo, however, looks unsure as you reach up and place a gentle kiss against his lips. “We’re a team and I love you, I love you more than anything. What can I do to prove that to you?”

               There’s a brief pause as Kylo’s eyes flick down to your lips before they jump back up to meet your gaze, and you can’t help but let the corners of your lips spread into a grin as you hop back onto the table. Kylo slides off his gloves as he grabs you by the nape of the neck with one hand, smoothing your hair out of your face and holding it back with his other hand as he presses his lips fervently against your own, sinking his teeth into the corner of your lower lip. You can’t help but let out a small moan as you thrust your hips up towards his before pulling away slightly.

               “What if someone walks in here?” you ask him, quirking an eyebrow. “Are we going to have to kill them?”

               “That’s not funny,” Kylo breathes as he works his lips down to your neck, pulling his scarf aside so he can kiss and suck at the fragile skin there.

               “Who says I was joking?” you murmur, and Kylo lets out a growl as he pushes you back down onto the table, lowering his body over yours. You wrap your arms around him as your lips meet together. You kiss him furiously, running your hands through his hair as you wrap your legs around his waist. “Are we really going to do this right here?”

               Kylo smirks as he pulls away from you slightly. “Are you worried about getting caught?”            

               You pause for a moment as you sit straight up. “Are you?” There’s a brief moment of hesitation before a look of understanding passes between you, and you pull your shirt up and over your head and slide off your pants as Kylo quickly undresses himself. You weren’t sure if you would call this hate fucking, but you weren’t going to deny that you needed some kind of release, and you didn’t know how to get it from Kylo any other way. You felt angry, and irritable, and you didn’t want to _talk_. You wanted to fight, to punch something, or someone, but you weren’t about to go ahead and just attack Kylo, so you took out your physical frustrations the only way you knew how.

               Kylo pushes into you before you’re even sure that you’re ready for him, and your vision blacks for a moment as you slam your head down against the table. “Where did all of this anger come from?” Kylo asks as he begins pumping into you as fast as he possibly can go, and your head begins to spin immediately as his lips hover against yours.

               “Oh, so now you want to talk?” you ask as you sink your teeth into his bottom lip, and Kylo grabs your hair roughly in one fist, pulling your head back roughly as his lips come around to your neck. He drags the front of his tongue into the hollow between your jaw and your ear, making you shiver, before he applies a rapid burst of suction that makes your eyelids flutter shut as you embrace the sensation.

               “If this is the only way I can get you to talk,” Kylo mutters as he grabs your breast roughly in one hand, and you arch your back into him before you thrust yourself forward, sinking your teeth into the area of his chest just beneath his shoulder as you pinch your top teeth into your lower teeth, making sure to split the skin and draw blood. Kylo lets out a grunt as he grabs your head in both hands, and for a moment you’re not quite sure what he’s about to do before he places a firm kiss against your temple, burying his nose in your hair. “What is happening to you?”

               “I don’t know,” you reply, breathlessly, loudly, because you’ve been building this entire time, quickly, and you can’t think clearly when you are so close to finding your release. “I don’t know, Kylo, just, please, don’t stop.”

               “I won’t,” Kylo assures you, and he wraps his arms around you as find your release, dragging your lower lip lazily against his bare chest as he tucks you cutely underneath his chin. You mumble something under your breath as you run your fingertips down from his shoulder over his chest, but even you can’t exactly figure out what you meant to say. “What was that?”

               “I love you,” you reply lazily, because, in truth, that probably wasn’t all that far off from what you meant to say. And you did love him, that was true, and he seemed so concerned about you that it was something that you didn’t exactly mind repeating, especially when it seemed like he needed to hear it from you now more than ever.

               “I’m sorry,” Kylo says after a moment, and it takes you a moment to recognize that Kylo is apologizing to you for something. He had apologized to you for various things in the past, but for some reason, you’re not sure why this strikes you as odd.

               “I’m sorry too,” you echo, mostly just to say it. “I just, I don’t know, I guess I was just surprised that you went to Phasma instead of talking to me about it first. I thought everything between us was okay, and then suddenly when things seemed like they weren’t, I just-“ Kylo plants a kiss on your forehead and you smile in spite of yourself. “I just got so angry, I don’t know, it just flared up all of a sudden and the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I’m sorry.”

               “You don’t need to apologize,” Kylo says softly as he strokes your hair, and as comforting as it is, you can’t help but feel that maybe, just maybe, you should put some clothes on before someone walks in unannounced. Kylo, however, only seems to hold you tighter to him as he continues to stroke your hair. “Where did this anger come from? I don’t remember you ever feeling this angry back on Naboo. Have you been keeping it from me?”

               “No,” you say immediately, flinching at the realization that Kylo thought your anger towards him had been steadily building all this time. “No, please believe me when I tell you that things are fine between us. I just got angry, I don’t know where it’s from and hopefully it won’t happen again.”

               Kylo pulls away as he offers you a sad smile, using his thumb to brush your cheek. “And you will tell me when it does?”

               “Yes,” you reply quickly. “Yes, always.” You hesitate for a moment as you glance up at him. “You haven’t talked to Ani about this at all, though, have you?”

               “No,” Kylo replies quickly with a firm shake of his head, his long dark hair bouncing as he does so. “No, I don’t know how much he can pick up himself through the Force, but I have not spoken with him about you.”

               “Okay,” you breathe. “I just don’t want him to worry.” You hesitate for a moment before you lock eyes with Kylo. “I’m worried that he might want to go back to the Resistance. I don’t know if he likes it here.”

               Kylo frowns as he looks you over. “What makes you think that?”

               “I’m not sure,” you say with a shrug. “It was part of the vision that Anakin showed me and I just, I don’t know. He seems-“ You hesitate and shake your head, unsure of how to put your concern into words.

               Kylo seems to pick up on your reluctance as he runs his hands down both of your arms. “Are you sure you’re not projecting your own emotions onto him?” he asks. “You saw your friends again recently for the first time in years. You learned they wanted to take you back, and a part of you wanted to go, I could sense it.”

               “I didn’t-“ You feel a flare of anger rise inside of you, and you quickly stomp it down, pushing it away from you. “I’m not projecting my emotions onto Ani because I _don’t_ want to go back. It’s been too long and I wouldn’t fit in there anymore.” You push a smile up to the corners of your lips. “Besides, if I went back to the Resistance I couldn’t take you with me, and I’m not leaving you, not now, not ever.”

               Kylo bends down and kisses your forehead, silently returning your sentiments as you begin to get dressed. “There’s some sort of meeting that Hux wants you to go to later today,” you tell him. “Phasma invited me to attend as well, but if you don’t think I should go-“

               “You should go if you want to,” Kylo says simply. “Hux has already warned that he can make life quite unpleasant for me if I choose not to go, and I don’t want to think about what that could mean for you.”

               “I doubt Hux can do anything to me,” you say idly, but give Kylo a placating smile to show that you took his concern seriously. “Would you like me to be there?”

               “If you want to go,” Kylo says with a shrug of his shoulders as he starts to get dressed, and you continue to do the same.

               “I’ll go,” you say with an idle shrug. “I mean, it’s not like I have anything better to do and it’s probably good for us to present a united front.” You pull your shirt down over your head as you tuck your hair out of the collar, and Kylo leans over to kiss you again. You reach up and put both hands on the side of his face as you embrace him before you bury your face against his chest, wrapping your arms around him.

               “Whatever is going on, I’ll protect you from this,” Kylo says softly, and you draw away from him as you look him in the eye.

               “But don’t you see?” you ask him. “That’s why we’re with the First Order. So you don’t need to protect me. The Resistance and the Republic can’t touch us while we’re here. We can take control of things from here, Kylo. We can help the First Order rule the galaxy, and then we won’t have anything to fear from anyone ever again.”

               Kylo’s brow creases as he brushes your hair out of your face. “I understand what you’re afraid of,” Kylo says softly. “It’s what I’m afraid of too, but I don’t want my fears to become yours.”

               You just laugh at him as you shake your head. “We’re bonded, remember? I can’t help being influenced by you, just as you can’t help being influenced by me.” You let out a sigh as you look up at him. “So should we head over then? The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can get back and fuck in our own bed.”

               Kylo lets out a small chuckle and plants one more chaste kiss against your lips before he slides on his helmet, and for once you can still see his beaming expression even through his mask. “Don’t worry,” you say in as reassuring a tone as you think your voice can possibly muster. “I know I concerned you today, but everything is okay. I’m okay. I’m not changing, and you’re not losing me. You’re _not_ going to lose me.”

               But even as you said those words, you couldn’t help but feel a subtle shift in your mood at the meeting, especially with Hux’s eyes on you. It made you sit up a bit straighter, and made you feel almost a little bit colder inside, as if he was leeching all of your emotions and leaving a callous, robotic husk in its place. You couldn’t be sure if Kylo noticed your change in demeanor, or if he thought you were doing it intentionally for Hux’s sake. To tell the truth, you couldn’t be sure, but what you did know was that you felt _different_ at these meetings, as if you were letting some dark part of yourself take over that you hadn’t really been aware of until now. You felt apathetic as Hux rattled off figures and numbers about the casualties sustained, almost as if they were simply pieces on a chess board that had been knocked over instead of a tangible loss of human life.

               You didn’t know when you had suddenly become insensitive to death, whether you had always been that way or it was something that had simply snuck up on you over the years. No one was entirely blameless. Even Poe, who you had put up on a pedestal and considered an ultimate good for the galaxy, had killed First Order Storm Troopers in battle. Heck, you had seen it yourself when he used that thermal detonator back on the _Resolute._ He had struck down Storm Troopers with a blaster rifle, and you had no question that he had been blowing First Order pilots out of the sky in _Black One_ in the years since you left the Resistance base. To tell the truth, you were a little bit frustrated with the way that you had once idolized Poe, as if you thought he was truly blameless and innocent. Over the years, he had probably worked up a considerable body count with the Resistance, and while he thought the Resistance was _right_ and _good_ , Shayne thought the same of the First Order. If anything, it was more than possible that Poe had just joined up with the Resistance because it was what he thought his mother would have done, and he was still anxious to impress a maternal figurehead that had long since passed on. There was nothing respectable about that, nothing good, or pure, as you had first thought, and as a new wave of irritation bubbles in your chest, you can’t help but notice Kylo look up at you.

               “Something to add?” Hux asks, noticing the way Kylo turns his attention towards you, and you sit up straighter in your chair as you meet his gaze unblinkingly, pretending that you had been paying the utmost attention to what he was saying.

               “I agree,” you say, mimicking the last thing that you had heard earlier. “Instead of recalling our troops to concentrate them here in the _Propitiate_ fleet, we should keep them scattered throughout the galaxy. This way the Resistance never gets a firm lock on where our strong hold is, and if we can keep their numbers scattered and as spread out as we have been, it will be easier to take them down, especially if we can outnumber their fighter squadrons.”

               “Yes, I believe we already agreed to that,” Hux says lightly, and your eyes skirt to the side, trying not to feel like a scolded child.

               “That’s why I said I agree,” you echo with the same lofty tone, and Hux fixes you with a glare before his upper lips quirks into a sneer.

               “I do believe you knew Commander Dameron personally,” Hux continues, and you can’t help but grit your teeth. Kylo is watching you through the helmet, and you could admit that it was almost unnerving now when the spotlight on you and you couldn’t turn to him for support. No, his helmet was as blank and expressionless as ever, giving nothing away. “Is there anything you can tell us that might be of value?”

               You think about what he’s trying to do before you spin his own words back against him. “Well, as you said yourself, General, our relationship was personal in nature and therefore we didn’t spend much time discussing military strategy.” Your voice is cool, too cool, especially considering you’re sitting directly in front of Kylo as you say it, but considering you can’t read his expression, you resolve not to try to think too much about it. If he was still jealous about how Poe had saved your lives back when you were escaping Naboo, there was nothing you would be able to do or say to help him control that. You were here now, with him, and he was going to have to let that go. “But, as you said, I did know Commander Dameron personally, and so I can safely say that I know _him_. I know he’s not going to stop until every last First Order ship is blasted out of the sky, and I recommend making sure that your early warning hyperspace detection systems are deployed as effectively as possible. If he’s concerned that you’re building a superweapon on this ship, he’s going to make this his primary focus and put all of his resources into taking this out.”

               “Is that right?” Hux asks, and you can see a plan mulling over behind his eyes as you nod your head forward.

               “He knows the stakes of what happened last time on the Starkiller Base, and he isn’t going to take that risk again,” you tell him firmly. “So if he does find out about this ship’s capabilities, you’re going to need to be much more prepared than you were the last time. With the resurgent Republic Navy, you’re going to need more ships, since we don’t just have the Resistance to contend with anymore. Considering how the Starkiller Base was destroyed, our current detection and shielding methods are, quite simply, unacceptable. Our shield projectors still suffer from the same refresh vulnerability that the Starkiller Base shared, and here in the Unknown Regions, we have the distinct disadvantage of knowing exactly as much about our surroundings as our adversaries do, which is nothing, by the way, so our picket ships should be deployed in anticipation for an attack from _any_ approach, even from dark space. If even I can think about abandoning the plane of the galaxy to enhance a sneak attack despite its obvious risks, you can bet Commander Dameron and at least a few of the Republic admirals have too. While we address those deficiencies, I personally recommend developing a procedure to rapidly evacuate the berthing and command spaces should the Resistance catch us unaware, along with a predetermined protocol to rendezvous and reestablish command control should such an event occur… _again_. I know more than a few Storm Troopers defected to the Resistance after the destruction of the Starkiller Base, simply because they thought there was nothing left of the First Order to go back to, and if there’s something the First Order definitely cannot afford to lose, it’s well trained soldiers.”

               “It seems you’ve given this some thought,” Hux says calmly, and you simply shrug your shoulders.

               “It’s best to be prepared,” you reply evenly.

               Hux runs his thumb along his lower lip, appraising you for a silent moment. “I’ll order the corrections,” he says after a moment. “And that should buy us time to resolve the issues with our main weapon. Does that sound agreeable to you?”

               “It does,” you reply, keeping your tone aloof. “So long as it benefits the Order, that’s the only thing I’m trying to accomplish here.” You shoot Kylo a quick smirk, trying to quietly reassure him that you were only trying to tell Hux what you knew he wanted to hear. Unfortunately, Hux himself seems to pick up on it.

               “If only Ren gave this half as much thought as you have,” Hux says pointedly, and you can see Kylo adjust his positioning. Your first thought is to defend him, but you know that Kylo can defend himself, even if it’s only with sarcastic deflection.

               “Still more thought than you’ve given the string of failed firing chamber tests,” Kylo says after a moment, calculating where he could hurt Hux the most. “Please remind me, what was the point of building a dreadnought when we’re lucky if the firing chambers even ignite once a week?”

               You’re not sure exactly what he’s talking about, but it seems to have the desired effect as Hux’s face flushes and he becomes visibly less composed than when he was dealing with you a moment prior. “Ren, if you care so much, you’re more than welcome to join the engineers in the drafting room to expedite the troubleshooting process. From what I hear, it was a most effective tactic for your grandfather in hastening the construction of the second Death Star. Barring that, maybe you’d like to find a new source of Kyber crystals for the central resonator?”

               You had suspected that a ship as big as the _Propitiate_ had to be harboring a superweapon, but you had no idea that it was _broken._ “What, is, uh, what’s the problem?” you ask, raising your eyebrows as you glance between them.

               “Two problems, in fact,” Hux says, straightening up slightly. “We’ve been working on downscaling the technology of the Starkiller Base’s hyperlaser to make twin capital cannons, but the process has been difficult considering the bulk of our crystal reserves was destroyed along with the Starkiller Base. Besides that, however, the main firing chambers continue to suffer from crippling uncontrolled power oscillations that no material seems to be able to resolve.”

               “What do you mean by oscillations?” you ask, tilting your head to the side. You knew what the word meant, you hoped that Hux wouldn’t insinuate that you didn’t, but you failed to understand how it applied here.

               “The concentration of energy in the Kyber crystals continues to generate wild rotating fields that necessitate extinguishing the chamber before we can fire, lest the chamber rupture and destroy the ship,” Hux explains. “All work on the weapon has stopped until we can resolve the problem. On the Starkiller Base, we simply left the issue unresolved and compensated for it by simply building the chamber large enough to contain he entire field. Here on the ship, however, we simply don’t have the luxury of near-infinite size to work with.”

               You bite your lip in consideration, trying to remember all that Rey had told you about the nature of Kyber crystals. “As far as I remember,” you begin slowly. “Kyber crystals aren’t capable of storing energy, they’re meant to channel it, so where is all of that energy going?”

               “Into the fields, it seems,” Hux replies. “At least for the present, just as it did on the Starkiller Base.”

               You think about it for a moment, trying to remember the last time you had seen a Kyber crystal being used in a new, inventive way that didn’t previously occur to you. For some reason, the image of glowing red plasma emptying into a charge pack suddenly leaps into your mind, along with a sudden idea.

               “Are you using Meranian alloy mounts for the crystals?” you ask immediately, tipping your chin forward to make it clear that you wanted an answer immediately, if not sooner.

               “Of course,” Hux replies simply. “It’s vastly improved the effectiveness of our shock troops since Captain Phasma discovered its uses.”

               You just nod quickly, your plan suddenly falling flat. You should have known that the superweapon would have already been constructed with Phasma’s help, and of course she had already probably explained her unique usage of plasma in regards to the Kyber crystals. “And the plasma in the chamber isn’t helping any?”

               Hux gives you a long look that almost unnerves you for a moment. “Plasma in the chamber?” he repeats. “You mean as a storage medium? Of course not. The amount we would need to store that much energy simply wouldn’t fit on the ship.”

               You can’t help but grin, your plan forming back into your mind with new clarity. “What if it doesn’t need to?” You reach down towards your belt to your lightsaber, keeping your face calm and composed to show that you had no intention of hurting anyone with it, at least, not yet. You scoot back a little ways from the table as you activate it, letting your two amber blades come into full view of everyone in the room. Hux looks puzzled for a moment, but you aren’t sure if it’s because of your dual amber blades or if it’s because he failed to see why you pulled out your lightsaber in the middle of a meeting. He had, of course, seen Ren do it plenty of times, and the repairs that he had to make after those events were no doubt expensive.

               “You’ve seen how effortlessly a lightsaber can cut through most materials, right?” you ask, holding it up in front of you as you let it the middle of the hilt hover just over the palm of your hand. “Regardless of how much energy that uses, I rarely ever have to charge my booster packs since it’s powered by the Force. I’ve learned a bit about my lightsaber since its creation, and the energy of the blades is contained by rotating fields, much like what you described, but those fields are stabilized by the plasma envelope it generates from the air when it ignites. Without the plasma, however, the fields would collapse, and the lightsaber would become little more than a handcrafted Force-powered bomb, much like your crippled firing chamber. What you need is right in front of you, you’re just looking at the problem from the wrong perspective. Instead of scaling down what you used to have, simply scale _up_ what you already have. I’m clearly not an expert on this, but you could find some way of priming the chamber with plasma to begin with, and the massive energy surge from the crystals should complete the envelope on ignition. Unfortunately, the power of the weapons will most definitely depend on the specific crew manning them when they fire, since the crystal and alloy combo becomes attuned to the dark side of the Force when they come into contact with plasma. Back on Naboo, Phasma mentioned that you cracked the Tortutaru communications and obtained the true list of Force-sensitive personnel on the Starkiller Base. Are there any of them left?”

               Hux considers this for a moment before he stands up and walks over to an operator who was sitting behind a console in the corner of the room, no doubt keeping a log and recording everything that was said in the meeting. There’s a few minutes of silence until the only sound you hear is the clicking of keys on the console, and Kylo takes this time to look at you through the slit in his helmet. For a moment, you think he’s glaring at you, but you can’t be sure why. You had come here to help the First Order, didn’t you? Or were you going overboard? Even still, the nature of the relationship between plasma and Kyber crystals was speculative at best, and there was no guarantee that what you had said would actually _work_. It had worked for Phasma, on a much smaller scale, but you had no idea if it would apply to a superweapon that was capable of destroying multiple planets at once.

               A part of you was a little curious to find out, though.

               “Most of the remaining survivors of Starkiller Base are forward-deployed as field sergeants,” Hux says as he walks back to the table and sits down again. “But it does seem we do have a few on this ship. I’ll see to it that they’re reorganized as a naval artillery crew, and I’ll arrange a tour of the gunnery space for you later next week.” He turns to Kylo, specifically, raising an eyebrow in obvious victory. “Did you have anything further to add?”

               This time, Kylo stays completely and totally silent.

               “And with that,” Hux says dryly. “I think it’s best we conclude this meeting.” You stand up to follow Kylo out, but Hux catches your eye and you hesitate as you hang back. Kylo turns back to you, confused, but you just nod for him to continue as he stiffly turns and heads out of the room until it’s just you and Hux, alone.

               “Is there something I can help you with, sir?” you ask, letting the sarcasm drip from your voice, but Hux pretends not to notice it.

               “Sir?” Hux echoes, his eyes flashing with amusement. “Since when did you become so polite? And to me, of all people?”

               “Well, this is your ship,” you reply evenly. “You’re in charge here, right? I’m simply exercising a simple manner of civility, that’s all.”

               “Is it?” Hux asks. “I think it’s more than that.” He clasps his hands behind his back as he stands up straighter, and you stand your ground as he begins to pace back and forth in front of you. “It hasn’t escaped my attention that Ren seems less and less enthused to be here. I know we have always had our disagreements in the past, but it seems lately that he cannot be bothered to perform even the simplest of tasks that I request him to complete.”

               “That is something you’ll have to take up with Ren,” you reply simply. “I’m his wife, not his parent. Whatever he does is his own business.”

               “Ah, but you of course know what I have asked him to do?” Hux asks, and you just shift uncomfortably. “Or don’t you? I forget how that Force bond works. I had Ren explain it to me once, but I don’t remember. Don’t you and Ren share _everything_?”

               “Certain things,” you reply evenly, as if you were discussing this with just any other person. “Emotions, feelings, things of that nature. Sometimes we can communicate through telepathic thought, sometimes we keep ourselves shielded from each other for privacy. It depends on the nature of things.”

               “Ren has always been a bit of a private person,” Hux says, although he appears to just be making an idle comment rather than talking directly to you. “But what about you? Do you share everything with him?”

               “As I said, it depends on that nature of the thing in question,” you say narrowly. “Why do you want to know?”

               “Because I want your loyalty to the First Order to be absolute,” Hux tells you without the slightest hint of a pause, and his heels of his shoes click together as he turns back towards you, his shoulders squared and at attention.

               “My first loyalty is to my family,” you tell him firmly, standing your ground. “Fortunately, Ren’s loyalty to the First Order _is_ absolute, as is mine to him, so you have no cause for concern.” You purse your lips as you raise an eyebrow. “Have either of us given any indication that we would be disloyal to the First Order? You know I haven’t spoken to anyone from the Resistance in years. Sadie and Ladson’s appearance on Naboo confirmed that much.”

               “But if you should?” Hux asks, and you hesitate for a moment, trying to understand what he was implying. “But what would happen if you should speak to your old friends from the Resistance base? Would your loyalties still be to the First Order then?”

               “My loyalties are to Kylo Ren, first and foremost,” you reply. “If you’re asking how much we can sense of each other to make sure we hold each other accountable, then you shouldn’t have any concerns. Kylo knows there is nothing for him outside the First Order aside from being on the run from the Republic-“

               “And you?” Hux presses. “You have options. The General of the Resistance clearly wants you and your son to return to her.”

               “I’m sure she’d like her husband to be alive as well,” you reply, your voice completely deadpan, and Hux audibly chuckles at this comment. “Regardless, they haven’t seen me in years. They are no longer my friends; they are simply people that I used to know. They are strangers to me now, and if confronted I would treat them as such.”

               Hux studies your face for a moment before he starts to approach, and you stand your ground, making sure to look as unafraid as possible. In truth, you weren’t afraid of him. You had no idea what Hux was really trying to ask of you, and so you were trying to remain as cool and aloof as possible to keep him on edge. It seemed, however, that Hux was doing the same to you, keeping you involved in a dangerous game of cat and mouse.

               “How far would you go to prove your loyalty?” Hux asks, and you give yourself a moment to analyze the question before answering. Hux was standing directly in front of you now, but you refused to be intimidated by him.

               “To the First Order?” you ask, playing dumb, and the corner of Hux’s mouth twitches into a smirk.

               “To me,” he replies, and your forehead creases in confusion momentarily as you glance up at him. There’s something different about the way he’s looking at you, something that makes you distinctly uncomfortable in a way you can’t really remember feeling before, but you quickly shake your head to dispel the feeling.

               “I have no loyalties to you,” you reply firmly. “To Kylo Ren, yes, and to the First Order, somewhat, but I owe no loyalties to you.”

               “Honest to the end,” Hux murmurs under his breath. He’s not that much taller than you, and he takes a step closer as he leans forward as if to whisper something in your ear. You can feel your entire body stiffen, and the sensitive skin of your cheeks pick up just the slightest hint of facial stubble as you wait for him to whisper whatever it is he wanted to say. He pauses there for a moment, but no words escape his mouth as he suddenly turns his head and places his lips against your cheek, much, much too close to your upper lip. You simply allow the contact without flinching, without blinking, and try to look as unflustered as possible as Hux straightens himself back up. As he does, your eyes shift past him to the corner of the room where you see Captain Phasma standing in the doorway, her expression concealed by her chrome helmet, and although you don’t let any intimation of your inner turmoil reveal itself on your face, inwardly you can feel your heart sinking like a stone in your chest.

               “Let’s hope it won’t be your undoing,” Hux says with a tone of finality, although his voice isn’t exactly cold, it’s not as warm as when he was speaking to you earlier.

               He turns to leave the room, and Phasma steps aside with a respectful, “Sir” as he passes. Hux gives her a steep nod as he does so, as if he wasn’t the slightest bit alarmed by what she had seen. You, however, were alarmed, and this is only furthered as soon as the door slams shut and Phasma pulls off her helmet.

               “What was that?” she demands, and you hesitate as you stare at the door after Hux. You can still feel the impression of his lips against your skin, the whiskers of his cheek just barely gracing your upper lip. “What was that? What were you doing with him?”

               “Curious,” you mutter to yourself as you stare past her at the door, trying to get your thoughts to come back to you. Phasma is silent, and as you eventually drag your eyes over to her, she’s watching you expectantly, but it’s also mixed with a look that asks if you know what the hell you’re getting into.

               “What happened?” Phasma asks again, but her voice is considerably less incensed. “That looked, dare I say it, intimate.”

               “I suppose it was meant to be,” you reply, tilting your head to the side. “He asked me how far I would go to prove my loyalties, to him, specifically.”

               “You’re playing a very dangerous game,” Phasma tells you, as if you don’t already know that. “Did he kiss you?”

               “My cheek,” you reply simply. “He was trying to intimidate me, that’s all.”

               Phasma studies you for a moment, trying to determine if you’re acting deliberately obtuse on purpose. “And do you plan to tell Ren of what just transpired?”

               Your eyes snap to hers immediately as your expression hardens. “Are you going to?”

               Phasma is trying carefully to gauge your expression, and you don’t think she likes what she sees. Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot you can do about that. You hadn’t asked for this to happen, although you supposed that some would say your actions as of late brought this on yourself. “It’s not my place,” Phasma says at length. “But I would be very wary of getting caught in any sort of _situation_ between Hux and Ren. You don’t want to make an enemy of either.”

               You don’t like the way she puts an emphasis on the word _situation_ , as if she truly believes there is something going on between you and Hux. The thought is ludicrous, and above it all, nauseating. “There is no situation,” you tell her firmly. “Hux invaded my personal space in order to try to unsettle me, just because he can, because he’s trying to get back at Ren.”

               “There are many ways for him to do that,” Phasma says, and although she doesn’t finish her thought, you can tell that she doesn’t think she needs to. _Plenty of which that don’t involve you._

“Hux knows how important I am to Kylo,” you tell her. “And he knows how important Kylo is to me. He’s jealous of our bond, of our devotion to each other. He is trying to temper our connection, to try to cause mistrust between us, and I will not allow that to happen.”

               Phasma narrows her gaze, and you think for a moment that you might have just convinced her that you’re not as stupid as you look after all. “So does that mean you will tell Ren what happened here today?”

               You shrug your shoulders absent-mindedly. “Nothing happened,” you reply simply. “Hux and I had a little chat about my loyalties to the First Order, and then you came in and he left. Nothing else happened. Not to my knowledge.” Phasma stares at you incredulously, but you simply brush your hair back out of your face as you walk towards the door. “Have a good night, Phasma.”

               You make your way out into the wide corridor, and as it’s sliding shut, you can just make out the bitter sound of Phasma saying, “You too.”

               Kylo had nothing to fear from Hux, and you didn’t want to give him any reason to doubt you more than he already was. He had already been concerned by your temper as of late, and you didn’t want to give him any reason for him to consider leaving the First Order. No, it seemed that was just what Hux wanted you to do, asking all those questions about your loyalty to him and to Ren. Hux wanted your loyalty to be to him, first and foremost, simply because he knew Kylo was a player on the field he could no longer control. He could, however, control you, and that was exactly what you were not going to allow him to do. He wanted to see if you would run to Kylo and tell him what happened, which was exactly why you weren’t going to do it.

               Unless Hux was also trying to build up secrets between you so he would have something to blackmail you with later, to try to dissolve the trust between you and Kylo for good. It was hard to tell, honestly, what Hux hoped to gain by manipulating you. Maybe he was simply using you for a laugh, trying to see what he could do to work his way under your skin, to see how you would react, trying to figure out what he would need to do to elicit certain responses from you. Either way, you knew for a _fact_ that whatever Hux hoped to gain, he was not going to get it, not from you. You were not going to stoop to his level, and you certainly weren’t going to play his mind games.

               Little did you know, this was a game you had already been playing for quite some time. And it was a game you were losing, and quite terribly at that. Phasma didn’t know it. Kylo didn’t know it. You didn’t know it, but Hux did, and he was quite pleased with the way things were turning out. Quite pleased, indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, lots and lots of notes today!! 
> 
> So I think it goes without saying that a heck of a lot happened in this chapter, between Kylo and Reader in the beginning, and WHAT was that _shit_ with Hux at the end?????? but I've got a little more important notes to add about stuff in the middle. 
> 
> So, basically, this is what happened: Remember when Reader found out that Phasma made a blaster back on Naboo that was partially powered by the Force using a Kyber crystal and plasma as a conductor? She just got the idea to use it...in Hux's new superweapon. So, uh, yeah, basically Reader just came up with the idea to create a superweapon just as powerful than the one used on Starkiller Base, and I don't think I need to tell you how not-fucking-cool that is considering they may be able to actually fire that thing now after her suggestions. What the fuck, Reader? What the actual fuck.
> 
> Also, just a quick science-y FYI: I have a headcanon that the engineers that built the Starkiller Base and its offensive and defensive systems probably lived on it too, probably deep in the base where the critical engineering spaces were typically located, so they all died when the Starkiller Base exploded. Since now the First Order doesn't have these engineers to do a post-casualty analysis, they couldn't conclusively prove how the _Falcon_ was able to get past the shield in TFA. But the Reader knows by now after her time with the Resistance and reading all of Han Solo's notes, and she was able to confirm which theory was true. 
> 
> Additionally, that's why they're having so much trouble with the main weapon, considering on mega-scale engineering projects, the original designs are often nothing like the final product after all the little changes along the way, and only the designers and original operators really understand all the eccentricities and shortcomings of such a massive machine, so the new engineers are having trouble reverse-engineering it.
> 
> If that all sounded way too technical, I apologize. I've been building my own lifesize BB-8 robot over the past month and while I wait for some more parts to come in (large sheets of fiberglass are _really_ hard to find...if you know where I can get some in person, let me know!) I've been looking into developing the schematics as to how I want to create the interior and how I want him to move, which takes up a lot of time hashing and rehashing out ideas before I actually gather the parts and put it into motion. Figuring out what does and doesn't work = science = fun!! 
> 
> But all that aside, the next chapter is one of my favorites in terms of a key plot point and actually required me to really try to put myself in Reader's shoes, in her position, which wasn't easy to do and took a lot out of me. Basically, if you're asking me if there will be "feels" next chapter, no, no feels, there will be _emotions_ and shit gets bad. Really bad.
> 
> You'll just have to see what I mean. ;) Until Tuesday, cheers!!


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”  
> –Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game, Chapter 13
> 
> Trigger warning: Depression and mention of suicidal thoughts

               As the weeks went by, it became apparent that Hux was grooming you for some sort of role that he wanted you to fulfill. Phasma said nothing about it, neither did Kylo, but you hardly left Hux’s side in those weeks. You had followed him from meeting to meeting, deciding it would be best to echo whatever sentiments that he uttered in matters that you didn’t feel like you really had an opinion to express. You hoped that they realized that you were doing this out of concern for Kylo’s well-being, and for the safety of your family, but for some reason, the more you played this sentiment over and over in your head, the more it sounded like an excuse. You were more powerful than Hux was, physically, although you needed Hux’s influence in the First Order in order to keep Ani and Kylo safe from the threat of the Republic, and for that, you had to stay on Hux’s good side. If you didn’t, it was always possible that Hux could forcibly disembark you from his ship and you would be on the run without the aid of resources from the First Order. The much worse option was that Hux could report your whereabouts to the Republic, and then you would have much more to worry about, and so you were determined to do everything in your power to stay in Hux’s good graces.

               The only problem with that, though, was that you were starting to lose sight of yourself. You felt different when you were around him, much more objective and cynical, as if you were simply checking your emotional baggage at the door whenever you entered a room with him. You felt numb, your core felt number, as if you had simply unzipped your human shell and left your soul warm in Kylo’s waiting hands. You hadn’t been intimate with him since the day when Hux had tried to kiss you, but that had less to do with anything you were doing or saying and more to do with your new schedule. Hux kept you busy from sunup to sundown, and there were times when you simply dozed off in the command center and awoke to find Kylo wrapping his scarf around your shoulders. You had a sneaking suspicion that Kylo felt that Hux was keeping you busy in order to punish him, but either way, you didn’t talk about it. You were a bit concerned that Kylo didn’t say anything, probably because he was afraid to ignite your temper again, but either way, you occasionally traded idle kisses behind closed doors to show him that you still cared, because you did. You loved Kylo, you loved your son, you loved your family, and that was why you were doing this.

               At least, that’s what you told yourself. Secretly, you were starting to enjoy the barbs and the witty sarcasm that you traded back and forth with Hux during executive watches on the bridge. You didn’t like him, not in the least, but you liked the fact that he seemed to treat you like an equal and not with the same contempt he seemed to have reserved for everyone else. You were quickly becoming his second in command, and that was the sort of authority and power that you wanted to have, not just for the sake of strength, but for the sake of influence. It would make you a target in the Resistance if they ever knew what Hux was grooming you for, but even you didn’t know what Hux wanted you for. You didn’t know what his ultimate plan for you was, and so you weren’t exactly concerned about the Resistance finding out. You assumed it had something to do with your connection to the Force and the fact that you were probably a lot easier to control and manipulate than Kylo Ren, but that in itself didn’t say much. Hux knew you would do anything, absolutely anything, if it meant protecting Kylo and Ani, and you had come to expect the day Hux would eventually try to use them as a bargaining chip against you. You didn’t know when that day would come, but you wanted to at least try to be prepared for it nonetheless.

               Either way, things seemed to pick up a new normal, and you were falling into a comfortable sort of rhythm of expecting where your daily schedule would take you until one fateful day when everything became as bad as things could possibly could get for you. The worst part about it was that everything had seemed normal that morning, the kind of normal you curse yourself for it in retrospect. You had been standing side by side with Hux in the command center as he was speaking to one of the communications officers in charge of the latest skirmish on Drabuka when suddenly you felt a sharp pain in your chest and you couldn’t _breathe_ , as if your lungs were filling up with fluid. You turned around and tried to breathe in, but you couldn’t; it suddenly felt as though your trachea had been sealed off by some unknown hand and your first instinct was to glance around the room for Kylo Ren, but he was nowhere to be seen. You took another long, shuddering gasp in as you shook your head from side to side, trying to breathe, and finally you felt your chest loosen, as if someone had removed a large block over your throat, and allowed the air to flow back into your lungs.

               You can feel Hux’s hand on your upper back, and although your first instinct is to jerk away from the contact, you focus on the physical sensation and allow it to draw you back to the present. Hux, thankfully, doesn’t ask if you’re okay, and gives you time to recover before you turn back around to face him. You can feel your eyes red-rimmed with tears from the shock of it all, and you release a slow breath through your nostrils as you struggle to regain your composure as quickly as possible. “Good news,” you say, trying to ignore the quaking in your panting breath. Hux gives you another moment to collect yourself as you square your shoulders and face him with as unaffected of a look as you can muster. “General Organa is unwell.”

               “You’re sure?” Hux asks, and for a moment you’re disappointed that he doesn’t look pleased, only surprised.

               “I felt it through the Force,” you reply. “She’s sick, she’s unwell. I don’t know the specifics-“

               “But you could sense it?” Hux asks again, as if he doesn’t quite believe you, and you tilt your head to the side as you consider him. Hadn’t Ren previously been in situations where he had felt ripples in the Force in Hux’s presence? Hadn’t he explained to him how that whole thing worked, or was Hux simply pretending to be ignorant of it for one reason or another?

               “I could,” you confirm, and Hux’s upper lip finally quirks into a smile.

               “Well then,” he replies, his icy blue eyes flashing. “This is good news, indeed.”

               “It is,” you say quickly, because you feel something else now, a mangled sense of confusion and despair and you know it’s coming from Kylo. “If you’ll excuse me-“

               You don’t say anything more, you don’t wait, as your feet quickly carry you back to your bedroom where you knew Kylo would be. She was sick, you could feel it through the Force, and if she was sick enough that you could feel it from the Unknown Regions, it meant that she must have been _very_ sick, possibly on death’s doorstep. You knew Kylo’s relationship with his mother was complicated, to say the least, especially after he had killed Han Solo, but you knew that there was never a chance that he could ever eliminate her unless he had turned from the light for good. That, you knew, would never happen so long as you were alive, although you couldn’t help but wonder sometimes how much of your own light was becoming extinguished simply by being with the First Order.

               Even still, that was not something you needed to worry about at the present. Simply knowing that Leia was ill was proof enough in itself that your Force powers were still working fine, and while you knew there was nothing you could really do about Leia’s health, specifically, you knew you were going to have to do damage control nonetheless.

               As you walked into the apartment, Kylo was in the bedroom, as you expected, his large hands lost in his unkempt dark hair. His head was bowed between his knees, and you quickly reached out to him with the Force with a quick sense of comfort. Kylo finally acknowledges your presence as he glances up at you and presses a soft smile to his lips, more for your sake than his. “So you felt it too?”

               “I did,” you say quietly. “Are you okay?”

               Kylo makes some kind of motion with his head that’s a mixture of a nod and a shake, and you’re not really sure what he means as he gets up and wraps his long arms around you, pulling you close to him. You’re not the one who needs to feel comforted, but you’re worried about him, and so you just go ahead and let him do it, let yourself be held if that was what he needed to help him feel better. You can feel his pain engulfing and surrounding yours, although you’re not really quite sure how much pain you’re actually experiencing. You’re a bit surprised that you had felt the ripples in the Force so abruptly and so clearly; you had no idea that Leia’s health would cause such a disturbance, and you almost wondered if more had happened than she had simply fallen ill.

               Kylo seems to sense this too, as he slowly pulls away from you and begins to pace the length of the room. “We can’t go back,” he says at length, although there is something pulling at the corners of his voice.

               “But you want to,” you say softly. “You want to make sure she’s okay.” You can’t help but sigh. You knew Kylo was upset, and you knew Kylo was definitely not the best person to make decisions when he was in one of these moods. “I know you want to make sure she’s okay, but Kylo, we can’t go back, they’ll never let us go.”

               “I know,” he says quickly, as if he’s annoyed that you’re pointing out the logical flaw in his argument instead of blindly supporting him. You chalked it up to his grief and left it at that, shrugging your shoulders errantly.

               “She’s just sick,” you tell him. “She’s tough. She’s a fighter. She’ll recover from this.”

               “I know,” Kylo says, as he nods his head forward in a brief series of nods. “I know, she’ll be fine. In the meantime, don’t tell Hux or anyone else about this. I want to-“ His voice trails off as he catches the look on your face. “What?”

               “Hux already knows,” you offer quietly, averting his eyes, and you can’t help but hear the exhale puff out from between Kylo’s gritted teeth.

               “How?” Kylo demands, but in your head you can hear his real question. _How could you?_

“He was right there when I started choking,” you tell him frantically, alarmed by his sudden flare of anger towards you. “I never felt anything like that before. I didn’t know what was going on.” You can see Kylo staring you down, trying to determine if what you’re saying is the truth, and you quickly put your mental shield up as you fortify your defenses. “Don’t you believe me? Don’t you _trust_ me?”

               “I don’t know anymore,” Kylo says as he shakes his head, and you can’t help but let your jaw drop.

               “We are a team,” you say firmly as you cross your arms over your chest. “We-“ You shake your head from side to side, trying to recover. “You’re just upset over Leia, okay? I don’t blame you for it. I know you don’t mean it, so I just-“ You shake your head again. You can’t pretend you didn’t just hear him say that, but you let some of your alarm, some of your pain slip out, and Kylo looks up towards you as he feels your distress.

               “You are so distant,” he tells you, his voice not quite yelling but firm nonetheless. “Everywhere I go, everywhere I turn, you are suddenly with him now. I scarcely have two moments to spend alone with you before you’re right back beside him again.”

               “Who? Hux?” you demand, as if that wasn’t already obvious. “I’m just trying to do my best to keep us together. Hux doesn’t trust you, obviously, and if he were to send us away, without the First Order resources at our disposal, I don’t know what we’d do or where we’d go.”

               “We’d manage,” Kylo says firmly as he looks you over. “You are getting too involved. I can see you. They talk of all the people who died, in the Resistance, the Republic, the First Order, and it’s like it doesn’t faze you anymore. It’s like you don’t care.”

               “I do care,” you snap at him. “I do care, but it’s war and there’s not a whole lot I can really do about it, so there’s no sense fighting it.”

               “And if the pilot was one of the casualties?” Kylo asks, his dark eyes blazing. “If you learned that the entire Black Squadron was reduced to embers because of an interception mission that _you_ helped Hux orchestrate, how would you feel then?”

               It’s a low blow, trying to use Poe to prove his point, but you were not going to let it affect you. “That’s the cost of war,” you tell him evenly. “Poe knew what he was getting into. Everyone has to die one way or another, and I’m sure he’d be glad to know that at least he died fighting for a cause that he so firmly believed in.”

               “Who are you?” Kylo asks suddenly, and you pedal your feet from your toes to your heels uncomfortably under his gaze. “What is happening to you? Hux is changing you into someone that even you wouldn’t like anymore, and you don’t even seem to realize what’s happening to you.”

               “I do realize what’s happening,” you tell him firmly, and Kylo looks taken aback, but only for a moment.

               “That only makes it worse,” he says quietly, and you grind the heels of your palm into your temple in frustration.

               “I’m doing what I have to in order to protect us,” you tell him firmly. “I’m finally in a position to use every skill set I’ve ever learned to protect you, just like you once protected me. My life with you and Ani is still the one thing I care about above anything else, and that will never change. You know that.”

               “I don’t know what to do anymore,” Kylo says as he shakes his head, and you let out a small, muffled cry of defeat to see Kylo question you this way.

               “We can be a family here,” you tell him. “We can look out for each other, and we can-“

               “Do you even know where Ani is right now?” Kylo asks, and you falter as you think it over. You think he’s training with Phasma again, blaster training, but you honestly couldn’t be sure and you didn’t want to give a wrong answer. “He’s learning how to be a pilot. He’s out there, right now, by himself-“

               “I didn’t approve that,” you say firmly, feeling a bubble of anger flare up inside of you. “I didn’t tell him that he could go out there and fly anything. I don’t want him learning how to fly here. It’s too dangerous for him.”

               “He’s not a child anymore,” Kylo tells you firmly. “These are skills he’ll need to learn how to develop if he is to survive. You claim to be so afraid of losing him, and yet you don’t even know where he is.”

               “I-“ You hesitate, before you quickly make an attempt to cover up your embarrassment with hostility. “Well, it stops now. I don’t want him flying-“

               “No, it’s not going to stop,” Kylo tells you, and you can’t hide your anger that he was trying to tell you, of all people, what to do. You barely even took orders from Hux, and you were not about to start taking orders from Kylo Ren. “I don’t know when you became so obsessed with the idea of controlling everything, but it needs to stop. I don’t know how much more I can take.”

               “How much more-?” you ask blankly, and for a moment you literally don’t understand what he’s trying to tell you. “Are you trying to say you’re done with me?”

               “You’re not the same person you were back on Naboo,” Kylo says, and his tone is even. “I’ve tried to protect you from it. I’ve tried to get you to talk to me, but you won’t and there’s nothing I can do for you if you won’t even try.”

               “You haven’t tried-“ you start, when suddenly there’s a knock on the door and a Storm Trooper enters your apartment without clearance.

               “General Hux needs to speak with you at once,” he says through his helmet, and Kylo sighs as he runs a hand through his hair.

               “Tell him that I’m busy with other things at the moment,” Kylo says firmly, his eyes narrowing as he glances back at you.

               “It’s not your presence he has requested,” the Storm Trooper says. Kylo blinks for a moment as if he’s been slapped before his features harden into an expression of pure rage, and the Storm Trooper quickly bows out of the room to avoid facing the brunt of Kylo’s anger.

               “Just go,” Kylo says loudly, turning his back on you, but you’re not sure what to do or what to say and so you just stand your ground.

               “Hux can wait,” you tell him firmly. “Like you said, we’re busy with other things-“

               “No we’re not,” Kylo says as he shakes his head. “There’s nothing, I-I can’t.” You’re about to ask what he means when he suddenly his voice drops to barely above a whisper. “Just go.”

               “Okay,” you say after a moment. “Okay, I’ll go and I’ll make sure it won’t take too long, and then we’ll talk when I get back, okay?”

               You turn around to head back out of the room, but before you go, you can hear Kylo saying, _“No”_ inside your head. You’re about to turn around and ask him what that means, but you know what it means, and you’re afraid to confirm your suspicions and so you just quietly step out and head down the hall. He didn’t mean it. Kylo said things he didn’t mean when he was angry all the time. He never meant any of the things he said before, and you doubted he meant any of them now. He was just upset from Leia, and although he had a tendency to make stupid decisions when he was upset-

               You shake your head and refuse to think of it anymore. You couldn’t think about Kylo, especially not in front of Hux, especially not when you weren’t quite sure what he wanted from you that would be urgent enough to warrant a private call to your room. You supposed it had to do with Leia, in which case it only furthered the notion that Kylo was not the one that Hux had called for. Kylo was too sentimental about his mother, and you could bet that if you knew it, Hux probably knew it as well.

               You know that something is definitely up when you step into a meeting room off to the right of the command center that is completely empty, except for Hux and a chair that is sitting in front of a holo projector. “What is this?” you ask softly as your eyes glance back and forth from Hux to the holo projector. Hux just smiles at you, a sickly sweet smile, and it’s enough to make your stomach flop. “What’s going on, General?”

               “It seems you are quite right,” Hux says, and there’s a tone of gloat in his voice that you immediately don’t like. “General Organa does appear to be sickly, and apparently there is a new interim leader of the Resistance in her absence.” You let your eyes flutter shut as you let out a sigh, knowing what Hux is about to say even before he says it. “It appears Commander Dameron is taking over her charge until she recovers, and he has requested a special audience with you.”

               “Did he mention what he wants?” you ask, and Hux raises an eyebrow, causing you to sigh again. Poe wanted you and Ani returned safely to the Resistance base, of course, but the danger here now was that you were not just some innocent victim in all of this. You knew what the First Order did, what they were planning, and where many of their secret bases were. You didn’t know if Poe knew that or not, but you supposed there was a chance that he had reasoned at least some of that out for himself after what Sadie and Ladson told him back on Naboo. The stakes were higher now; if there was even so much of a chance that you would defect back to the Resistance, you had enough information that you could give them to truly wipe out the First Order once and for all. Maybe Leia hadn’t wanted to take that chance, hadn’t wanted to try to get you involved again, but apparently Poe did. It didn’t matter to you what Poe wanted, but knowing his motivations for setting up this meeting would go a long way into helping you figure out just how to play this. “What do you want me to do?”

               “Talk to him,” Hux replies simply. “He won’t speak to me, but I think you’re smart enough to figure things out for yourself.”

               “I’m glad you have such confidence in me not to betray the Order,” you tell him dryly, and Hux merely gestures for you to sit down as he switches on the holo, coming around to stand at your shoulder. The closeness is unnerving, but you suppose it’s meant to look that way. Sadie and Ladson could probably guess were you stood in the First Order, but with you sitting down with Hux towering over you, it made you look more like an innocent person caught up in something far beyond your knowledge or control. Although you would have denied it, it was just as true on the Starkiller Base as it was now.

               You’re about to ask Hux what happens next when suddenly the holo of Poe Dameron flickers into view on the other side of the table. Your heart jumps into your throat for a moment and your eyes widen as you see him again. It’s him, it’s really him, just as you remembered him, and for a moment you completely forget about Hux, forget about Kylo and the First Order and your anger and for a moment you can’t suppress the bubble of emotion that rises in your chest. You hadn’t spoken to him in five years. The last time you saw him you had knocked a blaster out of his hands to save his life and now, here you were, sitting on opposite ends of the tables, not as lovers, but as enemies. Poe didn’t know it, but you were reminded of it the moment Hux put his hand possessively on your shoulder.

               “Commander Dameron,” Hux says, and while you instinctively flinch away from Hux’s hand, you suppose that it was supposed to have that kind of effect, as Poe’s eyes flick from him to you.

               “Actually, it’s _Captain_ Dameron now, General Hux,” Poe says, his voice was as confident as ever, but this time, it’s brimming with new authority. “As great as it is to see you again, I thought I requested a private audience with her.”

               “You have,” Hux replies smoothly. “I was simply bringing our newest Strategic Commander up to speed.” Poe’s forehead creases as he looks at you, and you drop your eyes down to the table in front of you. So Hux wanted you to play the role of Strategic Commander of the First Order. At least now you knew what role he was apparently trying to groom you for. Either that, or it was just something he was telling Poe to try to throw him off his game.

               “Well, if she’s the new Strategic Commander, then I believe you trust in her authority to speak to me alone,” Poe says, and you can’t help but hear the gruff bit of irritation in his voice.

               “Naturally,” Hux replies as he turns to you. “Let me know if you need anything.”

               “That will be all, General,” you say suddenly, finding your voice much more confident than you had expected it to be, and Hux’s lip twitches into a sneer in Poe’s direction as he heads out of the room. For a moment, you’re alone with Poe Dameron, and the weight of his gaze is almost too much for you to take.

               “Hey,” Poe says softly, intimately, and for a moment you think that he can catch you blushing through the holo. You forgot how you used to be so affected by him, or maybe that was just something you consciously chose not to remember. “Are you okay?”

               The question snaps you back to your senses, and you look up at him quickly. “I am fine,” you reply firmly, with new authority in your own voice. “And how are you, _Captain_ Dameron? Or is it General Dameron now, with General Organa incapacitated?”

               Poe’s mouth hardens into a line as he studies you, and from behind him you can see Hux enter through a doorway in the back of the room. Poe didn’t know that he was still here, and you supposed Hux wanted it that way. You should have known that he wouldn’t trust you to leave you alone with Poe, but either way, you did your best to ignore him, to not even look in his direction, as you remained focused on Poe. Acting natural around Poe with Hux there would be a challenge, but it wasn’t like you truly had much of a choice in the matter. It had been years, and you didn’t know who Poe was anymore. You had to leave the past where it was and remember that Poe was your enemy now, plain and simple.

               “I know you felt it,” Poe says softly. “I’m pretty sure the entire galaxy felt it. How are Ren and Ani dealing with it?”

               “I don’t think you reached out to the First Order to chat about them,” you say coolly, and from off in the distance, Poe nods his head quickly, although you can’t help but see a note of disappointment cross his features.  

               “This has gone on for far too long,” Poe tells you. “I understand why you left Naboo, why you fled to the First Order, but we want you to come home.” You just stare at him, waiting for him to continue, and he lets out a sigh. “I think by now you know about the order of execution that the Republic has placed on you and Ren, correct?”

               “By your good friend, Deso,” you reply without skipping a beat, and Poe lets out a snort of good humor as he nods.

               “If you defect from the First Order now, we can get that retracted,” Poe says firmly. “Ani is blameless in all of this, he was just a child at the time, but if you come back now, the Republic has agreed to drop all charges against you.”

               “In exchange for what?” you ask, crossing your arms over your chest, and Poe looks uncomfortable for a moment.

               “Ren,” Poe replies, and you let out a deep breath. Poe sees that he’s quickly losing your attention, and makes a move to recover himself. “It’s not what you think. We know he has information about the First Order, you both do. If you both agree to come over to our side, we’ll get the Republic to drop all charges against you and they won’t seek execution for him. He would have to stay under what would basically amount to house arrest, under close supervision, for the rest of his life, but-“

               “What about the Force bond?” you ask him cautiously, pretending to consider the details of his offer. “Before, Luke was going to siphon his Force powers from him. Ren would never agree to that.”

               “It’s up for negotiation,” Poe says, spreading his hands out in front of him on the table. “Obviously Ren is one of the most powerful Force users in the galaxy, but we may be able to work something out that’s favorable to everyone.”

               “Favorable to everyone?” you muse. “It doesn’t seem like the First Order is getting a lot out of this deal.” Poe arches an eyebrow and looks at you in surprise.

               “How involved are you with them?” Poe asks, and you shrug your shoulders absent-mindedly, trying to play dumb.

               “I’m just saying,” you say simply. “It sounds like you want me to escape the First Order and run back to D’Qar. I can tell you right now that I’m too watched too closely here. That will never happen.” You glance back apprehensively at Hux, a plan forming in your mind. “If, however, you were to offer the First Order something of value, then I may be able to set up a negotiation of sorts. The Resistance gets me, Ren and Ani, but the First Order needs to get something in exchange for losing three of the best Force users in the galaxy.”

               “Speaking of,” Poe says as he cracks a smile, and for some reason you feel a pit drop in the depths of your stomach as you know what’s about to happen. From behind him, Rey and Finn appear into view, smiling and waving animatedly at you, as if you had simply been away for a while, but as if absolutely nothing has changed for them.

               “Hi there,” Rey calls to you. “How are you?”

               “You look good,” Finn says appreciatively. “Same as ever.”

               You’re silent for a moment, unsure of what to say, and it’s only Hux’s glare in the background that pulls you back to your senses. “I’m fine,” you reply as evenly as you can. “And how have, uh, you two been?”

               “Great,” Finn replies enthusiastically. “Did Ladson tell you about the new obstacle course we’re building in the training arena? Rey holds the record for completing it the fastest, obviously, but I think you’ve got a shot at beating her time. What do you think?”

               Your eyes can’t help but settle back on Poe’s face, and he just grins at you as he tilts his head to the side as if to appeal to the fact that you could still come home, that you were still _wanted._ But there was too much that they didn’t know, too much had happened, and you can’t meet Rey’s eyes, afraid that she can read you from there. “We want you to come home,” Rey says softly. “Things haven’t changed. Whatever’s happened doesn’t matter.”

               You drift from her back to Poe’s face, and you lock eyes with him as Rey says, “Things haven’t changed.” For a moment, you’re worried that this is more of a pointed comment than you realize, and you quickly look away.

               “We can still-“ Poe starts, but then stops, waiting to get your attention, and you force yourself to meet his gaze again as he continues. “ _We_ can still work this out,” Poe says firmly, and that’s when you know he’s trying to up the incentive, trying to give you every possible reason to leave the First Order and come back. “We can still do this.” You can feel your heartbeat accelerate in your chest for a moment before you consider that Ladson isn’t there, nor is Sadie. Pretenses aside, they knew what you had done on Naboo, unless they thought that Ladson had been exaggerating what you had done. You doubted it, considering Rey or Luke could simply extract the information from their minds to see for themselves what had occurred, but you supposed you could consider this a second chance from them. You knew implicitly that you were unlikely to get a third.

               “Like I said,” you say after a moment with a brief shake of your head. “The First Order isn’t going to just let us go. They’re going to want something.”

               “We can work something out,” Poe says, his old, smooth confidence oozing back into his voice. “We’ve captured dozens of their ships, and I think I have a good idea of some other things Hux wants as well, but it will take some time for me to figure out the details.”

               You hesitate for a moment, considering what he’s saying. “I think we might be able to come to some sort of understanding,” you say after a moment, and Poe gives you his warm, assuring smile that he used to give you back in the cockpit when you did something that you didn’t think that you were capable of doing earlier. It makes your heart pound in your ears, and for a moment you had to look away. “But I need to talk to General Hux first, to see if he’ll even consider any sort of negotiations.” Poe nods his head forward in understanding, and you bite your lip as you make a show of looking back towards the door. “Hux is probably right outside waiting. I’ll talk to him and be right back. Will you still-?”

               “I’ll still be here,” Poe says warmly. “Take your time, I’m not going anywhere.”

               “Okay,” you breathe, and your eyes dart nervously to the holo forms of Rey and Finn, who wave and give you the thumbs up, but you don’t respond as you quickly switch off the holo. You think you can just make out a look of irritation cross Rey’s face before the holo switches off, but you can’t be sure if it was really there at all or just a trick of the flickering holo.

               “Well done,” Hux says after a moment as he gives you a ridiculously dramatic slow clap, coming around the room to stand in front of you. “I’m impressed. For a moment there, I thought you actually cared for him.”

               “I played it up a bit,” you reply without missing a beat. “Captain Dameron has been known to be ridiculously sentimental, after all. I’m sure you can find a way to use that to your advantage.”

               “So he wants to make a deal for you and Ren,” Hux muses under his breath. “I’ll assume that he is attempting to do this hastily, without any approval from General Organa, or the Republic, I’m sure.”

               “If he is, then it’ll be easier to lure him into some sort of a trap,” you offer. “Say we want to make negotiations on a neutral planet, and insist he has to make the deal in person. He comes out, you capture him, and then, boom, we have the new interim General of the Resistance as our hostage.”

               “You think it will be that easy?” Hux asks, and you shrug your shoulders.

               “Use me as bait,” you offer. “As I said, he is ridiculously sentimental. He wouldn’t think that I would turn against him.”

               “Your son would have to be there as well,” Hux advises. “Or they will know something is wrong. They wouldn’t think you would put your own son in harm’s way.”

               “If it can’t be helped,” you say with a shrug, and Hux smirks as he glances back towards where the holo stood for a moment.

               “The girl from Jakku might give us some trouble,” Hux says, visibly troubled, and you shrug your shoulders again.

               “She’s only one person,” you say idly. “Between Ren, me and Ani, I think we can take her. You know that Ren absolutely hates her after what she did to him. He’ll be looking for revenge-“

               “Take out the General and one of the most powerful Jedi’s in the Resistance,” Hux muses under his breath. “What about Skywalker?”

               “Luke?” you ask with a shrug. “I’m not sure. I never really met him, but I doubt he will leave Leia’s side if she really is that sick. I don’t think he would, anyway.”

               “The sentimentalities of the Resistance could prove quite advantageous for us,” Hux says, appearing to think this over. “Do you think you are capable of taking out the girl and capturing Captain Dameron?”

               “Without a doubt,” you reply confidently, and Hux smiles as he places a hand on your shoulder.

               “I’ll leave you to it then,” Hux says firmly. “I assume he’ll be scrambling to work up as best a trade as he can offer. Just make sure to insinuate that you want him present during our actual meeting. If he’s not there for the exchange, the whole plan collapses.”

               “Please,” you say as you roll your eyes. “You saw how he was looking at me. I just need to sniff a little, tell him how much I missed him, and he’ll be eating out of my hand. He’s so desperate to have me back, he’s not going to think things through. Like you said, it seems he’s acting quite hastily. The faster we can secure a deal; the less time he’ll have to think things through properly.”

               “He does seem rather pathetic,” Hux agrees. “You know, I always thought that your previous affiliations with the Resistance would prove auspicious for the First Order, and I’m glad to see that you are finally proving your worth.”

               “The leadership in the Resistance is obviously in shaky hands,” you reply with an idle shrug. “And it’s no secret how I feel about the Republic. It’s only a matter of time before they both crumble and surrender to the might of the First Order. All I want in exchange for my service now is the guaranteed safety of me and my family when all is said and done.”

               “And you will have it,” Hux says with finality. “Now, it seems your proposed weapon modifications are working, so I have another meeting to get to. Secure the negotiation and let me know if there are any difficulties.”

               “There won’t be,” you say with a smirk. “He’s _desperate_ to see me come back to him. Unless someone else steps in, I don’t think we’ll have a problem.”

               “I’ll leave it in your hands,” Hux says as he leaves the room, and you sigh as you sink back into your chair, burying your face in both hands. Capturing Poe Dameron, not only the best pilot in the Resistance, but the Captain and the acting General of the Resistance itself, would be a huge victory for the First Order. Of course, there was no guarantee that they would capture him. Instead, it was more than possible that they would kill both him, and possibly Rey too, outright. Still, you couldn’t let that matter to you. You had joined the First Order to protect your family, even though it was starting to seem like Kylo Ren wanted nothing, absolutely nothing, at all to do with you.

               The way he had turned away from you, the _“No_ ” that had entered your head from his, enters your mind as you pull up the holo. Poe was still there, waiting expectantly for you, and his warm smile as he sees you again confirmed what you always knew to be true, that Poe was far, far too good for the likes of you.

               “So what did he say?” Poe asks, and you’re thankful that Rey and Finn don’t seem to be behind him. “Is Hux willing to play ball?”

               “There will be no trade,” you say firmly, keeping your face level, and Poe’s smile falters. “There will be no trades, no negotiations, and if you ever try to contact the First Order again with such a proposition, they will make their new primary objective eliminating your primary base on D’Qar and erasing it off the face of the galaxy as quickly as they did to the Hosnian system.”

               “I don’t understand,” Poe says after a moment, and you suppose he didn’t. He couldn’t.

               “Goodbye Captain Dameron,” you say quickly. You can see Poe about to say something, but you switch off the holo before you can hear what it is. You put one fist inside your other hand as you press it to your forehead, releasing a slow breath out. You felt like you were about to lose it, but you couldn’t, not now, not yet. You quickly got up and walked to the door, stopping in front of a communications officer who was sitting behind her console. “Tell General Hux that Dameron refused to make the deal,” you tell her. “Tell him that the other members of the Resistance don’t appear to share his sentiments about the arrangement and he seems to be of no further use to us.”

               “Of course,” the communications assistant replies, typing something out, and you quickly turn and head out of the command center without looking back.

               You walk down the hallway as quickly as you can, making blind left and right turns around corridors until you finally make your way down to a utility closet not too far from the engines. You can hear their loud muffled roar coming from the next room, and you know you won’t be disturbed here, not when no one can find you. You were quite lucky that you hadn’t really passed anyone on your way down here, otherwise they would notice that your face had gotten considerably redder with each passing second, and you didn’t know how much longer you were going to be able to hold on for.

               Luckily, you made it into the utility closet just in time. As you entered and slammed the door behind you, using the tension in your upper arms to swing the door closed instead of just shutting it with the Force, you could feel hot, angry tears stream down your overheated cheeks. You let out a cry of defeat, of failure, and while you meant to lean back into the shelves, into anything, you somehow misplaced your footing and ended up slipping and falling flat onto your bottom instead. The shock of your new position rattles your brain for a moment, and for a brief second you’re not sure what had happened as you are suddenly looking up at the door handle instead of down at it. This new sense of frustration, seemingly with your own lack of body coordination, takes you over the edge as you bury your face in the rough, scratchy fabric of your First Order uniform pants, and for the first time you remembered how much you actually missed the clothes you used to wear on Naboo.

               You let the memory come back into your mind, of Kylo sitting there with Ani on his lap, a young Ani, laughing and smiling in the warm afternoon sun. You had been happy then. You knew you had been unhappy, although your heart had ached for Poe, had missed Poe, you had loved Kylo Ren too much to ever return to the Resistance. And now that was gone. That was all gone, that had all crumbled away from you and now, if you kept up the path that you were on, there was going to be nothing left.

               “I can’t take this,” you whisper to yourself. The image of Poe’s holo flashes through your mind. _We can still…_ we _can still work this out._ The way he had waited for you to really listen to him, making sure the impact of his words settled in, wiped away all of the hatred you wanted to muster for him. Poe hadn’t changed in all of these years. He was still his sincere, sweet self, and he still wanted you to come back to the Resistance. To be with him. _We can still do this._ We _can still do this._ You laughed to yourself, but you were also crying openly now, tears spilling down your cheeks, and it came out as a dry, ugly sound as it left your throat that made you hate it all the more. If Kylo Ren truly was done with you once again, what were you going to do? Turn tail and head back into Poe’s arms?

               You were disgusted with yourself. If you had turned into something that even Kylo Ren didn’t want to touch, then there was no way Poe would even want to look in your direction. Kylo cared about you above all others, and even he thought you were starting to become too damaged beyond repair. But why? Was it the First Order? Was it Hux? You knew you had been changing, but it had always seemed a justifiable necessity, and the fact that you _knew_ you were changing, should have been something to be praised. You weren’t just falling to the dark side blindly, as he had once done. You knew it was happening, and so you knew how far you could fall before you knew you had fallen too far, although you could see why Kylo would be concerned to see you playing an active role in your own destruction.

               Your mind shifts back and forth between Poe and Kylo. Kylo knew how far you had fallen to the dark side, and Poe, at least now, had some idea by how quickly you had rebuked him. Your motives didn’t matter, and he was probably smart enough to suspect a trap himself, unless Hux was right when he said that he was almost literally blinded with his optimistic hope that you would return. If that was the case, Poe was no better than you had been, waiting patiently on your old academia for someone who was never coming back for you. If that was the case, you could only imagine all the emotions that you had went through years prior, the confusion, the loss, the overwhelming sense of doubt, flowing through his mind as well. After you learned what Kylo Ren had done, you had always wondered if he had always been that way, or if there had been behavior that you had simply turned a blind eye to and hadn’t recognized it for what it really was at the time. Now Poe was going to have those same thoughts about you. Now Poe was going to wonder if you had been brainwashed by the First Order, or if you had really been secretly evil all along, manipulating him and using him for your own ends, and he would never know the truth. He would never know that-

               - _FUCK_.

               You let out a brief cry as you slam your closed fists so hard into your forehead that it hurts, it seriously _hurts,_ and this brings on a whole new fresh wave of tears as you literally beat your open palms into the top of your head, as if you’re trying to literally smack some sense into your brain. Your face is red, your cheeks ache, and your heart is pounding in your chest and you can’t breathe, and that’s good, that’s good, because you need something to distract you from the horrible disgusting fact that you’re a fucking worthless shit because a part of you _wanted_ to go back to Poe, and Kylo wasn’t joking when he said there was seriously something seriously fucking, _FUCKING_ wrong with you. A part of you did miss Poe, a part of you did want to go back to him, and for a moment you honestly weren’t sure if it was simply because of the fond memories you looked back to on the Resistance base or if it was because you weren’t sure if Kylo wanted to still be with you anymore.

               “I don’t want to be here anymore,” you whisper to yourself. Your heels of your palms are still drumming against your forehead, but the intensity is lessened, although you can still feel a reverberating in your skull as you cry openly in the secrecy of the utility closet. “I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t who I am anymore.” You pause, letting the silence of the utility closet permeate your words. No one was around, no one was there to hear you. “I want to die,” you manage weakly, but when no one scolds or chides your thinking, you begin to speak more openly. “I-I-I-I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t want to be here. I don’t know where to go or what to do, I’m so _lost._ ” For a moment you let your shields slip down, let Kylo find you if he wants to, but if he does feel you, he doesn’t respond. He doesn’t send out any sort of comfort, there’s nothing there, you just feel nothing, a steady sense of nothing permeating through your core and it works up a whole new wave of tears.

               You were alone now. Kylo turned his back on you, and you had turned your back on Poe. You had a chance to get out, to go back to him, but you had to use your one remaining scrap of goodness to try to spare Poe’s life, to prevent him from walking into a trap that could have taken his life, and yeah, maybe you could have done both, could have escaped with him and kept everyone alive and safe and _why. Why did you do that._ You weren’t good anymore. Kylo wasn’t answering. He really and truly believed that you had no more goodness left in you and you had used that last speck of light to protect Poe. Poe would never understand why you had to do what you did, and Kylo would never find out about it, but you had to live with it. You had to live with the fact that although Kylo thought you were something dark now, you had still done something fucking decent. Kylo and Poe thought you were both lost to the First Order for good now, and it was your actions that led you there. And you wanted to tell them, tell them both, that you had done something good, something that linked you back to the morals of your old self, but that would just put everyone in more danger than you could deal with, and so you had to keep silent.

               You had one simple chance of redemption, to prove that you still had one small speck of light in you, and you had taken it. And you had taken action, you had protected Poe, and the worst part was that no one could ever find out about the good thing that you did, ever, lest everyone’s lives be put back in danger all over again. You lost everything, everyone, but at least you had this one small thing to remind yourself that you still had a bit of light in you, and that was what made it worse. Suddenly you could understand how Kylo felt like he was literally being torn apart. It would be so much easier to just sink down into the darkness, to unshackle yourself from all of the guilt and the pain, especially when people thought that was all that you were now. If you did something good, even if you could tell them, no one would believe you, or worse and the more likely scenario, no one would care. You had killed someone now. You weren’t innocent. You had blood on your hands, the same as everyone else, but in a way, you were worse than everyone else, so much fucking worse. You were disgusting and polluted and vile and

               _“HELP ME!”_ You shriek at the door in front of you, and your palms go back up against your temples at you hit yourself in your face with your open palm again and again and again just begging, screaming, for Kylo to come and tell you that you weren’t lost, that you could fix things, that he still loved you. He had told you once that nothing you ever did could change his feelings for you, but apparently you had lost the affections of the man that had killed his own father, and that was saying a lot. A part of you wanted Poe there, needed Poe there, sweet Poe that could truly give you your redemption. You had, deep down, always believed that Poe was good, and pure, and if _he_ of all people could excuse what you did, if he could forgive you for it, then there was hope for you after all, there was a hope that you could turn away from the darkness and into the light. It would be a long path to earn back everyone’s trust again, but would it be worth it?

               You can feel a hollow ache in your chest as you realize you have more tears to cry. Your upper lip is coated with your thick, sticky fluids, the inside of your cheeks ache, your face is pulsing from the waves and waves of tears and your head feels worse than when you had been knocked unconscious back on the _Resolute._ For a moment you thought you had reached out to Kylo with your mind, but then again, another part of you just simply wasn’t sure if you had or not. Had Kylo heard you? Was Kylo coming? You paused and listened to the steady beat of silence all around you, muffled only by the sound of the engines pulsing when you realized you couldn’t feel Kylo as strongly as you once had. Was the Force bond slowly being eroded in some way? A new fear grips you, paralyzes you from the core, as you can feel every individual strand of hair on your body stand up at attention. The Force bond was all you had. Even when you weren’t sure about Kylo and his motives or his feelings towards you, it had stayed strong. If it felt like it was fading now, did it mean that Kylo was really and truly gone for good?

               _No._ You had lived for years and years with it, it had become you, it was what you _were_. Your relationship to Kylo Ren was what you were, it had defined you, and although you had thought that you wanted to go out and define yourself, to make your own name for yourself from within the First Order, that wasn’t what you wanted. You wanted to be Kylo’s, liked being his, liked belonging to him, only because you knew he was yours in return. You couldn’t go on without him, you just couldn’t. Every single fucking happy moment in your life had ever been with Kylo Ren or Ani or Poe or Finn or Rey or Ladson or Sadie and you had turned your back on all of them. You were alone now. You had nothing left, no one.

               Briefly you considered the fact that you still had Hux, that he was openly pleased about the person that you were becoming, the thing you were turning into, and it’s this thought that makes you lash out at the door in front of you as though you were a caged animal lunging towards the metal bars of your captivity. “Kill me,” you screech openly, throwing your fists against the hard, cold walls. “Kill me. _KILL ME.”_ Briefly you consider using the Force to rip yourself up from the inside out, to just explode your core and divide yourself into trillions and trillions of tiny cells so that there was nothing left of you. Another part of you considered jamming your lightsaber through your chest, but that seemed, for lack of a better word, unpure. Unclean, a less than dignified way to go, not for you, but for your lightsaber. It was a weapon you had made at one of your purest times on the Resistance base, and it seemed inappropriate to use it in such a way as to end your own life.

               So what would you do? Where would you go? They always needed more soldiers in the conflict, more people to fight. You could figure out where the fighting was thickest and just go there and serve the First Order as a field commander until your usefulness came to an end and you were struck down in battle. Maybe not a truly dignified way to go, but at least people would say that you died fighting for something, instead of running away from something that you couldn’t control. You could control a great many things through the Force, but as you had told Ani many, many years ago, love would never be one of them. You had always been loved, seemingly unconditionally, by your friends, by Kylo, and you didn’t know anything but. You didn’t know what it was like to not have a single person to turn to, to talk to, to say, _Hey, I am NOT OKAY_ and that was where you were seemingly at now.

               The Force bond was weak. Kylo had turned his back on you, because, quite simply, you had turned your back on him, and there was no way that there was going to be forgiveness in your future. You had said you were doing this whole thing in order to protect your family, to protect him, to protect your relationship and your life together, and you had held on so tightly that you had crushed it in your fists. If you could say anything right now, you would tell him you were sorry, but even those words seemed hollow to your own ears. Kylo did not seem like the kind of person to give second chances, and so that was it then. That was done. It was all done.

               You slumped sideways onto the ground, letting your cheek rest against the dirty floor of the utility closet. You were probably going to get all sorts of lint and dirt and debris in your hair, but that was literally at the very bottom of your list of concerns right now. When your head stopped aching and your heart stopped feeling like it was about to explode, you would figure out where the fighting was thickest. You would say your goodbyes to Ani first, and possibly Kylo, if he was there. If he would even talk to you. You would just tell him Hux was sending you on some sort of mission and never return. He had done it to you, after all, the only difference was that he wouldn’t care if you ever returned. You had screwed up that badly.

               _What happened to you?_ You can hear Kylo’s voice echo around your head with the same inflection he had used earlier, and you grab his scarf in both hands as you cling to the memory of his voice in your head, of his hand in your hand, of his lips against your lips, and for a moment you think you’re about to become physically ill to think that you had lost not only him but that sense of warmth that he provided you.

               _I fell_ , you tell him softly, although you know by now that he was not listening. _I thought I could do it. I thought I could flirt with the power of the dark side and be strong enough that I wouldn’t be lost in it. But I did. I fell. I lost. I lost you. I lost me. I lost everything._

A bubble surfaces between your lips and you puff it out slowly. You can feel hot, languid tears starting to drip from your eyes again, and the insides of your cheeks are starting to ache as a whole new wave of tears racks your body. You can’t go anywhere. No one was coming for you, and so you just laid on the ground of the utility closet, and you cried. And you cried and you cried and you cried with the bitter remorse of someone that had nothing left to lose.

               If that was what you truly thought, you would have been wrong.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn. I feel like we need a moment of silence for the Reader, because that was intense. I always say I like to put as many perspective moments as I can into my work due to my experience as a crisis counselor, and I've always been, not fascinated by, but interested in the way people develop this sort of self-hatred for themselves and see themselves as terrible, wicked people who don't deserve happiness even when they've done nothing wrong. The Reader, however, has done plenty wrong lately, and she knows it: from her treatment of Sadie and Ladson on Naboo, killing Major Dorska, giving Hux the idea on how to make a new superweapon for the _Propitiate_ that rivals Starkiller Base, and basically abandoning Kylo and Ani, the two people she claims to care about more than anything. Anakin's dream showed her losing everything, and that's what she was afraid of, losing everything and everyone and know it seems she's finally waking up to that fact that she is really losing everything, the harder she tries to hold on, the more things slip away, and that's compounded by the way that the Resistance seemingly still wants her back and is willing to give her a second chance, basically telling her that she doesn't have to be this person that she doesn't want to become, and she pushed away that chance knowing that it would probably result in heavy casualties for her friends, and now she's truly in a position to understand Kylo's struggle between the light and the dark, because she knows it would just be easier to turn her emotions off and not care, but she still does, and now she's torn between who she was and who she's becoming and where to go from there. 
> 
> It's also interesting to see the role of her perception in this chapter, how she feels totally abandoned by Kylo, like things are totally said and done between them, how she thinks that Rey looks irritated with her through the holo, how she thinks Poe still sees her, because of course we're reading from Reader's perspective, so all of these things are purely subjective. Is she looking for someone to hate her so she has a good reason not to go back to the Resistance, or was what she saw really there? 
> 
> Either way, things are definitely going down at the Resistance. What the heck happened to Leia? Is Rey really pissed at Reader? Was Poe's deal an actual deal, or was this way of him checking in on Reader and evaluating her priorities? And speaking of Poe, of course after all this time he's got to have earned a promotion by now. xD
> 
> Phew, not going to lie, that was an exhausting chapter to write, trying to get into the mental headspace of someone having an utter breakdown is tough and took a lot out of me while I was writing it. I can't remember ever mentally dropping to a level where the Reader's at now, and so I added a trigger warning to the top of the chapter just to make sure everyone keeps themselves safe. 
> 
> Haven't mentioned the playlist in a while, but the other day Suicidal Tendencies' _Institutionalized_ popped into my head, and I think that song would actually be really fitting for this chapter, but if you have other songs that you think fit this chapter too, or the story in general, please let me know in the comments!! (*proceeds to add Linkin Park's _Crawling_ to this list as well*)
> 
> So where do things go from here? Check back on Thursday to find out, until then, cheers!!


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW content ahead

               You didn’t know how long you laid there for, but after a certain point a creeping sense of numbness took over and you became concerned about what would happen if Hux went looking for you and found you missing. You couldn’t let him know that you were the one who screwed up a chance to capture Poe because you thought saving his life was the right thing to do. In truth, you didn’t know what right was, any more than you knew what goodness was. You had suddenly slipped into a world of grey, moral ambiguity, even though you supposed in your case it was more immoral ambiguity, considering all that you had recently done.  

               That reminds you of what you actually need to do, and so you slowly trudge your way back up to your apartment, feeling numb, and drained, and tired, above all things, _tired_ , as if each tear you shed drained a year out of your life, and you were surviving with only minutes left to spare. A part of you could only hope that you would fall before you ever reached your destination in order to prevent you from having the conversation you knew was inevitably coming, but as your feet lead you closer and closer to your door, you knew that was no longer a possibility you could entertain. No, you just had to go in there and tell Ani that you were leaving on an important mission and you didn’t know when you were going to return. Hopefully you could slip away quietly after that, without having to see Kylo, without having to face him telling you that things were over for good. Kylo was smart. Maybe after he learned that you had voluntarily walked off to die, he would realize that there was something seriously wrong and try to come after you. Or maybe then he would determine that you really were a lost cause. If you weren’t prepared to fight for your own life, why should he bother wasting his time to try to save yours? For Ani’s sake? Right now, with these kinds of thoughts suffocating your thinking, you didn’t seem like the type of person who was fit to raise Ani anyway. You were falling apart, and your slow descent into dysfunctional lunacy wasn’t something you wanted him to see anyway.

               You close your eyes and open the door to the apartment, almost surprised to see Ani and Kylo sitting in the living room as if they’re waiting for you. You’re not sure if your face is still red or not, but you quickly drop your eyes, almost afraid to look at Kylo, afraid of what expression you’ll see there. But you’re not about to be the first one to speak either, and it’s finally Ani who jumps to his feet, as if he’s ready to fight. “We need to talk,” he says loudly, and you just turn your head away, dreading the worst.

               “I guess we do,” you say quietly, shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot. “I, uh, I need to leave.” Out of the corner of your eye, you can see Kylo glance up in confusion, although he still isn’t looking at you directly.

               Ani seems surprised for a moment, but he quickly recovers himself as he dips his head forward in a firm nod. “Good, we’re all in agreement then.”

               “What?” you ask, unable to help yourself from sounding absolutely dumbfounded at this new turn of events. “What do you mean? Where are you going?”

               “Don’t you feel it?” Ani asks. “There’s something wrong here. There’s something wrong with this place. I constantly feel like someone’s watching me here, like there’s always eyes on me. I don’t feel safe here. Don’t you feel that way?”

               “No,” you say, quietly, softly, as if you’re afraid of your own voice. You wanted to leave yourself, assuming that both Kylo and Ani would have been safer with the First Order on the _Propitiate._ You thought that you were the problem, that you were the one who was slowly succumbing to the darkness inside of yourself, but maybe that wasn’t the case after all?

               “There’s something wrong,” Ani insists. “Father feels it too. He wants to take me away from here, and I want you to come with us.” His voice suddenly turns sad. “But he doesn’t think you’ll go. He thinks you’d want to stay here.”

               “I don’t like it here,” you mumble, your voice barely audible for fear of it breaking, and it’s suddenly obvious to everyone in the room just how much you had broken down in the past hour.

               “Hux was looking for you,” Kylo says quietly, although he’s still not looking at you directly. “He’s furious. What did you do?”

               You purse your lips together as you stare at a spot on the ground. You can feel tears starting to well up behind your eyes again, and you keep your lips clenched firmly together to suppress the sudden shuddering breath you feel forming in your chest. Regardless, you can’t control your movements as an involuntary shudder shakes you to your core, causing your arms to spasm at your sides.

               “Mom?” Ani asks quietly, and you physically turn away from them, afraid that you weren’t going to stop the tears from spilling down your cheeks as you cross your arms over your chest in a feeble effort to maintain control of yourself. “Mom, are you okay? What happened?”

               “Go to your room, Ani,” Kylo says quietly, and Ani lets out a sharp huff of breath as he looks between you two.

               “But-“ Ani starts, but with one firm look from Kylo, he seems to relent as he heads off into his room. The door shuts behind him, and now you turn your back to Kylo completely, afraid to look at him. Kylo had never broken down like you had, or if he did, he kept it well concealed. No, he was stronger than you, in every way that mattered, and you had turned your back on him. You couldn’t blame Kylo for this. Everything that had happened was your fault, how you felt now was a product of your terrible decisions, and you had to pay the consequences for your actions.

               “Take Ani and go,” you tell him quietly, finding your voice quite firmer than you thought it would be, considering the circumstances. “Escape, go somewhere quiet, lie low. I’ll cover for you here and try to get word out to you if Hux is close to finding you.” That wasn’t what you wanted, not exactly, but if you could protect them, keep them safe, it would be worth it. That was what you had been fighting for all this time, right? To protect them? To keep them safe? If you could do it from afar, then so be it. You weren’t quite sure they were actually any safer with you around, and you didn’t have any idea on how to go about fixing that. No, they were both better off without you around.

               “You’re not going to come with us?” Kylo asks, and you squeeze all of your muscles together, screwing your eyes shut as your hands brace into fists.

               “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” you say softly, not trusting your voice. It’s weak, and shaky, and you close your eyes as you try to blow air out through your nose. “I know what you said earlier, well, what you wanted to say.”

               Kylo lets out a sigh, and you bring your hands together in front of you, pressing your palms together as hard as you can, almost willing your hands to collide through each other, hoping the tension would give you something to focus on to stop the tears from flowing. “What happened earlier?”

               There’s something resigned in his voice, and you pick up on it instantly. You had thought you had been alone, that Kylo had severed his connection to you, cutting himself off from it, but perhaps not. “Did you feel me?”

               “I couldn’t allow myself to,” Kylo says softly, his voice just above a whisper. “You were in so much pain and I couldn’t. I can’t.” You drop your head forward until your chin touches your chest, nodding softly to yourself. No, that was fine. That made sense. “What happened?”

               “I did something stupid,” you say after a moment. “And I think I did a pretty poor job at covering my tracks.”

               “Come with us,” Kylo says with more authority in his voice, and this just pushes your resolve in the other direction.

               “No,” you reply firmly. “No, these are my choices and I will suffer the consequences of my actions.”

               “You’re coming with us,” Kylo says, although this time there’s a light tone of amusement playing in his voice. “I was hoping this time you would come with us willingly, but at least this time I know I’ll have Ani’s help in carrying you off this base.”

               There’s something in his tone that makes you spin around as you look at him, really look at him. Kylo has a small smile playing on his lips and you can feel it reverberate against something in your core. “But you hate me,” you tell him. “You think I’ve changed. You think I’m disgusting now. You want nothing to do with me.”

               Kylo looks taken aback, and confused, and surprised, all at the same time. “I could never hate you,” he says quietly, his dark eyes burning intensely into yours, and you feel so weak and vulnerable in that moment as Kylo grabs his hands and puts them on either side of your face. “Did you really think that after everything that’s happened that I could ever leave you behind?”

               “I-“ you stammer, because you don’t know what to say. Yes, you had thought that he would leave you behind. You had doubted him. You had doubted that he still loved you, doubted that he still cared about you even a little bit. Kylo seems to sense this as he wraps you in his arms, and you bury your face in his chest, feeling like a child as you squeeze him with all the strength you can muster. “You seemed so upset with me earlier-“

               “With the situation,” Kylo tells you. “Not with you. Ani is right. There is something dark at work here, and I fear that it has been targeting you. I fear that it’s already too late.”

               “Too late?” you demand as you pull away quickly. “What do you mean? Like, whatever happened to me, we can fix it, right?” Kylo looks concerned as he studies your face, and you bite your lip. “Like, I haven’t gone completely over to the dark side yet, right? I’ve only killed one person.”

               “It starts slowly,” Kylo explains. “It starts with one kill, but now it’ll be easier for you to take another life, and you’ll find that it gets easier and easier. You’re already so much quicker to anger than you were before, and I’m not the best person to help teach you control. Your judgement has already been compromised, and I don’t know how to help you get that back.”

               “Well, what’s doing this?” you ask him. “Shouldn’t we maybe try to stay here and try to figure out what kind of evil this is so we can defeat it?”

               Kylo just shakes his head. “I’m not sure, and Ani is starting to feel it too now. I can’t risk losing you both.”

               “But you’re unaffected?” you ask him, almost a bit suspiciously. “You should be the most corruptible out of the three of us. How come you can sense it but not be influenced by it?”

               “I’m not sure,” Kylo admits. “This is unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. I don’t know how to explain it.”

               You gnaw on your lower lip as you look up at him. “So you don’t think this is Snoke’s doing?” you ask tentatively, and Kylo shakes his head.

               “I don’t think so,” he admits. “It’s been years, but I _felt_ his energy disappear. I don’t think he’s returned. I don’t think it’s possible.”

               “So this is something new,” you muse. “Something new that has targeted me and Ani.” You can’t help but shake your head from side to side. “And I was weak. I allowed myself to be manipulated-“

               “It was subtle,” Kylo tells you. “That’s how it always is. You barely notice that your thoughts aren’t your own anymore until it’s too late and you can’t remember if you had always felt that way, always thought that way, or if the circumstances changed to force you to think in a new direction.” You nod your head forward in agreement. Kylo probably remembered the way Snoke had first manipulated him, slowly corroding away at his thoughts and his sense of self until he wasn’t really sure what was left, and now that was happening to you as well.

               “But you saw it happening to me,” you say softly. “If you really felt like something was wrong, why didn’t you tell me about it? Why weren’t you trying to protect me from it?”

               “I wasn’t sure I felt anything wrong at first,” Kylo admits. “I thought that, perhaps, this was the way you wanted things. I thought you were distancing yourself from me intentionally. It wasn’t until Ani started to express his concerns that I began to notice things for myself.”

               “You make it sound like something wanted us to doubt each other, to turn against each other,” you say softly. “But who would do that? And why? What purpose would that serve them?”

               “You and I are two of the strongest people in the galaxy,” Kylo tells you. “Not to mention the power that Ani possesses. The more of a unified front we present, the stronger we are. It is no secret that if someone wanted to eliminate one or both of us, the best chance they would have is if we were separated from one another.” You purse your lips as you consider how you had been ready to just storm off the base and leave Ani and Kylo behind. Kylo seems to notice the guilt on your face as he runs his fingertips down your cheek. “Did you really think I would desert you?”

               “Yes,” you reply, because, quite honestly, you did, and lying to save his feelings was not going to help anything now. “You just seemed so mad at me earlier, like you didn’t want to talk to me anymore, like you were really and truly done with me, and I didn’t know how to cope with that. You and Ani are all I have left-“

               A sad smile rises to Kylo’s lips as he returns your gaze, and you know he echoes your sentiments by the way he looks at you. “You know I feel the same,” Kylo says softly. “If something were to happen to you, if I were to lose you-“ He shakes his head as if he doesn’t want to even consider that line of thought, and for once you agree with him.

               “Maybe we should go back to the Resistance,” you tell him softly, and Kylo’s eyes widen in surprise. “I spoke to Poe earlier today.”

               Kylo regards you coolly for a moment, his expression impassive. “So the pilot has taken over for my mother. Why am I not surprised she left him in charge?”

               “Poe is more than capable of taking over the Resistance,” you tell him so firmly it surprises even yourself. Kylo narrows his eyes at you, and you quickly make an effort to recover yourself. “Besides, everyone in the Resistance _loves_ Poe. For all we know, it was a democratic election and everyone voted to put him in charge in her place. I can see that happening, to be honest.”

               Kylo pauses for a moment as he considers this. “So what did he want? For you to return to the Resistance with Ani?”

               “Yes,” you say firmly. “Yes, he says he can get the Republic to retract their charges of treason against me.” You pause for a moment as you look up at him. “And he thinks he can secure you a stay of execution.” Kylo simply snorts as he shakes his head and starts to walk away from you. “You’d have to help provide information that can help them take out the First Order, once and for all, we both would, but they wouldn’t kill you. They said they’d keep you under house arrest, under close supervision, and maybe after a while I could convince them-“

               “And I suppose letting them siphon my strength would be part of this arrangement?” Kylo asks bitterly, and you bite your lip.

               “He said that was up for negotiation,” you offer. “He wanted to negotiate with Hux, trade the three of us for basically anything the First Order wanted. He didn’t say exactly what, just that he’d need time. He seemed pretty desperate.” Kylo makes a face, and you can’t help but laugh at him. “Jealous?”

               “After all these years, he still cares for you,” Kylo murmurs under his breath, before he seems to finally regard your question. “I’m not jealous of your involvement with the pilot. Perhaps it might be better if you were to return to him. He could keep you safe until I figure out what’s going on.”

               You can’t help but let your expression sour. “There’s no chance of that happening now,” you tell him, and you wait for Kylo to put the pieces together for himself.

               “Was Hux actually considering a trade?” Kylo asks suspiciously. “No, Hux would never-“

               You close your eyes as you shake your head from side to side. “We shouldn’t talk about it here,” you say quietly. For once, you began to understand what Ani was talking about. You suddenly felt extremely exposed, as if someone might have been listening in on this very conversation. You didn’t know who would, from the privacy of your own room, but it was more than just a little possible that your apartment was bugged, either by physical means or someone had found a way of using the Force in order to eavesdrop on your conversations.

               Either way, Kylo seems to understand your meaning as he walks over to you and puts a hand on your temple. You close your eyes instinctively, waiting for the familiar push, when suddenly you feel his lips against yours and you can’t help but smile as you give into it, pushing your body flush against his. He kisses you back, and you can feel a familiar sense of warmth flood through your veins. You think about how you had almost lost _this_ , and for a moment you can barely stand it as you wrap your arms around his neck and throw yourself at him, kissing him with everything you can as he stumbles backwards in an attempt to reclaim his balance.

               “Easy,” Kylo murmurs against your lips, and you can’t help but smile as you lean against him.

               “Okay, okay, I’m good,” you tell him. “Take a look.” Kylo presses one quick kiss against your lips again and you can’t help but smile as he pushes against your temple to take a look at the memory of what had just transpired. It’s not long, by any means, and so you don’t try to rush him through it, letting the dialogue with Poe unfold, letting him see Rey and Finn again, letting him hear the conversation you had with Hux where you openly mocked Poe before you turned around and decided to try to save his life. You try to tug the memory away once you leave the room, but Kylo only puts a hand on your opposite shoulder to steady you, insisting on taking in this new memory as well. “No, Kylo, you know what happens next. You said you shut yourself off from it.”

               “But I need to see it,” Kylo says softly. “I should never have let you deal with this yourself.”

               You don’t want to relive it all again, especially with the pain so fresh in your mind, but you let Kylo look. You know he feels disappointed that he wasn’t there to support you when you obviously needed it, and so you let your emotions hit him full force as you relive breaking down in that utility closet. It was far from your proudest moment, almost akin to the embarrassment you felt when you had smashed that chair to bits on the Starkiller Base, but Kylo simply wraps you in his arms and doesn’t let you pull away. “I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I’m sorry. You were in such pain and I wasn’t there for you.”

               “It’s not your fault,” you say firmly. “I let things get out of hand. I should have told you that I felt, I don’t know, different, but I didn’t really know how to describe it.”

               “You’re afraid,” Kylo says quietly. “You’re afraid of losing me, of losing Ani, of losing everyone that has ever cared about you.”

               “And you’re afraid of losing me too?” you ask softly, glancing your head up towards him for confirmation, and Kylo nods simply. “Okay, so whatever it is, it’s playing on our worst fears. Fear is the path to the dark side, isn’t it?”

               “It starts with fear,” Kylo explains. “Because that’s the easiest way to control someone. When people are afraid they are malleable, they do what they’re told without much thought to their alternatives. They start to question their own judgement, and that, in turn, makes them angry, makes them reckless-“

               “I know,” you say softly, reflecting on your earlier outburst. “It just seemed so real to me, like I had already lost you.”

               “That is my greatest fear as well,” Kylo admits, taking your upper arms in both hands as he pulls you closer, and you can’t help but smile gently up at him. “But you will never lose me. What must I do to prove that to you?”

               “I think you know of at least one way,” you say with a light smirk. “But is now the right time? If we’re leaving, we have to be smart about this. We have to make a plan. We have to talk this over with Ani. We have to make sure that Hux doesn’t find out about-“

               But Kylo doesn’t want to hear about that as he presses his lips against yours, and you can’t help but push your body back against his, running your hands through his dark hair as you hold him close to you. For a moment, you truly thought that he had turned his back on you, had tried to temper your connection through the Force bond, and-

               “I felt like the Force bond was weaker,” you say as you pull away slightly. “Like, it _felt_ like it was weakening. Did I imagine that or is something really strong enough to obscure it from us?” Kylo looks alarmed as he steps away from you, and you can’t help but bite your lip in agitation. “Okay, either kiss me or talk to me but don’t just stand there. It makes me feel really, I don’t know, nervous, right now.”

               “I don’t know what we’re dealing with,” Kylo admits softly. “And the fact that I don’t seem to sense things is troubling. If you think something is weakening the bond between us, I don’t want to wait.”

               “It helps to know it means as much to you as it does to me,” you admit, driving the toe of your boot into the floor, and Kylo studies you for a moment as if he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. “What?”

               “As someone who’s never been shy about telling me how you feel, I think this is the most you’ve actually communicated with me in weeks,” Kylo tells you, and you can’t help but laugh awkwardly as you look away.

               “Well, it’s like you said, right? Fear can be a powerful motivator?” you ask. “If someone really wanted to make me afraid of losing you, they shouldn’t have made it seem like such a real possibility that you were about to walk out on me.”

               Kylo pauses for a moment as he looks you over. “How do you feel? Right now?”

               “Uh, fine,” you offer, looking down to take stock of yourself. “Um, I think I could use a shower, a little hungry, but other than that I feel okay.” You roll your shoulders. “And, I mean, I’m scared too, honestly, but you’ve already made it clear that I’m not going to lose you, so I’m trying to just, you know, not focus on that, although I still feel afraid, like you may change your mind at any moment.”

               Kylo bites his lip for a moment as he thinks this over. “I don’t know how affected you are by what’s going on,” he says after a moment. “I have to make plans, preparations, for our departure, and I don’t think you should be involved.”

               “Why not?” you demand indignantly, feeling a flare of anger rise up in your chest. “I can do things, I can help, I-“ Kylo raises his eyebrow as if you’ve just proved his point, and you can’t help but roll your eyes. “Fine, do whatever you need to do. I’m going to go take a shower.”

               “Hey,” Kylo says as he catches your arm. “We’ll figure this out, together. I need to talk to Ani first, but-“

               “Do what you need to do,” you say with a shrug of your shoulders as you mope off towards the bathroom. Kylo didn’t trust you, and you couldn’t really say that you blamed him, which made this whole thing even worse. You wanted him to trust you, wanted him to see that you could control yourself, but after your absolute breakdown earlier, you weren’t quite sure you could. You had never felt that out of touch with yourself in, well, ever, and it was scary to think that you had all of that rage brimming inside of you to the point that you would have just snuck off and left him.

               You expect to feel better as the hot water touches your skin, but for some reason, you don’t. You can’t help but think about how it was more than possible that Kylo didn’t want you involved in this because it was unclear just how affected you were, but you couldn’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, Kylo thought you were too irreparably damaged, and that’s why he didn’t want to talk to you about anything. Maybe that was why he wanted to talk to Ani in secret. Maybe he wanted to keep his plans as clandestine as possible so that he could sneak off and leave you behind once and for all, without trying to draw your suspicions. It made sense, it made cold, logical sense, and the more you thought about it, the more you couldn’t help but almost convince yourself of this fact, that Kylo was going to abandon you and leave you behind.

               You’re suddenly snapped out of your thoughts by the sound of a figure climbing into the shower behind you, and you whirl around to face Kylo, arms braced in front of you, as if you’re ready for a fight. You could feel the adrenaline pulsing through your veins, and for a moment you couldn’t quite describe who you had thought you were actually going to see there, only that you were in danger. Kylo looks you up and down for a moment before he raises his hand slowly to show you he means you no harm, reaching forward as he strokes a wet strand of hair out of your face. “I felt you,” he says softly. “You still doubt me, you still-“

               “At least we know the Force bond is still working fine,” you quip teasingly, but Kylo seems more than just a little upset about your doubt in him. “I’m just _upset_ , I don’t know, I can’t control it.”

               “I won’t leave you behind,” Kylo says as firmly as he can. “Do your nightmares play any role in how you’ve been feeling lately?”

               “Nightmares?” you echo, tilting your head to the side in confusion. “What are you talking about? I don’t have nightmares.”

               “You do,” Kylo tells you. “I don’t know what they’re about, you’ve shielded that from me, but I assumed it’s why you’re sleeping less. I thought you were doing it to avoid me, but Ani says he’s seen you napping in the living room, crying out in your sleep.” You gnaw on your lower lip as you drop your gaze and try to think. “What are they about?”

               “I don’t know,” you admit softly. “I don’t remember them. I’d say if they were Force visions then I probably would, but-“ A new thought suddenly strikes you, and you can feel fear seize you from under the hot water, a cool chill causing goosebumps to rise to the surface of your flesh regardless.

               “What?” Kylo asks quickly, as his dark eyes burn into yours. “What is it?”

               “Remember when we were on the Resistance base and Ani said that I would be tempted by the dark side?” you ask him. “That I wouldn’t be able to protect him?”

               Kylo looks at you nervously as he shakes his head. “That was so long ago-“

               “But what if they saw this coming?” you ask anxiously. “Maybe it’s too late. Maybe I shouldn’t go with you. What if I hurt him in some way, or do something-“

               “Look at me,” Kylo commands suddenly, with such authority in his voice, that you have no choice but to let your jaw snap shut with a slight click as you obey. “It’s not too late. There is still light in you.” The corner of his lips twitch into the semblance of a smile. “If you could forgive me after all that I’ve done, you can fight whatever hold this has on you.”

               “But I don’t know what has a hold on me,” you tell him. “I don’t know who’s doing this or what they want or why or even how strong of a hold they have on me. If they’re giving me nightmares, and making me doubt you, and us, and my own thoughts-“ You shake your head as you sink your face in your hands. “We came here for safety, and I wanted that. I wanted control, to shape my own future, and now it looks like I got the opposite of that. I feel reckless, and unhinged, and I don’t know what to do or how to stop it. I feel like I’m not in control and, and-“ You stop as you look back up at him again. “And I’m scared.”

               “It’ll be okay,” Kylo tells you as he pulls you in to hug him, but it’s wrong, it’s all wrong. The gesture is comforting and you embrace the warmth against his chest, but the muscles in your upper arms feel as though they’re twisted into tight knots and it’s uncomfortable more than anything. No, you wanted action, some sort of physical response, some sense of release-

               Suddenly Kylo grabs you and pushes you roughly against the side of the shower wall and you can’t help but let out a gasp as his lips attack yours, greedy and hungry. This was what you had been waiting for as you push your breasts against his chest, letting your fingers part his damp hair with ease. Kylo is trying to keep you upright, pinning your hips to the wall with his own while holding you under your thigh with one arm so he can touch you with his other hand, but it’s slippery and you keep sliding down to one side. “You know, it would probably be easier to use the Force to keep me up,” you tease him as you let your legs slide down so that you can just brace against the floor of the shower on your tiptoes.

               “No,” Kylo whispers. “No, no Force. Just you and me.”

               There’s something about the way he says this that makes you lunge at him, and although the shower is narrow, you push him against the back wall, kissing him fervently as he tries to regain his footing. Even still, he’s sliding down, slowly, and it’s not more than a few minutes until you’re straddling him on the floor of the stall with the hot water of the shower pelting down all around you. You feel his hands slide down your back before one comes up and slides around the nape of your neck, holding you in place so he can tilt your chin up and down with his thumb and fingers, kissing you the way he wanted to kiss you. You moaned against him, desperate to feel his warm wet skin underneath your hands as you planted them firmly on his upper arms to keep him from tipping over.

               You supposed this was appropriate, just you and him underneath the warm spray of the shower overhead as you kissed him, wet and naked and suspiciously vulnerable. You had not been this intimate with him in weeks, simply hadn’t felt a desire to be, and that should have been your first clue that something was wrong right there. You should have been able to sense this, should have known that if your feelings for Kylo were changing, that something was definitely wrong. You had given up almost everything for him, and yet it took _Poe_ for you to realize that there was something seriously wrong with the way things were continuing on. If he hadn’t reached out to you, who knows if things would have continued on that way they had until it truly was too late? You and Kylo were bonded, yes, but you were also two mature, rational people, who knew better than to think that true love was absolutely unconditional. You would do anything to keep him by your side, but you would not beg him to stay if you found that you had been growing apart to the point of incompatibility.

               And that was when you realized that, whatever this new darkness was, it had to target you. _You_ had to be the one to leave him, simply because he harbored too much guilt over bringing you out here in the first place in order to chase after you. He was the only reason you were tied up in the First Order to begin with, and if you had suddenly slipped over to the dark side, it was because it was his fault. If he had simply escaped and left you and Ani on the Resistance base, you would have remained safe there and nothing like this would have happened to you. You wouldn’t have had to doubt him, or yourself, and the more you think about this, the more you think about the fact that it would have just been better if Kylo had left you back on D’Qar after all, and you can feel the stone almost burning around your neck, even though you had left it on the edge of the sink before you had even gotten into the shower.

               “No more thoughts,” Kylo whispers quietly as he holds your face with both hands, using his thumbs to brush back your cheeks, and that is when you realize from the marks that covered his collarbone and the bottom of his neck that you had been attacking him with your lips more viciously than you had realized. For a moment you feel dizzy, out of control, but Kylo’s hands are there, reminding you to stay present. _“It’s okay,_ ” he tells you, linking your mind with his own. _“It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re not lost. You’re with me.”_

“I need you to take me,” you breathe. “Right now.” Mostly because the muscles in your upper arms are twitching uncomfortably again, but also because Kylo’s right. You need to not think, you need to simply turn your thoughts off, and there was no better way to do that than to feel him thrusting inside of you. Even though the stall is narrow, you still manage to work your way around Kylo so that you are sitting on him, and slowly lower yourself onto his length. You can’t help but whimper a small murmur of pleasure against his lips as you embrace the feeling of him inside you again, and you wrap your arms tightly around him as he brushes the tip of his nose against yours.

               “I’m here,” he tells you comfortingly. “I’m right here. I won’t leave you.”

               “I know,” you whisper back as you kiss him softly, tenderly, letting him run his fingers through your wet hair. The warmth of the water over you was starting to wane, but you didn’t pay it any mind as Kylo started to move inside of you. The rhythm was a bit awkward at first, but you soon managed to find a comfortable pacing as Kylo leaned his head forward onto your shoulder, whispering your name in your ear as he bit and sucked at your earlobe, licking into the pleasurable hollow where your jawline met your neck. He was being exceedingly gentle with you, and you suppose he felt that he needed to be, needed to remind you that he didn’t just need you for release. He needed to show you that he could care about you, could support you, could _love_ you, and for a moment you couldn’t believe that the same Kylo Ren that had almost run away while he fingerfucked you against the wall of your room back on the Starkiller Base was the same person you were with now. That had been over a decade ago, and while you knew that it was possible that people could change, a part of you felt like he almost hadn’t changed at all. Maybe this was always the sort of person he always was, buried deep, repressed under Snoke’s constant influence, and once Snoke was gone he had finally been free to come into himself. If that was true, then there was still hope for you, hope that the person you really were was the person that everyone had come to befriend back at the Resistance base, and your recent disregard for the lives of others and your volatile emotions was simply an ephemeral shadow, a cloud that would soon pass over and let you return to your happy state of being.

               Kylo seems to sense your thoughts as he lets out an appreciative hum as he moves inside you, and you can’t help but offer him a small smile, for his sake, to show him that you thought things could change, or rather, go back to the way things were. You had stopped looking back on the past some time ago, but you wanted to go back to a time when you were happy, back on Naboo. You wouldn’t be able to go there, not anymore, but a large part of you couldn’t help but wish that you _could_ , and you suppose that desperate drive to change the things that you couldn’t possibly have any control over was what was leading to your downfall, at least in part. You wanted to predict and control everything, and you couldn’t, you kept being reminded that you couldn’t, and it was fueling your seemingly never ending source of frustration.

               “It’s okay,” Kylo tells you softly. “It’s okay, just let go.” You can’t help but meet his eyes as you realize that you trust him, you do, you implicitly trust him. He had given you plenty of reason not to in the past, but you were going to move past all that, you _had_ moved past all that, you had forgiven him for everything he had ever done against him and you trusted him now, implicitly. He wanted you and he wanted Ani, and that was it. That was all. He had no reason to lie to you, no reason to hurt you or deceive you, and you let these thoughts flood through your mind as you found your release, whimpering his name under your breath as your fingertips grasp the muscles in his upper arms for support.

               You shudder against him as you dip your head forward, resting it against his shoulder, and Kylo wraps his arms around you as he smooths your wet hair down your back. The water has since run cold now, and you can feel yourself shivering against him as he runs a hand down the goosebumps in your forearm. “Are you all clean?” he asks, and you nod your head forward as he helps you to your feet, keeping one of your hands firmly in both of yours. He picks you up, making the motion seem completely effortless, and you smirk as you bury your face in his neck, puckering your lips to place a kiss against his overheated skin. He walks out of the bath and places you down on the bed, and you quickly grab the corner of the blanket and roll to the other side, wrapping yourself up in the exterior of the blanket until it’s wrapped around you as tight as it can possibly be. “Well, that’s one way to do it,” he says as he leans over and places light kisses against your forearm. “I have things to do, but promise me you’ll stay here and sleep and you won’t go anywhere. Just wait for me to get back.”

               “I will,” you reply sleepily as you rest your head against his pillow. It still smells a bit like him, and it brings a soft smile to your lips as Kylo leans down and presses a kiss against your temple.

               “I’ll leave Ani here,” he replies. “Make sure he holds you to that.” You simply mumble something under your breath as you snuggle into the blanket, dozing off as Kylo gets dressed behind you. Kylo presses one final kiss against your temple as he prepares to head off, but just as the door opens, you can’t help but feel a flash of irritation. At first you were disappointed with yourself, but you couldn’t figure out why exactly you were irritated with Kylo, and it took you another moment to realize that you weren’t. You were feeling Kylo’s irritation, and it didn’t take you more than a second to figure out why.

               “Is she in there?” you hear Hux demand, and Kylo quickly steps out as he shuts the door behind him. Even still, the door, or perhaps the material of the wall, is thinner than you had first realized, as you can hear what’s being said beyond it.

               “I told him she’s not here,” Ani says, quite loudly, almost as if he wants you to hear it. “He won’t listen to me.”

               “She’s not here,” Kylo confirms. “She left to go find you. She was quite disappointed that Captain Dameron didn’t seek approval from the other heads of the Resistance before attempting to start negotiations. Apparently Colonel Ematt was particularly disappointed in Dameron’s brash course of action and called the whole thing off.”

               For a moment you’re not sure how Kylo knows who Colonel Ematt is, before you remember that Leia had told you that she had been friends with him back when he was serving as a lieutenant in the Alliance against the Empire, and he had been one of the first of the Republic officers to join her and serve with the Resistance. You could only imagine that Kylo had probably met him as a child, had known him, but you quickly push that thought out of your mind. Everyone back at the Resistance base who had met him probably remembered what Kylo Ren had been like as a child, and while that part of his life was still a mystery to you, it wasn’t something you were particularly concerned with reflecting on, especially in light of recent, troubling events that had to do with your present situation.

               “So glad she took the time to fill you in on things so I didn’t have to take the trouble,” Hux says dryly, and your eyes flick open as you scowl. While a part of you wanted to tell Hux off yourself, you couldn’t let him know that you were here and make a liar of both Kylo and Ani. Instead, you decided to just stay put, not even daring to sit up on one arm in case the bed might creak.

               “As I said, she was quite disappointed,” Kylo says firmly. “She felt it was only appropriate that she tell me personally, considering her previous relationship with the pilot.”

               “Ah, yes,” Hux replies, and you can practically hear his nefarious sneer through the door. “He did seem to take quite a special interest in her, didn’t he?”

               “No more so than you’ve been, as of late,” Kylo notes, and for a moment you wonder if Phasma had told Kylo that Hux had almost kissed you after all. You still hadn’t quite figured out what that was all about, and so you just preferred not to dwell on it if you could. Regardless, you had been spending more and more time with Hux lately, and even if Phasma hadn’t said anything, you assumed Kylo could probably put things together for himself.

               “Why, Ren,” Hux replies, and you can picture his gloat through the door. “I do believe you sound just a bit jealous. Don’t you trust her?”

               “Implicitly,” Kylo replies simply. He says something else that’s muffled as he puts on his helmet, and you can’t make out his voice distortion as clearly through the door. Regardless, you can hear the sound of footsteps as Kylo presumably leads Hux out, and you sit up quietly, listening to the steady beat of silence in your eardrums.

               _“Stay put.”_ Kylo’s voice flashes through your mind, and you quickly jerk your head back down into the pillow and shut your eyes, pretending to be asleep.

               _“Yes sir_ ,” you reply immediately, and suddenly you can feel Kylo’s contented energy through the Force bond. It calms you instantly, and you snuggle back into the pillow as you wrap the blankets a little closer around you as you give in to your fatigue and start to drift off to sleep, willing yourself to remember any nightmares that you may experience during your doze. There was something malicious that had targeted you, specifically, and although you were seemingly allowing yourself to be controlled and manipulated by it, you had the Force on your side. You were strong, and you could protect yourself, even if you weren’t completely sure you knew what it was that you were fighting. The last thought you had before you drift off was that if there truly was an embodiment of evil, a true sense of darkness that embodied the First Order, it only made good sense that it must have eaten Hux alive some time ago.

               You never really were the type to dream, although perhaps if you were, you simply lacked the ability to retain their memory upon awakening. Even still, there had been one specific dream that you had remembered, although that could have perhaps been because it was less a dream and more of a vision of something that someone had placed in your head a long time ago. Regardless of how it happened, it came unbidden to your unconscious mind as you slept, filling you with a new sense of dread.

               You dreamed that you were back in _that_ cell on the Starkiller Base, the one with the white walls and the blood stain on the floor in the far corner of the room where C had bled to death, the same one that Hux had tried to starve you to death inside. You looked around at the bleak interior and closed your eyes, wishing to be someplace else, anywhere else, never wanting to revisit this place again, not even in a memory. However, when you opened your eyes, you were no longer alone in that cell. Instead, the bodies of your friends were pinned to the walls, and you felt a creeping chill take over your core as you turned around and around, your eyes sweeping over all of them in turn – Ladson, Sadie, Shayne, B, C, Taro – they were all there, looking the same as you did back when you had first known them. You study B’s face for a moment, try to feel some scrap of hatred, or anything, but no emotions flow readily to you. It seemed that time had erased any anger that you held towards him long ago.

               Regardless, you couldn’t help but let your eyes trail down the length of his body to see the lightsaber-sized hole in his chest, and while you were momentarily glad that you didn’t have to witness what Kylo had done, a part of you realized that that could have just as easily been you. Kylo could have just as easily given in to Snoke’s brainwashing and killed you back on the _Resolute_ , and while you had somehow seemingly convinced yourself that he never could have gone through with it, you were suddenly less sure, especially as your eyes trailed over the bodies of Sadie and Ladson. Their fragile skin had been all but burned away, charred black where Kylo’s lightsaber had struck them, and you were hit by the sudden realization that Kylo could have done this, he really could have. He hadn’t done it then, and he hadn’t pulled his lightsaber on them when they showed up on Naboo, but he was _capable_ of murder, capable of taking their lives if he wished to do so.

               You spin around suddenly as the door to the cell flies open, and in the shadows, all you can see is a masked figure, dressed in black. You can’t make out anything other than the metal slit in the darkness, but that is a tell in itself, and although you tell yourself that this is Kylo, _your_ Kylo, your body can’t help but instinctively flinch away from him as you take a step backwards and fall to the ground. You look up at him, try to say his name, but no words come out as you hear the familiar hum of his lightsaber fill the air. There’s a brilliant flash of red, and then you see it, crackling angrily in front of you, silently signaling that you were its next victim. You screwed your eyes shut as you flinched away, holding your hands up in front of you in a weak attempt to shield yourself. Even still, you can feel the heat from the lightsaber against your exposed cheek, and you know it’s about to strike when…

               …you open your eyes and sit up straight in bed, your pulse racing through your veins. For a moment your eyes dart around the room, expecting to see Kylo there, dressed in his familiar attire with his lightsaber outstretched in his hand, but he’s not there. Instead, you have to consciously tell your heart to stop beating so quickly in your chest, consciously have to tell yourself that Kylo wouldn’t hurt you. Even still, that wasn’t the most troubling part of the dream. The worst part was the fact that that had been the vision that Taro had somehow gotten into your head before he showed up to rescue you from something you didn’t want to be rescued from. And then, as he was escaping, he had perished as the First Order shot him down. Although you had never had that vision again, it wasn’t the type of thing that you could forget, and you wondered what was the purpose of remembering it now. Was something trying to turn you against Kylo, to instill fear in you that he would harm you in some way? Or was it serving as a warning, that you were going to share the same fate as Taro if you tried to escape?

               The door opens suddenly, and you scoot back slightly into the pillow as Kylo strides into the room. “Good, you’re up,” he says quickly, without even bothering to glance in your direction. “We don’t have a lot of time. Phasma’s keeping Hux distracted so we can get off the base within the hour if we-“

               “No,” you say suddenly, and Kylo spins around to look at you, taking you in for the first time since he had tucked you in. Your skin was pale, your eyes were wide, and you still had beads of sweat from your nightmare clinging to your forehead.

               “No?” he repeats, and as he turns around, his fingers brush over the hilt of his lightsaber in his belt. You swallow hard for a moment as your eyes glance up to meet his.

               “No,” you repeat firmly as you harden your resolve. “No, I think I had another vision last night.” Kylo stares at you with concern, waiting for you to explain what you saw. “Basically,” you say as you release a heavy breath. “We leave? We die.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a bit of canon clarification: _Everyone back at the Resistance base who had met him probably remembered what Kylo Ren had been like as a child..."_ According to _Bloodline,_ Leia didn't form the Resistance until Ben Solo was at least 23, considering how he was still apparently off training with Luke at that time, but I can only imagine that the members of the Republic that joined the Resistance first were probably close friends of Leia's, or at least acquaintances, and had met/remembered Ben Solo as a boy before he was sent off to train with Luke, like Colonel Ematt, who was a lieutenant with the Alliance during the Galactic Civil War and thus knew her as Princess Leia first. He's listed as a Major in TFA, but it's been so long since then that I can only assume that a number of people have probably been promoted since that time. xD 
> 
> Also: _Kylo lets out a sigh, and you bring your hands together in front of you, pressing your palms together as hard as you can, almost willing your hands to collide through each other, hoping the tension would give you something to focus on to stop the tears from flowing._ Fun science-y note, from a nuclear physics perspective, the word _collide_ actually works well here. In casual jargon, it usually implies the transfer of kinetic energy from one mass velocity to another mass velocity via inelastic contact, but it can _also_ mean the rearrangement of material structures and ground-state energies due to quantum interactions. In other words, I'm a giant nerd who studies physics for fun. Don't judge me!! 
> 
> But all that aside, there you go, some smut to ease you off of the stress from last chapter...although I make no promises as to what will go down next chapter. ;) Maybe everything. Maybe nothing. Tune in Saturday to find out. Until then, cheers!!


	30. Chapter 30

               “What are you talking about?” Kylo asks, shaking his head from side to side. “We don’t have time for this. We need to go.”

               “When Taro tried to help me escape the Starkiller Base, he gave me a vision that you were going to hurt me in order to try to convince me to escape with him,” you tell him. “I had that dream again. Right now.”

               “You know I would never hurt you,” Kylo tells you, and you can’t help but shake your head in frustration.

               “I know that,” you say quickly. “I know that. That’s not my point. My point is that right after he gave me that vision, Taro died trying to escape the First Order.”

               “And you think that was a vision warning you that we should stay?” Kylo asks, and you nod your head firmly up and down. He doesn’t look convinced, and to tell the truth, neither are you. You’re not quite sure what to make of what you had just seen, don’t know how to interpret it, but you can’t deny that the dream had shaken you to your core. “Who sent you this vision?”

               “Um,” you hesitate for a moment, trying to think it over. You honestly weren’t quite sure who or what had sent you that vision, but it was unlike any of the ones you had ever received from Obi-Wan or Anakin. This seemed familiar, and yet entirely new, all by the same hand.

               “If it wasn’t from my grandfather, I don’t trust it,” Kylo says firmly, and you can’t help but sigh.

               “Maybe we’re being premature about this,” you say softly. “I mean, I know Ani said he _sensed_ something, but he doesn’t exactly want to be here. Maybe he only-“ Your voice trails off, and you quickly avert his gaze, as Kylo’s staring at you like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. “I mean, maybe we should plan this out a bit more before we just take off. The Resistance wants us alive, the Republic wants us dead, and if we run now, we can add the First Order to the list of people who want to capture us.”

               Kylo’s staring at you now like he’s trying to figure out if you’re really concerned about leaving, or if you’re under the thrall of whatever dark entity had been manipulating you lately. You felt more or less like yourself, and he could sense that. That’s what concerned him. “It’s going to be a lot harder to escape if I have to knock you out and carry you away from here by force.”

               “It worked once,” you say under your breath. “But it’s not going to work again. If I come with you-“

               “If?” Kylo repeats incredulously, and you can see he’s trying not to yell. “You were ready to leave yesterday. What changed?”

               “I don’t know,” you moan as you press your hands against the sides of your heads. “I don’t know what’s going on with me, I just feel like I _have_ to stay, I don’t know how to explain it. I just feel like I can do something substantial, like I can amount to something here. I’ve learned so much, not just about the Force, but with everything I’ve learned, I feel like I’m just wasting my potential. I want to _do_ something. You’ve already done things, you’ve made your mark on the galaxy, and now it’s my turn to contribute my abilities.”

               Kylo purses his lips together into a thin line, and you can tell that he’s trying to figure out whether you’ll respond to yelling or placating, if at all. “I’m taking Ani,” he says firmly. “He wants to leave. If you want to see either of us again, you will come with us.”

               “Threatening?” you ask as you raise an eyebrow. “Really?” Kylo simply spreads his hands as he tilts his head to the side, waiting to see how you’ll react.

               “The _Propitiate_ isn’t exactly that hard to find,” Kylo tells you, this time attempting to persuade you with cold logic. “Come with us. If you really feel as though you must return, you’ll know where to go.”

               “Like you’d really let me leave after you get me out of this place,” you murmur dryly as you untangle yourself from the blankets and get to your feet. “You do realize that’s the whole problem, don’t you? You never give me a choice in anything. It’s either doing what you tell me to do, or going along with your decisions, but I never get to make any choices for myself.”

               “You have a choice now,” Kylo tells you. “You can come with me, or-“

               “Never see my son again,” you argue, and suddenly you can feel that familiar rush of anger coursing through your bloodstream, and you pull your fists into your sides, ready for a fight. “Yeah, that definitely sounds fair to me. That definitely sounds like I choice _I_ am making.”

               “Don’t do this,” Kylo says quietly, and against your better judgement, you close your eyes and try to focus. You wanted to trust Kylo, but a small part of you held back. You weren’t quite sure why, you wanted to be with Kylo, and yesterday you thought you trusted him implicitly, but that dream stirred up older, uncomfortable memories of him and what he had done, and it was affecting you more than you wanted to let it. But if Kylo and Ani were right and you were really being manipulated by some dark entity, you couldn’t really trust your own thoughts either. You almost didn’t want to believe that you were, wanted to believe that you were still in control of yourself no matter what terrible decisions you had made, but if you couldn’t trust Kylo and you couldn’t trust yourself, then you could only trust in one thing, the Force, which seemed to pull you towards whatever inevitable destiny you were headed for, as much as you tried to resist it.

               If anything, that familiar rush of anger that had suddenly bubbled up out of nowhere should have told you everything you wanted to know. It had never been there before, never felt as accessible or as oddly comforting as it did now, and the fact that this new sense of rage was feeling _familiar_ to you meant that there was a problem. It meant that you were changing, it meant that you were becoming something that even Kylo didn’t like, and if your judgement was any clearer, you were sure that you wouldn’t like yourself much right now either. You had a glimpse of it, a rare moment of clarity, down in that utility closet, back when you thought you had lost your family for good. You just had to focus on that, how you felt then, and use it as fuel in order to give you some sort of incentive to push yourself to leave.

               You didn’t want to, and that was precisely why you had to. If something really was trying to control you, then you had to fight it and focus on what was really important to you.

               “Tell me you love me,” you murmur, and through the Force, you can tell that Kylo seems taken aback as he senses your resolve weakening, although he can’t be sure in what way that means. Regardless, you open your eyes and stare him down, willing him to answer you.

               “You know I do,” Kylo says softly, tilting his head to the side.

               “Then tell me,” you repeat, crossing your arms over your chest. A part of you wanted to hear it, but another part needed to hear it, needed to make sure that Kylo still cared. You weren’t sure where this sudden rush of doubt in him came from, but you hated that more than anything else about your situation right now.

               “I love you,” Kylo tells you, but he still seems unsure of why exactly you want him to say it.

               “Okay then,” you breathe as you walk around the bed to face him. You press your body flush against his chest as you raise your lips to his, and Kylo kisses you back softly before he pulls away, trying to figure out what to do with all the mixed signals you’re throwing his way. “Let’s go then.”

               Without waiting for his reply, you quickly brush your hair behind your ears as you start to get dressed, and as you begin to struggle into your pants, Kylo watches you, almost dumbfounded by how quickly you seemed to be jumping between extremes. “What made you change your mind?” Kylo asks cautiously, and you let out a breath as you turn to face him.

               “I didn’t,” you tell him. “I just realized, the Force dictates everything, right? If the Force wants me to come back here, I’m going to end up back here one way or another.”

               “The same could be said of seeing Ani and I again,” Kylo murmurs, as if he is suddenly starting to doubt you. “What happened to wanting to stay and leaving your mark on the galaxy?”

               “As you said, this place really isn’t that hard to find,” you say, using his own words against him, but Kylo doesn’t seem convinced as you sigh and stop to turn and face him. “Look, this is going to sound incredibly stupid, but choosing you seems like the easy option, like choosing love and my family is the easy way out, and it’s not, it’s not at all. Nothing about you has ever made my life easier. When I first met you, I never asked to get pregnant and raise your son. I never asked to wait years for you to return. I never asked for Poe to show up on my doorstep and take me back to the Resistance so I could learn about all the awful things that you’ve done from your mother. I didn’t ask for Snoke to manipulate you into manipulating me to manipulate the Resistance into manipulating you to bring you back to D’Qar. I never asked for you to try to kill me, or for you to take me away from the Resistance.”

               “Honestly, it feels like my life has been one giant struggle trying to see past all the mind games and manipulation, and if there’s one thing I realized is I’ve never had a choice in any of it, not once, and I’d like to, believe me, I’d like to at least pretend that I had one tiny sliver, one small iota of control over my own destiny, but I don’t, and the fact that I’m starting to feel like I do now almost makes me think that that, in itself, is too easy. So, no, I’m not going to stay here and pretend that I have things under control, only to find out that I’ve been royally screwed over and manipulated yet again, only to lose you and Ani in the process. The Force gave me Ani, gave _us_ Ani, and while I just _know_ that following you around the galaxy is going to cause me more drama and probably more trouble than you’re worth, I at least know what I’m getting into with you, and I’d rather choose the enemy I know rather than the enemy I don’t.” You pause for a moment as you catch your breath. “I’m sorry, that was probably a terrible way to end a declaration of love, but I don’t have any illusions about the person you are or the ways in which you’re probably going to make my life a living hell. You-“

               Kylo rushes forward and kisses you, deeply, putting both hands on either side of your face, allowing you to get lost in him momentarily as you wrap your arms around his neck, hugging his body close to you. This is what you wanted, more than control over your destiny, more than anything the Resistance could ever provide you. You wanted someone who would love you no matter how much chaos you caused, someone who would care about you unflinchingly and never give up on you, no matter what terrible things you did. Almost without realizing it, your positions had somehow become reversed. While he had once sought forgiveness from you, thought that you were going to leave him because of the terrible decisions he had made, now you were in that very same position, asking him to forgive you for something you didn’t know how to put into words.

               In either case, you can feel Kylo’s hand dip below your waistline, and that’s when you hear a familiar voice from the doorway.

               “Um, aren’t we supposed to be leaving soon?”

               You step away from Kylo quickly, embarrassed, as you turn to face Ani, who was standing in the doorway. “Yeah,” you say quickly, dropping your eyes to the floor. “Yeah, uh yeah, we’re leaving soon.”

               Ani crosses his arms over his chest. “You are coming with us, right?” he asks, and you can’t help but let a smile tug at the corners of your lips at his tone.

               “Of course,” you say automatically. “I know lately I haven’t exactly been there for you, for either one of you, but you’re both the most important people in my life and I’m not going to let the two of you go running off into the galaxy and getting yourselves caught up in all sorts of trouble if I’m not there to bail you out of it.”

               “I wouldn’t be the one to start trouble,” Ani says pointedly. “I leave that up to you and dad.”

               “And see where it’s got us?” you ask with a note of good humor in your voice. “That’s why the three of us need to stick together, so we don’t get caught up in any more trouble than we can handle. Right?” You turn to Kylo who just nods his head.

               “How much time do we have?” Ani asks, also turning to Kylo, prepared to follow his lead.

               “Enough, if we move quickly,” Kylo tells him. “Phasma is going to guarantee that Hux is distracted, and she’s already slipped word to the Controller that we are prepared to depart on a mission of a most confidential nature, so as not to draw too much suspicion to ourselves trying to leave the hangar.”

               “Why is Phasma helping us escape?” you ask, suddenly suspicious. “Isn’t she someone who swore her loyalty to the First Order over her friends?”

               “She did,” Ani replies with good humor in his voice. “That’s why she wants you gone. I don’t know what you did exactly, but she told us that you’re bad for the Order.” You turn to Kylo who simply nods his head in confirmation.

               “What?” you demand incredulously. “Is it because of that time she saw Hux kiss me, because I already explained-“

               “What?” Kylo demands, his anger flaring to the surface without any sort of preamble, and you automatically feel a heat rising to your cheeks as your jaw snaps together with a faint click.

               “Okay, so I’m guessing Phasma didn’t tell you about that, then?” you ask softly, and Ani claps his hands together loudly to draw your attention back to him.

               “Ten minutes,” he says loudly. “I’ll start getting packed. Please, can we just leave now and fight later?”

               “We’re not going to _fight_ ,” you say quickly, but you can tell by the way that Kylo narrows his eyes at you that there is definitely going to be some sort of a fight, either now or in the future.

               “Hurry up,” Ani calls as he runs into his room, and you can’t help but notice that he seems almost downright _excited_ by the prospect of leaving. Nervously, you turn your attention back to Kylo who seems to be mulling over something in his mind.

               “When did this happen?” Kylo asks seriously as he takes a step towards you, and you bite your lip as you look him up and down.

               “Okay, I’d offer to let you see it, but that might make it worse,” you say nervously as you take an involuntary step back away from him. “Okay, actually, I take that back, that actually makes it sound worse than it was. Hux just got really close to me and kissed my cheek, he was just trying to intimidate me, I think, and Phasma walked in and saw it as he was pulling away. He didn’t really mean anything by it, he was just trying to freak me out.” You drop your gaze before you look up at him again. “And probably trying to piss you off as well.”

               “Why am I only hearing about this now?” Kylo demands angrily.

               “Because, like I said, I kind of figured you would react this way,” you say pointedly, standing your ground.

               “Were you ever planning on telling me?” Kylo demands, and you shrug your shoulders.

               “It only happened the once, and there’s nothing more to tell,” you explain. “Honestly, Kylo, I can handle things myself. Maybe that’s why I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t want you charging in and trying to defend my honor or something. I appreciate the fact that you’re pissed at him for invading my personal space, but I can handle myself.”

               “Clearly,” Kylo snorts as he turns away from you. “Just get ready to go.”

               “No,” you say firmly, and Kylo lets out a snort of exasperation. “I mean, yes, I’m getting ready, but I don’t want to fight over this.”

               “Fine,” Kylo says as he starts to pack his own things. “Fine, we’re not fighting.”

               “Then can I borrow your scarf?” you ask softly, and Kylo sighs as he picks up one of his scarves and hands it to you. “Can you fix it for me?” You stand there and look up at him, a clear pout playing on your lips, and you can tell that Kylo is struggling and failing to hold onto his frustration. As he finishes fashioning his scarf around your neck, he reaches down and plants a gentle kiss against your lips, silently telling you that although he wasn’t happy that you kept this information from him, that he wasn’t going to let it impact your impending departure.

               “Why is it that every time I come in here you’re always all over each other?” Ani asks, a touch of impatience in his voice. “Please, can we please just go already?”

               “If your dad’s ready, I’m ready,” you tell him, looking intently at Kylo. “I don’t need to pack much. As soon as we’re off base, I don’t want to wear this stupid First Order uniform anymore. I miss the clothes I had back on Naboo.”

               “Just when I thought it was growing on you,” Kylo teases, and you let out a moan of exasperation.

               “Don’t even,” you reply. “I know you hate this thing and I wouldn’t be surprised if you took it outside and burned it the minute we’re clear of this base.” You pause for a moment as you adjust your belt on your waist, making sure that your lightsaber is firmly attached. “So where is it that we’re going, exactly?”

               “We’ll figure that out along the way,” Ani tells you, and you can’t help but let your jaw drop as you spin around to face Kylo.

               “You don’t even know where we’re going?” you demand, letting a hint of anger creep into your voice. “How do you not know where we’re going?”

               “We know where _not_ to go,” Kylo tells you simply. “We know the areas of the galaxy where the Republic and the Resistance have the most influence, so it won’t be too hard to stay away from them, and _you_ know the areas of the galaxy where the First Order has set up their new bases recently.”

               “I know some of them,” you tell him. “I didn’t exactly memorize all of them.” Kylo bites his lip as he looks at you uncertainly, but suddenly a new thought strikes you. “But I know someone who does.”

               “Who?” Kylo demands, and you bite your lip as you look up at him.

               “Shayne,” you reply. “Remember? He was one of the interpreters back on the Starkiller Base with me. Apparently he’s a, um, I don’t remember his title now, but he’s working with Hux to compile a list of all the resources in the galaxy and evaluate what the First Order is most and least interested in. It’s far from complete, but-“

               “Can you get your hands on that list?” Kylo asks you, his expression turning serious, and you nod your head quickly.

               “I can,” you reply. “I mean, at least, I think I can. I can _ask_. Hux put his whole operation under my charge, but I haven’t exactly checked in since then.”

               “Okay,” Kylo says firmly. “Ani and I will get down to the hangar and make sure our ship is secured. Meet us there as soon as you can.”

               “Of course,” you say quickly, nodding your head as you reach up to give Kylo a quick kiss. You turn quickly towards Ani and nod your head. “You do _exactly_ what Kylo tells you, do you understand?”

               Whereas Kylo looked determined, Ani, however, looked nervous. “I don’t like the idea of us splitting up,” he admits. “What if something happens?” He looks to Kylo without even trying to hide what he was thinking. You were one of the primary reasons you had to leave this place, and the person who seemed to be the most susceptible to whatever dark influence was occurring here. All you had to do was run to Hux and tell him that you were trying to escape, and you could make life unpleasant for everyone involved. You’d expose Kylo’s treason, Phasma’s betrayal, and Ani, well, at least he was still just a child, but you didn’t doubt that Hux would probably find some way to punish him as well. No matter what you had done in the past, you were not going to let Hux hurt Ani. You knew what _punishments_ Hux had employed in the past, and you were sure he was capable of much worse than he had ever done to you or Sadie.

               “I’ll meet you in the hangar,” you say firmly.

               “We won’t leave without you,” Kylo replies without the slightest bit of hesitation, and although you want to argue that he should, that he should just leave you there and take Ani and go in case you run into trouble, you can’t help but appreciate the sentiment as you smile back at him.

               “I won’t be long,” you say quickly as you turn on your heel and head out into the corridor. You walk quickly down to the hallway, although you can’t help but feel like you’re walking in the wrong direction. A part of you, a large part of you, wanted to remain on base, and that was why you knew you had to leave with Kylo. You had never, not once, put yourself and your wants before him or Ani, and you didn’t know when you had started, but you weren’t sure that that was a person that you wanted to become. Healthy or not, that was the person that you always were, putting your family before yourself, and you were not going to let that change now.

               You quickly find Shayne’s office and head inside, noticing Shayne addressing the small team of people who were seated in front of him. “Shayne,” you say quickly, lowering your head as you enter, making your expression seem as business-like as possible.

               “Oh hey,” Shayne says, seemingly in a much more colloquial mood than before. “I was wondering when you were going to stop by. I have a ton to show you-“

               “Unfortunately, a personal call is going to have to be saved for a later date,” you say briskly. “I’m here on orders from General Hux.”

               “Oh?” Shayne asks, raising an eyebrow. “Sending you around to do his dirty work? I heard that you’ve really stepped up beside him.”

               “I have,” you reply. “And right now, he wants the specifications for all of the new bases the First Order has sited. He wants a full list and the accompanying supporting data of the established forward operating bases and the new ones he just set up last week, as well as the scout reports on the most promising sits for bases slated for construction in the next three months.”

               “That’s going to take some time,” Shayne says uncertainly. “How quickly does he want that information?”

               “Two minutes ago,” you reply firmly, without missing a beat, and Shayne looks up at you with a clear look of concern on his face.

               “Well,” he begins hesitantly. “Lucky for you, I heard a little rumor recently that Hux was looking to set up three new bases within the next few months, so I narrowed down a list of the places he planned on resending scouts to in the near future…”

               “That’s fantastic,” you say, trying to quell the excitement in your voice. “If you can get me a copy of that list and anything else in the next, say, ten minutes, that would be great.”

               Shayne seems to notice the change in your voice as he turns around to look at you. “Hux giving you a hard time today?”

               You can’t help but stifle a laugh. “You have no idea.”

               “Welcome to the club.” You turn around to see a girl sitting at the desk behind you, her short blonde hair pulled into two pigtails on either side of her head as she clicks at something behind a console. You turn to Shayne and quirk up an eyebrow, but he just shrugs as he lets the girl work. “Compiling the information for you now, Commander. Anything else I can get for you?”

               You bite your lip as you think things over. You were the Commander here now. That was the role that Hux wanted you to play, and you finally got the control that you wanted. When you asked people to jump, they would respond by asking you how high. It was the sort of control that you had always wanted to have, or at least, always _thought_ you wanted to have, but you couldn’t have both that amount of influence with the First Order and Kylo Ren at the same time, and when you really thought about which you would rather have, the answer was actually quite obvious.

               “Actually,” you say after a momentary pause. “There is one last thing you can help me with.”

 

* * *

 

               Information in hand, you quickly scurried back down the corridor towards the hangar, feeling considerably lucky that they had almost all of the information that you needed on hand. The hardest part was finding the places that Hux was planning on setting up bases next, and Shayne already had all of that information out, as if he was simply waiting for you to walk in and take it. You considered the possibility that maybe the rumor he had heard had been slipped to him intentionally by Captain Phasma to help aid your escape, but you didn’t think she would be so bold as to risk it, and so you took your luck to be a sign from the Force that you were headed in the right direction, that you were supposed to leave the First Order base with Kylo and Ani, at least, until you turned the corner and ran straight into General Hux.

               “Just who I was looking for,” he muses, and you can’t help but swallow the knot that you didn’t realize had formed in your throat.

               “The same goes for you,” you tell him. “I’ve been looking for you. Kylo tells me that you dropped by. I need to talk to you about what happened with Captain Dameron. It appears-“ Your voice trails off as Hux holds up a hand to stop you.

               “Ren has already explained,” he says simply, and while you can’t help but feel a burst of trepidation, you let it slide as he notices the information clenched in your hand. “And what are you carrying?”

               “Reports,” you reply. “I know you were thinking about branching out to new bases, and I asked Shayne to cross-reference them with planets that had noted Resistance or Republic activity entering their airspace recently. I figured it would be beneficial to know where they plan on sending their own scouts. In the admittedly unlikely event that Captain Dameron should decide to visit one of them, though, it seems imperative that we develop a hasty plan of capture, just in case.”

               Hux simply raises an eyebrow. “And you are convinced that he will remain _Captain_ Dameron after he so recently tried to start a trade agreement for your safe return without any prior conferment from the other generals?”

               “The Resistance is a bit more lenient in terms of _mistakes_ ,” you say after a moment, trying to give nothing away.

               “If that is the case, it’s amazing they have been able to elude us as long as they have,” Hux murmurs under his breath. “We’ve yet to harness the resources to annihilate their base on D’Qar, especially after the new planetary shield they’ve managed to implement, but it’s only a matter of time before we find a way to crush their petty resistance once and for all.”

               “Their time will eventually come to an end,” you say idly, as if the whole topic of conversation bores you. “We may lack the resources to build another superweapon at the moment, but we have the plans, the knowledge, the means in order to do so. We’re playing the long game here. It’s easy for the Resistance to sit back and hide behind their defensive shields, but once we find a way to overcome them, they will not stand a chance and the First Order will bring the Republic to heel.”

               Hux fixes you with a sad smile that almost reaches his eyes. “I’m glad to see your devotion to our cause is unwavering,” he says simply. “Unfortunately, I’m starting to suspect that Ren’s oath to serve us is starting to waver.”

               “Is it?” you ask, knowing you would have to watch your words carefully. “To be fair, I’ve been so busy with you in these past few weeks that I haven’t had much time to speak with him. I know he seemed equally disappointed in my failure to secure any means of capturing Dameron, but his disappointment simply could be a mask for other things.”

               “Yes, he does seem rather jealous as of late,” Hux mutters under his breath. “This is why the First Order does not condone attachments, to ensure that the needs of the First Order are not overshadowed by petty emotions such as jealousy and love.” Hux brings his blue eyes up to meet your own, burning into you with a gaze that’s almost hypnotic, one that makes you almost believe that he can see through to your core. “If I was to have reason to suspect that Ren’s devotion to our cause was wavering, I would hear it from you first?”

               You’re about to tell him _of course_ for no other reason than to appease him, to tell him what he wanted to hear, before you realize while that was a viable option to maintain the game that you were playing, it was not a viable strategy if you wanted to win. “Is this your roundabout way of asking me if you should have anything to fear of Ren abandoning the First Order?”

               “Is that a question I should be asking?” Hux asks, and you bite your lip as you deflect his deflection.

               “The most important thing to Ren is Ani and I,” you tell him simply. “And we’re both here at the First Order under threat of death from the Republic. Ren would have no reason to betray the First Order in any way, so long as Ani and I are safe.”

               “And do you?” Hux asks, a look of good humor playing on his face. “Feel safe here?”

               “Well, considering all those TIE fighters and turbolasers outside, I don’t think the Resistance is getting anywhere close to us without being blasted out of the sky,” you say with a slight roll of your shoulders.

               Hux studies your face for a moment, and even though you know that Hux can’t sense your thoughts through the Force like Kylo can, you still put up a shield regardless, trying to give nothing away. Eventually, Hux seems satisfied with what he sees as he stands up a little taller. “You have a great deal of potential,” he tells you. “You have strength, and you can become powerful, more powerful than Ren, with the right allies.”

               You’re trying to figure out how to respond to that, trying to hedge the safe bet as to whether he wanted to hear that you were aligned with the First Order or with him, specifically, when your Force luck strikes again as you see Phasma coming down the length of the hall. “Sir,” she says immediately, and you can’t help but drop your gaze so you didn’t have to look at her. She thought you were bad for the Order, and while she was probably right about that, you couldn’t help but be disappointed that she was putting her loyalty to the First Order above her friendship with you. You had always thought that you had been friends, but maybe this was never the case. Maybe everything she did was to help benefit the First Order in some way, even if that was a perceived kindness to you. A part of you couldn’t help but think, though, that in a way, Phasma was sending you away for your own good, for your own protection, but you couldn’t force yourself to dwell more on it now in either case. “I need to speak to you on a matter of some urgency.”

               “Oh?” Hux asks, raising an eyebrow as he turns back to you. “Shall we be off then?”

               You hesitate for a moment, and you realize that this was your point of no return. You could, right now, just go with Hux and let Kylo and Ani take off themselves, or you could take advantage of Phasma’s distraction and make a quick exit. Now, the choice really was, quite literally, in your hands, as you swallow a deep breath and stretch out your hand, offering the report for Hux to take.

               “Here,” you say quickly. “I actually still have something else I have to wait up on from Enson, but you go ahead. I’ll catch up.” Hux merely nods in your direction as he heads down the hall, but Phasma gives you a long, lingering look through her chrome helmet before she turns on her heel and follows him wordlessly. You take a deep breath as you watch them go, before you turn and head off in the other direction, heading for the hangar as quickly as possible without flat out running and drawing attention to yourself. At first you’re concerned and daunted at the recollection of the size of the hangar, and you’re almost thankful to see Ani waiting for you as soon as the doors to the hangar open.

               “Where were you?” he hisses. “Father’s getting furious.”

               “When have you known him not to get furious?” you whisper with a light shrug of your shoulders. “Either way, I’m here now, and Phasma is keeping Hux distracted, like she said. Where do we need to go?”

               “This way,” Ani instructs as he leads you through a side hangar. “We’ll be heading off in a commerce shuttle that the First Order captured from the Republic. I’ve been training on them, so it’ll draw less attention that way; they’ll think I just headed out for another routine practice exercise.”

               “Have you disabled the tracker?” you ask immediately, and Ani nods his head.

               “Father did,” he replies. He looks like he’s about to ask something else, but holds his question as he leads you up to an awaiting shuttle, and you scamper up the boarding ramp as quickly as your feet will possibly take you, feeling a new sense of exhilaration flood through your veins at the thought of escaping. You could only hope that if the First Order did somehow shoot you out of the sky, that hopefully at least the adrenaline rush would make the whole thing a lot less painful.

               “Where were you?” Kylo demands as Ani sinks into the seat next to him in the cockpit, and you make a face as you take a seat in the back.

               “I ran into Hux on my way out,” you tell him, and now it’s Kylo’s turn to make a face as Ani begins the start-up procedure to take off as soon as possible.

               “Any trouble?” Kylo asks, and you just shake your head from side to side.

               “Did that guy give you the information he was supposed to?” Ani asks as he turns around to face you, and you sit up as you reach down into the waistband of your pants, untucking your shirt to reveal what you had concealed there.

               “Hux got the original,” you tell him with a shrug. “Fortunately, I asked Shayne to make a copy.” You see Kylo about to argue, and so you quickly speak up before he can say anything more. “He saw me carrying it. There wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it, and besides, this is a list of places we want to _avoid_ , isn’t it? It’s not like I gave him a list of places where we were headed so he can just cross them off the list one by one if he decides to try and track us down.”

               “Do you really think they’re going to come looking for us?” Ani asks, and you puff a breath out of your cheeks as you settle back in your chair.

               “I’m not sure,” you admit after a moment. “I mean, Poe meant well, but he had pretty terrible timing. It’s more than possible that Hux thinks that we’re heading back to the Resistance, which means he’s going to have his sights set on D’Qar.”

               “He knows I can’t go back there,” Kylo says quietly as he shakes his head, and you fall silent as Ani exchanges words with the Controller. Unfortunately, this only brings back memories of how you had once trained with Poe, and you can’t help the feeling of homesickness that suddenly floods you as Kylo turns back to look at you.

               _I’m fine,_ you tell him quickly.

               _I know,_ Kylo replies, and you quirk your eyebrow up as you look at him. _If you truly miss the pilot again, it means you’re coming back to yourself._

Your jaw opens and shuts with a click, and you weren’t sure how to tell Kylo that it didn’t mean anything that Poe had been the one to make you realize that you were headed on a dangerous path to the dark side instead of him, when he had been right by your side, watching you descend deeper and deeper without quite knowing what to say in order to help bring you back to yourself. _I love_ you, you remind him pointedly, and as the corner of Kylo’s lip quirks up in a smile, you can’t help but let another question jump to the forefront of your mind. _Is there still light in me?_

Kylo looks surprised by the question, and you glance away uncomfortably. _Yes,_ he replies firmly before he turns back around to the front to help Ani. _Yes, you can always find your way back to the light._

This sounds extremely profound coming from Kylo, and you don’t realize until now that you were basically living your lives in reverse. You hadn’t been there to watch Kylo’s slow descent to the dark side, but you were there with him when he had decided, not exactly to embrace the light side, but to find a sort of balance between the two. You had been balanced, albeit probably more inclined towards the light than the dark with Rey’s influence, and you had allowed yourself to be dragged down into the dark, with Kylo feeling as helpless to help you control your own emotions as you had been to him on the Starkiller Base. Either way, you had both been able to find a comfortable balance with each other when you were back on Naboo, and you hoped that that would remain true again now. You were headed into the galaxy with no one to rely on but each other, and you knew you could trust Kylo to do the best he could for you, and for Ani. He would not permit himself to do anything less, and you were ready to echo those sentiments in turn.

               “Control, Fanatic two-one-one-seven,” Ani says as he clicks in the comlink, and you tilt your head to the side as you listen to him speak like an actual pilot. You didn’t know where he had learned this from, but you had to admit that you felt proud of him nonetheless. Ani learning how to pilot his own vessel could only be advantageous for both him and you; you weren’t quite sure why you hadn’t realized that before. You wanted to keep your family together, but keeping Ani locked away, sealed in his room, was not the way to go about it. He would only resent you for it, and if there was anything you didn’t want to happen, it was that.

               “Go ahead, Fanatic,” the Controller replies, and you silently hold your breath as you wait for Ani to respond. As much as you hated to admit it, getting the three of you off the _Propitiate_ was all in Ani’s hands now.

               “Control, P-M-one-three-seven-two, commanding Fanatic under instruction, requesting departure clearance to proceed with Special Task Five, fighter escort is _not_ required at this time. Hyperspace horizon will be eight-zero kilometers.” You smile as you listen to the sound of the flight jargon leave Ani’s mouth, and idly you wonder what it would have been like if you had let Poe train him after all. He would definitely have been granted his own callsign, not the cold serial tag of the First Order, but you couldn’t think of what it could be. You wondered what type of name he would have received if you had stayed at the Resistance, but then again, Poe had named you _Moonstaff_ , and you weren’t exactly eager to see what he would have called Ani. _Moon-quarter-staff?_

               “Acknowledged, P-M. Noted horizon of eight-zero kilometers. De-energizing locking clamps, you’re cleared for departure from centerline portal. Terminal egress is authorized along bulkhead seven-two-six-one on the port beam.”

               You feel a sharp _thud_ under the shuttle, and it suddenly jerks upwards into a floating position. Once it stabilizes, Ani finishes up with the Controller. “Control, Fanatic is aweigh. Departing via centerline portal.”

               Ani pulls the shuttle up, but the hangar doors ahead are shut. You tilt your head to the side in confusion, momentarily concerned that your plan of escape has failed after all, before Ani turns around and heads further into the ship and out through an opening that led to a tunnel down the center of the ship. As Ani flies down the tunnel, you can’t help but notice the rows upon rows of laser batteries that line the tunnel, and you can’t help but realize that Hux had really taken your advice to heart and make the _Propitiate’s_ outer defenses as impenetrable as possible.

               Finally, Ani makes a quick turn to the left, up and out of the ship and into the vast expanse of space. “So that was easier than I thought it would be,” Ani breathes as you head out into the open galaxy, letting the titanic _Propitiate_ dissolve into the darkness of the galaxy behind you. “I thought for sure that would end in us being chased into hyperspace by TIE Fighters.”

               “Sometimes I guess we just get lucky,” you admit with an idle shrug of your shoulders. “If Force sensitive people are naturally inclined to be luckier, and there’s three of us on board, then you can only imagine that we’d have a huge amount of luck.”

               Ani nods his head forward and seems to accept this explanation as he begins to head out of the Unknown Regions in favor of the charted spaces of the galaxy. “So where exactly are we headed then? We have enough fuel to take us just to D’Qar, but I figure we don’t really want to head back there.”

               “No,” you say firmly as Kylo nods his head in silent agreement. “No, not D’Qar. We need to head somewhere that’s free of any sort of political affiliation, at least as much as possible.”

               “Is Shyri’Kala on the list?” Kylo asks after a moment, and you hesitate as you remember that Shyri’Kala was a mostly peaceful planet that consisted primarily of water and dozens of smaller islands. It would be easy to find a remote beach and hide out there for a while, but it was a notorious place for smugglers and shady dealings due to the furtive nature of the islands at large.

               Regardless, you keep your concerns silent as you scan the list, and you’re not exactly disappointed when you see it’s on there. “Sorry, it’s on the list. It’s a possibility, but considering Hux might think we’re headed there, we should probably find someplace else to go, at least for a while.”

               “There’s Terradune,” Ani pipes up. “Didn’t we stop to refuel there a few years ago?”

               “Not Terradune,” Kylo says quickly. Your eyes scan the list, and you don’t see it, but if Kylo didn’t want to go back there for one reason or another, then you trusted his judgement. For all you knew, he had past memories of that planet that he cared not to relive, and you didn’t want to go to a place that had uncomfortable memories for any of you. No, you wanted to make a fresh start, to find a quiet place in the galaxy to simply live without having to worry about the constant threat to your safety day in and day out.

               “We could always head back to Tatooine,” Ani offers. “You know I always wanted to go back there.”

               “No,” you say firmly. “Granted it’s far enough away from the Republic and the First Order doesn’t care much for it, but we need to find somewhere that’s comfortable as well as safe. Tatooine isn’t going to be much help if we’re jumping down each other’s throats all the time.”

               “She’s right,” Kylo admits as he runs the edge of his thumb along his lower lip, thinking things over. “A decision doesn’t need to be made today. We have enough fuel to last us for several days before we have to stop, and we should have enough distance between us and the _Propitiate_ by then in order to catch our breath.”

               “We’ll figure it out,” you assure him as you lean forward to place a hand comfortingly on his arm. Kylo leans slightly into the contact, and you can’t help but smile. “I mean, with our combined skills, we’re probably powerful enough to take on anything in the galaxy, as long as we stick together,” you tell them. “And we are a family. We _will_ stick together.”

               “As long as we eventually arrive at a place where I can get the materials to make my own lightsaber, I don’t care where we go,” Ani offers, and you can’t help but laugh at that.

               “All things in good time,” Kylo tells him as he turns back around to face you. You can see a spark in his eyes, and for once, you’re reminded of how happy you were with him back on Naboo, when Ani was still a child. If there was one happy memory you could relive with him, it would be that time back on the lake, with the waterfalls, when you laid in his arms, with your head against your chest, and just let the cares of the galaxy pass you by. Returning to Naboo no longer seemed like a valid option, but Kylo was there, and deep down in your heart you knew that Kylo would always, always be there. From the moment you met on the Starkiller Base, you had no idea your destinies would be intertwined this deeply, this passionately, but thinking back, you wouldn’t have had it any other way.

               “Together then?” you ask as he takes your hand in his, and he bows his head in the smallest of nods.

               “Together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and then they all lived happily ever after. The- 
> 
> Wait. The story's not over yet, but if this does seem like a conclusion of sorts, this is the end of Act II. I originally said at the end of Act I that _Glow_ would be a three act play, but my editors are telling me that it's pulling into the realm of four, but that's okay!! I've been hearing a lot of people tell me lately that they don't want this story to end, and if so, good news, we're not even at the halfway mark!! (but we are close). The story is still being written, and I'm close to 400k words now. In other words...
> 
> Kylo and Reader's (and Ani's!) adventure does not end here!! They may have escaped the _Propitiate_ , but where will they go? What will they do, now that they're on the run from the Resistance, the Republic, and the First Order? What happened to Reader? What was the dark entity that was manipulating her, and, more importantly, is the Reader going to start coming back to herself, or has she been irreparably changed and haunted by the things that she's done? And when will she start to pay the consequences for those actions? 
> 
> AND WILL ANI FINALLY GET A LIGHTSABER? All these questions and more are coming up, so stay tuned and check back on Tuesday for the next part of the adventure. (Aren't you so happy I gave you a relatively happy conclusion before the weekend/Game of Thrones tomorrow night? After so many feels as of late, I know you guys can only take so much, and sometimes things really can work out in our Reader's favor...at least for a little while!) ;) 
> 
> Until then, cheers!!


	31. Chapter 31

               When Ani was a baby, Ladson had always described him as cranky. It seemed as good an adjective as any to describe his sudden shifts in temper, how one moment he could be lying there, calm and composed, and all someone would have to do was sneeze in order to ignite his frustration and send him into a full blown firestorm of insufferable emotion. Kylo Ren had been that way, once upon a time, but since Snoke’s defeat he had learned more or less to control his now infrequent bursts of rage. There were times when he slipped, of course, and old habits that were so deeply rooted to his core rose back up to the surface, but for the most part he was _tired_ , unbearably fatigued by the weight of all the atrocities he had committed, and it seemed that he almost lacked the energy to be as perpetually angry as he had once been.

               Either that, or he had seemingly transferred all of his anger to you, as you were, for all intents and purposes, cranky. You had never been before, and if someone had told you years ago that you would have violent fits of mood, maybe not as frequently, but as extreme as Kylo’s rages were, you wouldn’t have believed them. Of course, you didn’t lash out at them or at inanimate objects like Kylo did. You didn’t even cry or lash out like Ani did as a baby. Instead, you turned your anger deep down inside yourself where it festered, snapping at anyone who tried to ask you what was wrong. In honest truth, though, you had no idea what was wrong. Ever since you had stepped foot on the _Propitiate_ , something darker had taken hold of you, and that darkness had never left. Kylo told you it would take some time to come back to your old self again, but you no longer knew who that person was. You couldn’t even remember what your life had been like before you had stepped foot on the Starkiller Base, couldn’t remember a time when you had lived without Kylo Ren, with the exception, of course, being your time spent at the Resistance base, and you preferred not to dwell on that at all.

               You started having more and more nightmares lately, and you were almost frustrated with Kylo for mentioning that you were having them, because it was only after he had brought it to your attention that you actually started remembering them when you awoke. Part of the problem was that these nightmares weren’t nightmares at all, but dreams, seemingly almost amounting to visions of an alternate reality where you had stayed on the Resistance base with Poe and Finn and Rey and never thought twice about Kylo Ren after he was extradited to the Republic, where it led to his subsequent death. Kylo was never far away from you when you woke up, confirming your fears were unfounded and that these were just dreams that had no basis in reality, but you couldn’t help but be afraid that something of that nature would occur nonetheless. Still, you didn’t know when or where if it would happen, if it at all, and the consideration that you were completely powerless to stop an event that you were not sure might or might not even happen made you, more or less, cranky.

               The commerce shuttle that you were on wasn’t terribly roomy, but it wasn’t terrible by any means either. The cockpit was of a decent size, set up with four seats with enough leg room to make it comfortable to just lounge about in while you traversed the galaxy. The shuttle only had one major bedroom and a series of cots holed up in another room, which Ani found most uncomfortable, and so most of the time he simply stayed in the cockpit, throwing his feet over the side of the chair while he dozed. You worked in shifts, constantly making sure that there was always someone in the cockpit keeping an eye on things, while someone else rested and someone else made food, although to tell the truth, that person was always Ani, and on more than one occasion you and Kylo considered shaking his shoulder and waking him in order to ensure that you ate that day. Even if you didn’t, though, it wasn’t as though it was that big of a deal. Portions on the ship were limited, and although Kylo assured you that there was always less than scrupulous means of getting more, you weren’t quite sure how to feel about it. You had never truly gone hungry, but you remembered stories that Rey told you, about how she once got lost in a sandstorm as a child and went almost two full weeks with barely any food because she had eaten most of it on the first night. Even while you were back on Naboo, Phasma always kept a constant supply of food, somehow, and if you happened to leave the planet, there were always other stores of food that the First Order had provided for you. Now that you had cut all of your political affiliations, you were really and truly on your own and you would have to make do, somehow.

               And for the first thirty-one days, you did okay. You stopped on random planets in the corners of the galaxy whenever you needed to get fuel, Kylo staying safely hidden on board for fear of being recognized, while you and Ani surveyed the surrounding areas. Although you had told Kylo that you had disposed of your old First Order uniform, it had been custom made just for you and fit you perfectly, and so you kept it hidden in the bottom of your pack where you hoped he wouldn’t go looking. Regardless, you were back to wearing some of your old tunics like you used to wear on the Resistance base. At first you had tried to go back to wearing your flowing, sheer fabrics that you had worn back on Naboo, but space was much too cold, and even with your normal clothes, you still couldn’t help but bundle one or more of Kylo’s scarves around your shoulders in a vain attempt to keep yourself warm.

               You had never minded the cold before, but you were starting to wake up every morning with frozen fingers clenched into fists at your sides, and no amount of massaging your palms was getting circulation back into them. Even Kylo’s warm hands seemed cool after a while, and you supposed that was at least a small part of the reason that Ani convinced you to go back to Tatooine. You didn’t want to, you _really_ didn’t want to, especially with the recollection that you had fought with Kylo so much there, even though you couldn’t remember what you had fought about. Regardless, Ani said that he had a Force vision from Anakin saying that it would be safe there, and while a small part of you doubted him, you and Kylo decided to follow Ani’s lead all the same. Ani was still a child, but eventually he would have to grow up and make his own decisions about his future in the galaxy, and if he really wanted to go to Tatooine, the least you and Kylo could do was follow him to make sure that he didn’t get into any trouble that he couldn’t bail himself out of while he was there.

               You took solace in the fact that Kylo said that you would remain on board the ship, and while part of you was eager to get out and stretch your legs, you knew that Tatooine was not the place to do it. The shuttle itself was a commerce shuttle, so it did have an expansive cargo hold in the back, even complete with a mini prisoner bay you supposed they used to lock up inebriated crew members considering how it was positioned right next to a small, makeshift shower, but it seemed almost creepy to see such a large space so deserted, with scuff marks and possible blood stains marking the floor, and so you chose to avoid that area as much as possible. You did, however, occasionally use that area to swing your lightsaber around, making sure that you hadn’t forgotten how to use it, trying to keep your skills sharp. You knew you could always practice with Kylo, but so much had happened on the _Propitiate_ and your mood had been so unstable that you didn’t even want to pretend to fight him. Kylo, too, seemed concerned with how you might react, and so you both simply let it go, putting Ani’s needs first in the hopes that things between you would eventually settle themselves out and you would return to a comfortable rhythm in time.

               The first few days on Tatooine were tense. Kylo had elected to stay behind to avoid any chance of being recognized while you and Ani went to scope things out in town, but you had been so off put by the coarse sand that kept blowing in your eyes that you eventually turned back. Kylo was, well, less than pleased that you let Ani go off by himself on a foreign planet, but you simply argued that he was going to have to learn how to fend for himself at some time or another. You could tell that Kylo wanted to say more, and you knew you definitely had more to say on the subject, but your moods were both tense and you both decided it was best to stay silent to avoid any sort of major conflict that neither of you really wanted to have.

               After that, Ani had gone out on his own every day, scavenging out new bits of food or treasures to bring back to the ship, and within a week, he had already won an outdated pod in a bit of gambling. While you were proud that Ani was utilizing his natural advantages of the Force in order to survive, Kylo was much more apprehensive about it than you were. He was concerned that overuse of the Force would get him noticed, but Ani assured you both that he was being careful, and by the end of the next week, he had amassed quite a collection of parts that he and Kylo used to help fix up his pod while you looked on. It was nice to see them working together, nice to see Kylo helping him and supporting him, even if he didn’t entirely agree with what he was doing. Ani wanted to race, not in any of the bigger top-speed races that would draw attention to himself as a human with impossible reaction times, but the smaller, slower, back alley races that were known for being, in a word, rigged. Ani, however, had a strong trust in the Force, and felt that if he simply relied on the Force, there was no way he could lose, and besides, money meant getting food and fuel and other resources you would need to survive.

               And so, on your seventeenth day on Tatooine, Ani set out for his first pod race while you and Kylo stayed behind. While Ani seemed excited and overconfident, Kylo, on the other hand, couldn’t have been more flustered, constantly pacing around the cockpit as he waited for Ani to return for the day. “I don’t like this,” he says as he stalks back and forth in front of you. You were sitting with your legs thrown over the side of the chair, lazily turning the hilt of your lightsaber over and over in your hands, getting used to the familiar weight of the Mandalorian iron in case you ever needed to use it again.

               “It’s fine,” you say dismissively, without glancing in his direction. “Seriously, Ani’s fine. You should be more proud of him. He’s been doing really well so far.”

               “I _am_ proud of him,” Kylo says, making a visible effort to control the irritation in his voice. “He is doing exceedingly well in making the best of our circumstances.”

               You can’t help but frown as you glance up at him. “I mean, we could always head back to the First Order if you don’t want him running around on Tatooine,” you say with a shrug of your shoulders, and Kylo narrows his eyes at you.

               “Do you want to return?” he asks. To be fair, you hadn’t had any sort of real outburst in weeks, although, then again, you and Kylo had been sort of circling each other, trying not to say too much to each other that would cause things to erupt into any sort of argument. You knew it would have to happen eventually, but you preferred to think that it would happen later and later until it never happened at all.

               “You know I don’t,” you reply simply. “I want to stay here with you and Ani.”

               “Then there’s no problem,” Kylo says, his jaw clicking shut, and you can’t help but breathe out through your nose as you roll your eyes.

               “You say it like there’s some sort of a problem,” you murmur under your breath, and Kylo turns to glare at you. “Seriously, if we have a problem I’d rather just get it all out on the table now, rather than when Ani gets back.”

               “Is there a problem?” Kylo asks, and you can’t help but let a small groan escape you as you pull yourself into a seated position.

               “You act like there is, and to tell the truth, there probably is,” you say evenly. “And I suppose it’s my fault-“

               “It’s not your fault,” Kylo says quickly.

               “It is my fault,” you reply evenly. “It is, because if I was strong enough to figure out whatever was going on, we never would have had to leave. I was the only one affected by whatever was going on.”

               “Ani was starting to feel it too,” Kylo tells you. “Whatever it was, it might have been targeting him originally, and he was able to resist it somehow.”

               “At least you were able to sense it after a while,” you tell him, a bit bitterly, ashamed at your own shortcoming. “I was weak. I just sort of let it take over me before I even realized what was happening.”

               “It’s not your fault,” Kylo repeats. “You were distracted by other things.” You can’t help but notice the twinge of bitterness in his voice, and you can’t help but gnaw on your lower lip as you glance up at him.

               “Is this about Hux?” you ask nervously. “Still?”

               “No,” Kylo says firmly. “I wouldn’t put anything past him. He clearly did it to see if you would tell me, and you didn’t.”

               “I should have,” you admit, although you can’t hide the slight whine in your voice. “I know I should have, it was a mistake, and it won’t happen again. Why are you still holding that against me?”

               “I’m not,” Kylo says firmly, but even as he says it, he looks away from you.

               “Then what?” you ask him. “Something is clearly not okay between us-“

               “I know that,” Kylo snaps at you, and you can’t help but flinch. “I know something’s wrong, and I don’t know what it is or how I can fix it. You think I wanted any of this? If it was up to me, we’d still be back on Naboo. It’s what I want, it’s what you want, but unfortunately that can’t happen so now Ani is out there risking his life for us, while we just sit here, and you don’t seem concerned about it at all.”

               “There’s nothing I can do,” you tell him. “I want to control things, you get mad at me. I take a step back and let Ani do what he wants, and you get mad at me. Is there a way I can actually win here, or are you just going to be mad at me for everything I do now?”

               “It’s because you’re navigating between extremes,” Kylo says with a sigh, as if this should be obvious. “You used to have a comfortable sense of balance. I don’t know what happened to you. When you first came back to me, you seemed so confident, so sure of yourself, and now-“ He shakes his head, as if he can’t help but think it’s his own doing that made you this way, that being around him for so long had finally turned you into his worse sense of self.

               “You don’t know that,” you tell him firmly. “Even if you had just left me back on the Resistance base, things might have still happened the same way. Ani said even back then that I was going to be tempted by the dark side. It would have happened either way.”

               “At least there you would have had a better chance at fighting it,” Kylo says bitterly. “Do you think my mother or the scavenger or any of your friends would have permitted you be seduced by the dark side of the Force?”

               “They might have not even noticed at first,” you say quietly. “Like you said, it’s subtle. You know me better than anyone. If you couldn’t sense it right away, then no one else could have.” Kylo’s silent for a moment as he thinks, and that’s when you pick up on something through the Force that you hadn’t really considered before. “Are you serious?” you demand. “You didn’t fail me. Thinking that Poe would have noticed that something was off with me right away is childish.”

               “He hasn’t seen you in five years,” Kylo shoots back. “And yet the moment you see him, that’s when you realize for yourself that something is wrong. Even if I told you that I thought something was wrong, would you have listened?”

               “I don’t want to do this,” you say firmly as you bury the heels of your palm into your temples. “I don’t want to have this conversation.”

               “I know what you dream about at night,” Kylo tells you. “You want to be back at the Resistance. You think you’d be better off there-“

               “But I don’t,” you say loudly. “I can’t control what I dream about, Kylo. You should know that better than anyone. Yeah, maybe if we could go back to the Resistance together we could have the best of both worlds, but you know there’s not a chance that that can happen.”

               “And you blame me for that,” Kylo says quietly. “Because of what I’ve done-“

               “I don’t,” you say firmly. “I don’t, not anymore.”

               “But you should,” Kylo says as he whirls on you. “You should care that I’ve hurt you, that I’ve abandoned you, that I’ve done such terrible things even my own mother won’t forgive me.”

               “It’s not just me,” you say quietly. “Whatever happened on the _Propitiate,_ it affected you too, or you wouldn’t be saying things like this.” Kylo turns away, and you get to your feet as you confront him. “We were _past_ all this, Kylo. We were happy. What changed?”

               “I don’t know,” Kylo admits as he runs a hand through his hair.

               “Things were good,” you repeat. “I just, I don’t understand. Things were working, and now it seems like we just can’t get things back together.”

               “I don’t know,” Kylo says as he shakes his head. “I think I’ve been stuck on this ship too long. I need to head out.”

               “You sure it’s safe?” you ask quietly, and Kylo gives a half-hearted shrug.

               “I’m going to find Ani,” he tells you. “Just to watch over him and make sure he’s all right.”

               “Ani’s fine,” you tell him, but make no move to stop him as he prepares to leave. “Do you want me to come with you?”

               Kylo just shakes his head from side to side as he adjusts his scarf around his head to make a makeshift cover for his face from the sand. “Someone should stay with the ship,” he murmurs, and you nod your head quickly as you turn your head aside.

               “Wait,” you say suddenly, and Kylo turns back to you as you run towards him, pressing your lips up against his. He smiles as he strokes your hair back and away from your face, cradling your cheek in one hand. “Whatever’s happened, we’ll work through this. We’ll work this out, won’t we?”

               “We will,” Kylo says softly, and although you’re not quite sure if he means it, you try to let his words comfort you all the same as he heads out of the cockpit and out into the harsh sands of Tatooine to go find Ani, leaving you with only your thoughts for company.

               You had Kylo, and you had Ani, but you didn’t have anyone else. Then again, neither did Kylo. Sometimes you wondered if you were just two people that had met in the galaxy under ordinary circumstances if you would still be together today. You couldn’t be sure, and you absolutely hated the fact that you weren’t sure. You were his, you had always been his, and yet lately you couldn’t help but feel as though you were just two people who were thrown together by circumstance and nothing more. If you never had Ani, would he have ever come back for you? A large part of you doubted it. Ani had been the primary reason that Poe had even picked you up to bring you to the Resistance, anyway, and without him, you didn’t know where you would be. Light side or dark side, you probably wouldn’t have had much use for the Force at all sitting pretty back on your old academia with Sadie and Ladson, letting the rest of your life pass you by.

               The thought depresses you, and as much as you really didn’t want to step outside into the harsh twin suns of Tatooine, you couldn’t stay on that abysmal ship any longer, especially not by yourself. Even still, as soon as you disembark the boarding ramp, you’re immediately struck by tiny pellets of sand striking you in your face, getting in your eyes, and you quickly tried to adjust your hood the way Kylo did in order to keep out the worst of it as you headed out towards the town.

               You had first thought that you were only a short distance away, but as you kept walking with no sign of anything, you were beginning to think that you were going in the wrong direction. Even still, you decided to keep on your present course, knowing that it was easier to turn around and head back to the ship if you were lost, rather than heading left or right and ending up in a whole different direction than where you had initially started. You could only imagine how angry Kylo would be if you walked off and left the ship without his direct instructions, and so you quickly tried to channel the Force to see if you could feel him nearby, but you couldn’t truly get a good sense of focus with all the damned sand particles flying into your field of vision, and thus, you kept walking…

               …and walking and walking and walking. By now your throat was parched, your skin felt like it was cracked and peeling around your face, and your eyes felt like they were rubbed dry from all the sand. You kept walking, unsure whether it was better to keep going or turn around, but even as you turned in a slow circle all around you, you couldn’t but feel as though the wind was blowing the sand with more force than it had before, blowing it up into the air and letting it fall down around you like harsh pellets of rain as it spun around through the air, and that was when the thought struck you that you had somehow, unknowingly, stumbled into the middle of a sandstorm. You cursed loudly to yourself, and even though you had the scarf tightly sealed around your nose and mouth with one hand, you could still feel coarse grains of sand work their way onto your tongue.

               You quickly bowed your head forward and kept walking, eyes squeezed tight against the coarse grains that had by now worked themselves into the corners of your eyes, and you were sure that your tear ducts would have washed them away if they hadn’t run dry themselves. Neither Kylo nor Ani would ever forgive you if you died in the middle of a sandstorm, and you would never forgive yourself if you had truly let yourself succumb to the elements. You had left the First Order because you feared something dark and evil was trying to take advantage of you, and instead, you had run away only to be struck down by a billion particles of sand stuffing their way into every open orifice in your body.

               You had been so caught up with trying to simply walk your way out of this dust storm, that you hardly noticed that you were being followed. You hadn’t sensed anyone while you were walking, simply because you had been so concerned with bracing yourself against the gritty sand blistering against the sensitive skin of your cheeks, but you were being followed nonetheless. In fact, you were so caught up in trying to find shelter, or water, or _something_ , that you almost missed the signature click of a blaster rifle behind you as you dropped to the ground and rolled out of the way, sending the bolt driving into the sand beside you.

               It seemed to be a low shot aimed towards your legs, which could only mean that they wanted you captured, not dead, and you thanked the Force for small miracles as you rolled over onto your front. This next shot, however, was headed straight for your head, and you quickly lifted one hand and held the bolt in place as you scrambled to your feet. You could feel yourself becoming almost lightheaded as you held it, before you took a few steps away and let it crash into the ground beside you.

               You turned all around you, but all you could see was the swirling bits of sand. Suddenly, you thought you saw it, a pair of brown boots and tan pants that blended into the surrounding area, perfect camouflage for this planet. You want to call out to them, tell them that you’re really not in the mood to fight, but you didn’t know who they were working for, and you weren’t exactly eager to get a mouthful of sand, and so you just grit your teeth as you used the Force to knock them back. You can hear a grunt as they go down, and for a moment you don’t do anything, trying to figure out what _to_ do. Should you fight them? Kill them? Make a run for it?

               Your throat was seriously parched, you were beginning to develop a headache, and so while your instincts told you to get out of there as fast as you can, you knew Kylo would not be happy if someone was trying to hunt you down and you didn’t even stop to see who it was. You approach them cautiously, one hand on the hilt of your lightsaber still attached to your belt, and the other hand raised in the air in front of you, waiting to use the Force to deflect another bolt from their blaster if it came to that. You didn’t know how much you were still influenced by the dark side, and you weren’t sure you were ready to take another life unless you absolutely had to.

               Suddenly a blaster bolt fires out of the sand, and as you skirt your body to one side to dodge it, giving it wide birth, another one shoots you in the side of the leg as you drop to one knee. You suddenly realize that the first shot was meant to serve as a distraction, and you grit your teeth as you let a familiar, aggressive energy work its way up inside you. You stay low, waiting for the figure to approach as you feel a creeping sense of numbness flood through the back of your calf, and as the person starts to approach you, you jump up and try to knock them back, your fist aimed at their jaw. Instead, they catch your fist in one hand, moving their elbow to your chest as they knock you back. Even still, your other arm catches their side and you both go sprawling into the sand.

               You quickly get to your feet as your opponent rolls over onto their back as they start to get up, and you can see that your opponent is wearing some kind of a mask or a helmet that was probably keeping most of the sand out and keeping their vision relatively clear. You know, immediately, that you need that helmet, and as you rush forward and plant a well-placed kick into their abdomen, they release a very masculine sounding grunt as they fall back into the sand. “Going to need that,” you say quickly as you reach down for the mask, but suddenly the figure grabs your arm in both hands as he twists it and throws you to the side. It’s such an amateur, rookie move, leading with your arm extended, and you silently curse yourself for letting yourself fall out of your familiar rhythm.

               The masked man quickly gets back up, and you’re at least pleased to see that the blaster has been knocked out of his hands. Regardless, he had apparently hit you in the side of your shin with some sort of numbing agent, and you could feel an icy chill spreading up your calf to your knee and your thigh, working from the inside out. You honestly couldn’t remember if this was new technology that the First Order had been developing under Phasma’s charge, or if this was something that the Resistance or the Republic had created. Even the man’s outfit didn’t give much away, considering either side would probably want to blend in with their environment in order to take you out, and wearing the black First Order uniform would make him stick out like a sore thumb against the signature clothing of this arid climate.

               As the man comes back at you again, you swing your leg around into a firm kick, meaning to knock him back, but your leg isn’t bending the way it’s supposed to, and the man catches your leg as he literally pushes you off your other foot, and you topple unceremoniously to the ground. You can feel the tingling sensation start to spread into your hip and down to your toe now, and as you start to stand you realize you can’t do much. The man seems to sense this as well, as he turns his back from you to pick up his blaster. You take advantage of the lull to pull your lightsaber off of your belt and hold it out in your hand.

               “I don’t want to hurt you,” you tell him, losing track of his whereabouts through a heavy wave of blown sand. “But I-“ You suddenly let out a shriek as the blaster bolt emerges from the pistol. You didn’t even hear the click of the trigger, and thus you had no time to react as the bolt strikes against your clenched hand. You immediately drop your lightsaber as a burning sensation sweeps through your fingers. They won’t bend properly, and while you can close them into your palm, you can’t curl your fingers together to make a fist, and you can hear your heartbeat flooding into your ears as the man suddenly grabs you from behind, his large arms crossing over your chest. “No-“

               You start to struggle with everything you have, especially as you can feel his hand gliding towards the separation between your shirt and your pants, gloved hands gliding across your smooth, bare skin and exposing it to the harsh elements all around you. “No,” you gasp again, kicking and flaying for all your worth, and you think you know what’s about to happen when suddenly you feel a sharp prick against the area just above your hip bone. You momentarily stop struggling to see a small silver, metallic handle of an injection needle protruding from your skin. “What did you do to me?” you shriek suddenly, fear taking over your body. “What did-“ Suddenly your voice cuts off mid-sentence, and you can feel your eyes flutter as every muscle in your body spontaneously relaxes at once, and you slump back into the man’s chest. He holds you for another moment to make sure you’re not faking until he stands up, gently easing you off of him.

               The only sensation you’re aware of is the tingling in your leg that has now spread up to your upper thigh and the lower part of your butt cheek, as if you had been sitting in an awkward position for a while. While your entire leg felt numb, it was starting to feel like you were being pricked by pins over and over again, all across the expanse of your leg, and you tried to focus on something else as you noticed the man walk over and pick up your lightsaber. You tried to call it to you, tried to get it back into your hand, and as you focused you let your eyes slip closed. It was only for the briefest of moments, or so you thought, until you opened your eyes again to see that the side of your cheek was pressed against the man’s chest and he was carrying you off…somewhere.

               You tried to struggle, tried to kick or do something, but your muscles wouldn’t budge. Even the pain in your leg felt like it was subsiding, although you couldn’t be sure if the pain had ceased or if you had simply stopped being aware of it. You wanted to ask where he was going, where the man was taking you, but as you couldn’t even open your mouth to get the words to come out. Instead, you just let your head lull against his chest and let your eyes slipped closed. There was nothing you could do about your situation until whatever effect of the serum he had injected you with had worn off, and then he would pay, most unfortunately, with his life.

               Eventually, you felt him resettle you against his shoulder, and you opened your eyes to see him leading you into a small room. There were two cots set up on either side of the room with a table against the far back wall, and you noticed that this entire room was probably only as big as the cockpit on the command shuttle. Even still, the man laid you out on the bed closest to the door, and you let your eyes slip closed again, trying to will feeling back into your extremities. It appeared that the man was alone, although you knew implicitly that he definitely was not acting alone. There were many people in the galaxy that wanted you captured, the Republic, the Resistance, and now the First Order, although you hadn’t really considered the option of being kidnapped by a bounty hunter before. It was very well possible that this person _was_ acting alone, and was prepared to sell you to the highest bidder.

               You can hear the sound of running water in the background, presumably in an attached kitchen, and for a moment you can feel your tongue, heavy and thick in your mouth. You can hear the person in the kitchen literally gulping down the water, and it only makes you hate them more, and you let anger flood through your core as you wait for them to come back into the room. They do, not quick enough for your liking, and you open your eyes again as you see the masked figure staring down at you.

               “I’m going to inject you with something that will allow you to move again,” he tells you, and you’re almost surprised to see that the mask has some kind of voice distortion of its own, obscuring his voice. “And I’ll even give you some water if you promise not to kill me.”

               You struggle for a moment, trying to speak. “Maybe,” you finally croak. That one word is all you can manage, and you can almost swear that you hear a chuckle come from the mask as he injects something else into your hip. This needle is sharp, and it’s painful, and you curse under your breath as it suddenly feels as though all of the cells in your body had come to life at once. You roll over onto your back and grab at the canteen in his free hand as you sit up, chugging down the water as fast as you can. You think you can hear him tell you to take it easy, but you’re thirsty, and you’re angry, and you’re tired, and you’re confused, above all else.

               “Sorry to tell you,” you pant as you pull the canteen away from your face. “But that was a really stupid move.” Water is dribbling down your chin, and you wipe it away with the sleeve of your shirt. “Because you’re about to die in twenty seconds.”

               “I hope not,” the man replies, and you can’t help but pause for a moment as you stare through the mask. There was definitely a familiar energy around him, or at least something familiar, but you couldn’t figure out just how to place it. He seems to be enjoying the expression on your face right now as you attempt to puzzle out who he is, and this only serves to enrage you even further. You instinctively reach down to your lightsaber in your belt, almost half-surprised to find that it’s still there. _He had given it back to you? But why?_

               “Who are you?” you demand, your hands balling into fists at your sides, and the man straightens up as he unlocks a mechanism in the back and struggles out of the mask to reveal his face. You feel your jaw go slack as your eyes slowly travel up from his chin, to his nose, to his eyes, which blink a few times before they return your steady gaze.

               “Surprised to see me?” he asks as he spreads his hands to his sides, and for a split second, you almost can’t believe that you’re staring up at the signature grin of none other than Captain Poe Dameron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh. SHIT.


	32. Chapter 32

               Your jaw moves up and down, but suddenly it feels almost as though your mouth has forgotten to work as you stare up at Poe Dameron, soaking in every inch of him. It had been years since you had last seen him in person, _years_ , and the hologram had clearly not done him justice, although you were in no mood to count the ways in which he had physically changed right then. You couldn’t help but notice, however, that the muscles in his arms were considerably bigger. “I think I’m going to be sick,” you mutter under your breath as you finally look away, and Poe looks taken aback for a moment before he chuckles good-naturedly.

               “Yeah, the adrenaline will do that,” he tells you. “Drink some more water, it’ll help.”

               You simply hold up the now-empty canteen for him to take, and Poe takes it in one hand as he flicks the bottle with his wrist to see how much water was still inside. You had drained the thing, and Poe raises his eyebrows and turns his head to the side in consideration as he flicks the canteen again, hearing only a few meager drops hitting against the inside. “Guess you really were thirsty,” Poe says appreciatively as he goes to refill it, and your eyes immediately dart around the room. It was definitely nothing special, and looked like the interior of one of the simpler homes on Tatooine, not that you had really been inside any to know for sure. At the very least, you can ascertain that this was definitely not any sort of undercover Resistance base, and it would be very, very easy for you to escape. The door looked to be just that, a door, and it wouldn’t take much for you to simply open it and walk right outside.

               “I wouldn’t,” Poe warns, and your eyes quickly dart away from the door as he hands you the canteen again, and you begin to drink thirstily, glugging down every last drop. “That’s a pretty bad storm outside.” You don’t answer or even acknowledge him, just keep drinking in long, steady gulps, and Poe gnaws on his lower lip as he watches you. “How long were you out there for?”

               “Depends,” you say as you jerk the canteen away from your face, wiping the dribble of water away from your lower lip with the back of your hand. “How long were you trailing me for?”

               Poe just cracks a grin as he sits down on the bed on the opposite side of the room, but at a bit of a diagonal to your position. He places his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together, and that’s when you realize that he wasn’t going to tell you. He wasn’t going to tell you how he had found you, how he had gotten from D’Qar to Tatooine, or even if he was alone on this planet. You figured the Resistance wouldn’t send him alone, especially if they knew you were there, and immediately you came to the conclusion that your lies were quickly going to become your allies right now, so you had to keep them close at hand.

               “Oh right,” you say evenly. “Can’t discuss Resistance military strategy with a member of the First Order. I get that.”

               “Are you though?” Poe asks, and there’s a look of good humor playing on his face. “Don’t get me wrong, but I’m pretty sure General Hux only said what he did for my benefit.”

               “No, I’m the Strategic Commander of the First Order,” you tell him, before suddenly changing your mind immediately. “I mean, I was, before I left.” 

               “So you’re not with the First Order?” Poe asks, raising one eyebrow, and you just give a half-hearted shrug, almost indicating that you didn’t really understand the question. If Poe was going to play dumb with you, you could play his game right back at him. It wasn’t even a matter of not telling him the truth as it was giving him countless bits of contradicting information to keep him confused. You didn’t need him to trust you, especially when it was more than obvious that he didn’t. If he did, he was a bigger fool than you had remembered.

               “So I get that you’re not going to discuss any Resistance plans with me,” you say evenly. “But can I at least ask what exactly you plan to do with me? I feel like I have a right to know at least that much.”

               “Feel like coming back with me to D’Qar?” Poe asks, but you can tell by the smirk on his face that he already knows your answer.

               “You think I’d still fit in there?” you ask, raising an eyebrow as you cross your arms over your chest and lean back against the wall. The bed is small, and you cross one leg over your thigh as your foot dangles over the edge, not quite touching the floor.

               “Definitely,” Poe replies coolly, although you can’t honestly tell if he’s being sarcastic. “You saw Rey and Finn. They’re eager to have you back as well.”

               “I mean, I’d love to,” you tell him with an idle shrug of your shoulders. “But unfortunately I’m expected elsewhere, so I’m going to have to decline.”

               “Oh yeah?” Poe asks as he presses one of his hands against his knee as he leans forward. “Where’s elsewhere?” You stare him down, lips pursed, not willing to answer. “Where Ren is? Is that who you were out searching for?”

               “Ren’s not here,” you snap immediately, and Poe notices your sudden burst of anger. It’s not hard to, but it suddenly reminds you that Poe doesn’t know anything about what had happened within the _Propitiate_ , why you left, or Kylo’s concerns that you were being seduced by the dark side of the Force. Either way, this was something you could definitely use to your advantage.

               “Where is he then?” Poe asks, and you can tell he’s paying close attention now, trying to discern whether or not he could still detect if you were lying to him. “Still on the _Propitiate?”_

“He might be,” you reply with an honest shrug of your shoulders. “I have no idea where he is. He walked off, and I haven’t seen him since.” You fix Poe with a steady, unblinking gaze, feeling the heat of your anger burning behind your eyes, and Poe picks up on your misdirection, quite as you hoped he would.

               “You two split up?” Poe asks, and it’s clear from his expression that he hadn’t seen that coming. “I-“ He hesitates for a moment, as if he’s trying to figure out whether or not he believes you. You honestly can’t be sure either way, but that didn’t matter to you. What did matter to you was that you had to protect Kylo at whatever the cost.

               “Not any of your business,” you snap, your anger finally being channeled into something productive. You had no way of knowing just how many people from the Resistance were on Tatooine, and while you were sure that Kylo could probably take them out, you didn’t want to draw any attention to him and Ani if you didn’t have to. If you could lead Poe into thinking that Kylo was elsewhere in the galaxy, then hopefully he would send the Resistance forces elsewhere, and there was less of a chance that Kylo would be spotted.

               Poe looks honestly flummoxed as he rubs his jaw in one hand, before finally resting it under his chin. He looks as though he’s about to speak, but then reconsiders, and you can almost see the wheels turning in his mind. You honestly didn’t know quite what to make of it. “Why?” he asks at length, and you can’t help but snort.

               “He thought it was in Ani’s best interests if I was no longer around,” you tell him without even needing a pause to consider what you were going to say. The less time it took for you to answer, the more truthful your answers would seem, at least, that’s what you hoped. “He let Ani decide who he wanted to stay with and, surprise surprise, Ani chose him. They’re both probably still up on the _Propitiate_ right now, living it up without me.”

               “I don’t believe that,” Poe says immediately. “I don’t believe you would ever leave Ani, and I don’t believe Ren would ever just send you away-“

               “He didn’t send me away,” you say firmly. “I wasn’t wanted, and so I left. Ani didn’t want to speak to me anymore, Kylo didn’t want to fuck me anymore, so there wasn’t a point in constantly reminding myself what I lost. So I left, and ran off to the very edge of this shithole of a galaxy where I was hoping I could avoid you and the Resistance and the Republic and the First Order and, well, everyone, basically.”

               “What happened?” Poe asks, as though he’s genuinely curious. “Was this because of me? Because-?”

               “Oh, don’t give yourself so much credit,” you snap irritably, and it almost frightened you how easily this irritable persona seemed to come to you. “It was me. A lot of things can happen over the course of a few years, Poe Dameron. Without Snoke around to keep him conflicted, Kylo Ren found peace. He found the light side, and I found the dark.”

               Poe stares at you for a moment, as if he’s not sure what to say. “No, you haven’t.”

               “Are you sure about that?” you press, and the doubt is written all over Poe’s face. No matter what he said next, you knew he wasn’t.

               “Rey-“ Poe pauses for a moment, gnawing on his lower lip as he glances away. He seems to make a decision about something before he met your eyes again. “Rey said she felt something, recently, that there was awakening of the dark side of the Force, and that it had to do with you, specifically. But I didn’t believe-“ His voice trails off, and you wonder for a moment if there had never been any negotiation attempt to begin with. Perhaps Poe was looking for any excuse, any reason, to see you, to make sure that you were really okay. You had thought you saw a troubled look on Rey’s face, but you had assumed it to be simply a distortion of the holo. Now you knew better. Something was wrong with you. Ani sensed it, Kylo sensed it, and even Rey had been able to sense it from the other end of the galaxy.

               “You should have listened to her,” you tell him, cocking your head to the side. “I’m no better than anyone else in the First Order now.”

               Poe just shakes his head, as if he doesn’t believe what you’re saying. “Are you sure you’re not just trying to protect him?” he asks, and you switch your expression from hostile to bemused in order to conceal your look of alarm. “Because I’m not entirely convinced he’s not on this planet.”

               “You should have listened to Rey,” you repeat, refusing to give in to what you felt was probably an obvious trap. You were not going to talk about Kylo, not going to let anything slip. “I’m just as dark as he was.” You switch your legs, crossing the right over your left, as you slump back against the wall and gloat. “My very first day in my new post, I snapped a man’s neck simply because I didn’t like the way he was speaking to me. General Hux was very impressed.” Poe looks a bit wary, but not as overly concerned or surprised as you’d like him to be. “You wouldn’t believe what else I’ve done since then.”

               “I’m sure,” Poe replies as he looks away from you, and suddenly you can’t help but notice his disappointment as he looks down and to the side. It had been years since he had seen you last, and you could only imagine that he really wanted to believe that you were still the same person he had come to know back on the Resistance base. You weren’t, even Rey had probably told him that much, but he still held onto the slightest bit of hope that you hadn’t changed, even when he knew you were with the First Order. And now, now you were sitting in front of him, confirming his worst fears, that the girl he had come to care about was gone for good.

               You can’t look at him, and so you decide to focus on other things, like how hot it was in the stuffy little room. You could literally hear the wind blowing grains of sand into the door, and you were almost a bit thankful there were no windows to give the tiny, coarse particles even an iota of space for them to squeeze through. Unfortunately, it made the heat in the room almost unbearable, and considering you were probably going to be locked in there with him for a while until the storm blew over, you proceeded to struggle out of your jacket, freeing up your arms as you tossed it onto the bed beside you.

               “What was that?” Poe asks as you fluff out your hair, and you let it drop against the nape of your neck as you glance up at him, not sure what he was referring to.

               “What?” you ask blankly. “It’s hot in here.”

               “What’s that?” Poe repeats. “Around your neck?” His voice is a mixture of surprise and confusion, and for a moment you think that he’s spotted a hickey from Kylo, immediately revealing your tale to be a lie, before you realize he had seen something much more incriminating.

               “Nothing,” you reply immediately, but you know he can see a bit of the cord around your neck through your loose collar, and you quickly pull the stone out of the front of your shirt as you turn it over in both hands, pretending to be studying it absent-mindedly.

               “You still have that?” Poe asks, and you wish you hadn’t heard the subdued sense of awe in his voice. It just made the whole thing worse.

               “Still trying to find someone to pawn it off on,” you say idly. “No one wants to give me what it’s worth.” Still, even as you say it, you know that it’s the wrong thing almost immediately. Your tone of voice is all wrong, and the implication that no one would give it what it’s worth, of course, meant that it was worth at least _something_ to you, otherwise you would have simply discarded it long ago. Poe doesn’t say anything, but as you meet his eyes, you can see some kind of glow there, and you’re almost embarrassed that you’re pleased that he hasn’t given up on you completely. He needed to, you know he needed to, but seeing him look so pleased to see you again was a feeling that you weren’t quite sure you knew how to deal with.

               “I’m bad now,” you tell him. “I’ve embraced the dark side. I can kill you. I can run you through with my lightsaber, I can snap your neck, I can choke you to death with the Force and I won’t even think twice about it.”

               Poe just nods his head forward a few times, as if he expected to hear this from you, but it’s almost as though he doesn’t quite believe it either. You grit your teeth, hoping that he wouldn’t call you on your bluff. You could only Force choke someone that you really and truly hated, and you weren’t quite sure you could work up pure hatred towards Poe. You could feign indifference and apathy at your best, but you simply couldn’t bring yourself to hate him. You just didn’t have that much darkness in you.

               An uncomfortable period of silence stretches on for far too long before Poe finally dares himself to speak again. “What happened up there?” he asks quietly. “What happened? On the _Propitiate?”_

“I should ask you the same question,” you tell him. “There never really was any sort of trade deal for me and Ani, was there?”

               “I asked you first,” Poe responds, but his voice is quiet, too quiet, and there’s no humor in his tone. It’s sobering, and you can’t help but let the truth slip out of you.

               “It was a trap,” you tell him instantly. “Hux wanted to draw you in and capture you to use as leverage for the Resistance, possibly kill Rey too, if she came with you.”

               “And you told him no?” Poe asks, tilting his head to one side, as if trying to understand the situation.

               “I told him yes,” you tell him, almost a bit indignantly. “I told him you were a sentimental idiot who would jump at the first chance he got to see me again.” Poe chuckles audibly at this, and you can’t help but look away. “I played you both. I told you that Hux said there’d be no deal, and I told Hux that you failed to get clearance from the other heads of the Resistance, and they refused to go along with it.”

               “Smart,” Poe tells you, but you just shake your head.

               “No, it wasn’t,” you reply firmly.

               “You may have saved my life,” Poe points out, and you hate the pointed note in his voice as he says it.

               “No, I didn’t,” you insist. “You were never in any danger to begin with. There was never a deal, or negotiations, or talk of a trade, or anything like that. Rey told you she was concerned about me, and you thought of the best excuse there was to see if I was okay.” You cross your arms as you look away. “I bet Leia wasn’t even sick.”

               “She is,” Poe says firmly, and you can tell that you’ve touched a nerve by the way he sits up a bit straighter, and you pause for a moment, surveying his reaction.

               “Bad?” you ask at length, and Poe simply shrugs his shoulders uncomfortably, as if he doesn’t really want to discuss it. “Fair,” you say at length. “Though at least tell me that I’m right. Tell me that there wasn’t any deal to begin with.”

               “Do you want there to be?” Poe asks, and you can’t help but bite your lip as you look him over.

               “There’s no way you’d take me back to the Resistance now,” you tell him. “I’ve killed someone. I’ve murdered. I’m a murderer.”

               “And you also lied when you thought it would save my life,” Poe points out. “Whatever you’ve done, that shows that there is still some goodness in you yet. You can come back with us, you can-“

               But you can’t hear it, you just can’t. “The only thing it proves is that I’m as self-serving as Ren is,” you snap at him, making sure to call him _Ren_ and not _Kylo_ to show your distance from him. “I’m sure Ladson and Sadie already told you all about what happened back on Naboo, especially with what happened with Hux.”

               “I’m aware,” Poe says quietly, and his face hardens again.

               “You see?” you demand. “I’m only looking out for my own self-interests. That’s not exactly the mark of a good person, now is it?” Poe looks away, but you can’t help but keep going. “If it had been anyone else with the Resistance who had tried to make that deal with me, they’d be dead right now. The only reason that you’re not is because you’re _you_ and-“ You shut your mouth quickly as you look away this time, staring towards the door, but Poe catches what you meant to say all the same. “I’m just as self-serving as Ren is,” you conclude quietly. “I am a bad person. I’ve given into the dark side of the Force. I can kill anyone I want, whenever I want, and I have no qualms about it now.”

               The lights flicker overhead, and in the silence you can literally hear the wind knocking the sand up and blowing it up against the thick walls. “Sounds like one hell of a storm out there,” Poe murmurs appreciatively, and you just nod your head, trying to get some of your old fire back. “You’re lucky I found you in time,” he continues, and you just shrug your shoulders, immediately regretting that you had left the ship. Even still, though, if you had seen the storm coming, you would have worried about Kylo and Ani being out there all alone-

               _Shit._

While you were in here with Poe, listening to him rattle on about the provisions that he brought with him to make sure you both would be fine for another two to three days at least, Ani and Kylo were possibly separated by the sandstorm. As Poe talks, you can’t help but shift your gaze towards the door as you try to concentrate. _Ani? Are you there, Ani? Are you okay?_

You wait for a few minutes, waiting, listening, when suddenly you feel something back. It’s faint, but the connection is there, solid, conveying in feeling and not in pure thought as Ani so often did. You felt a small tug of affirmation, a nod, a sure sign that he had heard you and that he was okay.

               _Is Kylo with you?_ you press, and there’s a beat before you feel it, stronger than last time, and you know it’s a yes. You would reach out to Kylo yourself, but under the circumstances, you figured it would be best if you didn’t. You didn’t know how Kylo would feel about the fact that you were with Poe right now, or about the fact that you had left the ship against his instructions. Likewise, you didn’t want to blush and give away to Poe that you were secretly communicating with Kylo in your mind, and so you just let it go.

               Regardless, you could feel something of an inquisitive nature from Ani, wondering where you were, and you paused for a moment as you tried to think of an excuse, any excuse, to give him.

               _I went out to look for you when the storm started picking up, but I think I got lost. I’m in an abandoned hut right now, but there’s plenty of food and I’ll be fine until the storm blows over._ You can feel an immediate rush of concern from Kylo’s end that quickly ebbs into anger that you didn’t follow his orders and simply stay put, and you can’t help but roll your eyes. _I’m fine, Kylo. Just relax. I’ll be fine. Just take care of Ani, okay?_

“Are you okay?” Poe asks, quite predictably, and you quickly roll your eyes over in his direction.

               “Two to three days, huh?” you ask idly, to show that you were paying attention, but Poe seems to notice how distracted you look.

               “You okay?” Poe repeats, and you just shrug absent-mindedly, trying to search for a good excuse to give him.

               “Is it your leg?” Poe asks, and for a moment you had completely forgotten that he had shot you. You roll up your pants leg to reveal a good-sized contusion along the side of your leg, and you can’t help but wince as you notice how ugly it looks. Poe seems to mistake this for pain, as he comes over and drops to the floor in front of your feet, taking your leg in both hands.

               “What are you doing?” you ask immediately, feeling the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end as you realize that he is touching you again, actually touching you, for the first time in years. You couldn’t honestly remember when the last time he had touched you was, or where, but you had a sneaking suspicion that it was probably when he had gone off to work one morning. He had probably woken up and kissed you before he had headed off to the command center, thinking absolutely nothing was wrong, completely ignorant of the fact that that was the last time he would kiss you or touch you, or, well, even see you, for years and years and years.

               But now he was touching your leg, and while that was far from an intimate gesture, you still couldn’t help but feel, well, confused by the myriad of emotions that were coursing through your body, alarm and panic about what this might represent being the chief one. “Don’t worry,” Poe chuckles as he sees the look on your face. “It still feels numb, right? I’m just stimulating the muscle to help ease the pain.”

               “Oh, if that’s all you’re doing,” you reply crossly, as you cross your arms back over your chest again, and Poe gnaws on his lower lip as he glances up at you and winks in your direction. You blush, and it’s quickly quite obvious that you’re blushing, and remembering that Poe used to tease you about that, even before you went off to see Kylo on the _Resolute_ , does strange things to your insides.

               “Your new girlfriend probably won’t like to hear you were touching me like this,” you tell him as you look away, trying to work up any feelings of anger or indignation that you can probably muster.

               “No girlfriend,” Poe says simply, and you purse your lips together.

               “Boyfriend, then,” you say with a shrug of your shoulders, and Poe just grins as he shakes his head from side to side. You stare at him incredulously for a moment before you narrow your eyes and brace your hands against the edge of the bed. “You can’t seriously expect me to believe that you’ve just been waiting around for me all this time,” you tell him, and Poe laughs openly at that.

               “No,” he admits. “But I’ve been pretty busy. The years go by pretty fast, I’m sure you’d agree with that.” He pauses for a moment as he looks up at you. “There’s no good time for romance when you’re fighting a war, remember?” You do remember, and although you can’t picture exactly when or where he said it, you had a sneaking suspicion that it either happened while you were watching that sunset on D’Qar, or while you had been making out in the back of that transport shuttle in the mock up of a First Order Star Destroyer hangar. Either way, you’re not exactly keen to ask him and test his recollection to see if it was any better than yours.

               “What do you want?” you ask after a moment, and he seems to consider this as he looks up at you.

               “Just to talk,” he says simply, and you can’t help but take this the wrong way. Poe didn’t track you down to Tatooine just to talk. He wanted something from you, or he wanted to take you and Ani back to the Resistance, or he was hoping to use you to draw Ren out of hiding, or some combination of the above, maybe all three. Either way, you knew implicitly that you could not let him be in control. You had to be in charge of this situation. Whenever that sandstorm died down, you would make sure that you would escape before he and the rest of his friends in the Resistance could capture you and use you for whatever they were planning. Instead, you would turn the tables and capture Poe instead, although you didn’t know quite what you would do with him, and his capture would surely lure in both the Resistance and the First Order, pulling you back into the mess that you were so anxious to be rid of. No, maybe it would be better to just knock him out and leave him where he was as you escaped with Kylo and Ani, of your own volition this time. There was a certain sense of poetry in that, leaving him by your own accord, and in the back of your mind you decided that that was exactly how things would go. You would knock him out and escape at the earliest opportunity, and you would be long gone off Tatooine with Kylo and Ani before Poe even woke up.

               But the Force dictated all, and the Force had plans of its own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Poe's not quite sure how to act around Reader. Reader's not quite sure how to act around Poe. The difference? At least Poe has a mission, and a plan, and the Reader is just trying to keep herself afloat and keep him distracted to help protect Kylo and Ani. Is this going to spell trouble down the line? Yes. Yes it is. Until Saturday, cheers!!


	33. Chapter 33

               Poe only massaged your calf for a few minutes before you told him that it was feeling better and he released you to go make food. You just sat on the bed, knees drawn into your chest, staring at the doorway as if expecting someone to walk through at any moment. Someone from the Resistance? Kylo, perhaps? You weren’t sure if you expected someone opposed to the fact that you _wanted_ to see someone, anyone, to distract you from your privacy with Poe Dameron. You still weren’t sure how you felt about seeing him again after all this time, or rather, you weren’t quite sure you wanted to let yourself open up to actually thinking about it. You had made sure to push any part of yourself that still cared for him away from you until you were convinced that if you ever saw him again you would feel nothing, absolutely nothing towards him, but clearly that was not the case if you were willing to risk sacrificing your safety in the First Order in favor of his.

               It’s not long until Poe comes back with a plate of bread and some mush, and you quickly use the bread as a spoon as you eat, trying to conceal the fact that you were hungry. Poe had no idea what your situation was, and you didn’t want to seem absolutely desperate for food, although you couldn’t help licking the plate clean with your fingers, leaving the plate so clean you almost couldn’t be sure there had been any food placed upon it at all. By the time you finish eating, you’ve noticed that he’s not even halfway done, and he’s eyeing you warily, as though he wants to offer you his share.

               “So you want to talk,” you say quickly, putting the plate down and trying to focus his attention on something else. “Let’s talk. How’s life been for you? What’s happened on base since I left?”

               “Is that your way of asking if I came to look for you after Ren took you?” Poe asks through a mouthful of food, and you can’t help but roll your eyes as an involuntary smile tugs at the corners of your lips.

               “I know you did,” you say lightly. “You were looking in the wrong direction, but I know you tried to find me almost as soon as I left.”

               “I did,” Poe says, and there’s a glow behind his eyes, as if he wants you to make sure you hear him confirm it. “I visited a lot of different planets searching for you. Ladson even got us to go back to your old home world to try to find you there, thinking perhaps you might have reached out to Sadie. She hadn’t heard from you, but I’m sure you can guess how she took the news after he explained Ren had taken you and Ani.”

               You can’t help but let out a snort as you imagine how that conversation went. You can picture Ladson showing up at her front door, with Poe in tow, trying to explain how they had _lost_ you and Ani, like they had simply forgotten where they had placed you. “Yeah, how’d she take it?” you ask, crossing your arms over your chest as you lean back against the wall again.

               “She didn’t honestly believe that _Kylo_ had kidnapped you,” Poe tells you, but there’s good humor in his voice. “She almost didn’t believe Ladson when he told her about, you know, us.” Poe awkwardly gestures between you, and you’re almost glad that he’s not gloating with his old, superior cocky confidence. You were a dangerous person now, and he was treating you as such. For some reason, you didn’t really mind this at all. In fact, you almost liked it.

               “Yeah, well,” you say idly as you roll your shoulders back.

               “But we brought Rey and Finn along,” Poe offers, and you narrow your eyes at this, trying to figure out why. “They showed her the holo of your fight with Rey, the one for the Republic? Do you remember that?”

               “Oh, I remember,” you snap hastily, and Poe almost looks confused for a moment as his eyes meet yours, and suddenly the recollection comes back to him.

               “Was it really that bad?” he asks, and you shrug your shoulders errantly, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear.

               “It shows the cowardice of the New Republic,” you say, the venom palpable in your voice. “They are just as corrupt and depraved as anyone at the First Order, the only difference is that the First Order is clear about their motives. They don’t lie and sneak around behind people’s backs to achieve what they want, unlike the Republic you serve, a Republic that seeks only to create chaos to benefit themselves in a galaxy already rich with violence and misfortune.”

               “Man,” Poe says as he pops the last bit of bread into his mouth and sets his plate down on the floor. “They really got into your head, didn’t they?” He doesn’t say this accusingly, and his voice is surprisingly casual, which only incenses you further.

               “They didn’t have to,” you snap at him. “I’m sure from the outside looking in, you wouldn’t understand, but once you’re there you can see that the First Order isn’t as terrible as the Republic wants you to believe.” Poe shakes his head, but you’re not done. “There was another interpreter on the Starkiller Base, one that never made it back with us, and we presumed he died when it exploded, if he wasn’t gone long before that. Instead, they forgave his transgressions, and he worked his way through the ranks and is now serving as a Warrant Officer, assisting the First Order in various operations. No one had to _convince_ him of anything. The Resistance led him blindfolded into a trap that almost cost him his life, and the First Order was wise enough to see his skill set and utilize it to their mutual benefit.”

               Poe looks up and to the side, like he’s trying to remember something, and you just stare him down, waiting for his reaction, silently challenging him to call you brainwashed again. “That was your friend, right?” Poe asks. “That was your friend, Shayne? The one you told me about when we first met?”

               Your chin drops to your chest as you stare at him. That had been such an off-handed comment by Sadie, a distraction to keep Poe’s attention off your reaction when you had learned that the Starkiller Base exploded and had possibly taken Kylo Ren along with it, but he had apparently remembered it. You couldn’t possibly think of any other time that Shayne’s name would have come up in conversation, and for a moment you couldn’t wrap your head around the fact that he remembered such a trivial piece of information until you remembered that Poe had been the one to destroy the Starkiller Base. It wasn’t him alone, but he had been the one to fire the final shot, and you could bet that he probably spent a long time after its destruction, after the obvious celebration that the Republic probably hosted, no doubt, thinking about the lives he had taken, the people that were captives and there not by choice, but by circumstance. Poe remembered his name because he cared, not because of his later affiliation to you, but because he cared about people in general, and the fact that he probably still harbored enough guilt to remember the name of a person who everyone had thought died unwittingly in a Resistance plot gone south was a testament to how much goodness he had in him. It made you sick. It made you angry. It reminded you what you had always known to be true, that Poe was something light, something pure, and something much too good for you, and suddenly you realize that if Kylo had never taken you off that Resistance base that you never truly would have had a future with him anyway. You probably would have succumbed to the darkness regardless, and then-

               You decide not to let yourself become consumed by hypotheticals as you simply shrug your shoulders, as if you couldn’t have cared less, but Poe can see the wheels that are spinning behind your eyes, and he knows that he’s said something that’s affected you, as he doesn’t bring up Shayne again.

               “So I looked for you, and I couldn’t find you,” Poe says, spreading his hands to show how obvious of a statement this was. “Do you want to tell me where you went? Did you even want to be found?”

               “For a while I did,” you say immediately, and you can’t help but sound affronted, but that’s probably because you are. Did he really think you didn’t care about him as Kylo pulled you off that base? But Poe’s lip quirks upwards into a small smile, and immediately you know that you had just lost his game. You had taken his bait, he had guilted you into providing an honest answer, and you just roll your eyes upwards as you scoff. “Although it wasn’t as though Kylo kept me hostage or anything. I was with him, on Naboo, and I resisted things at first, but-“ You shrug uncomfortably, not liking the way the words sounded when they left your lips. “-but it didn’t matter,” you say eventually. “Once it became clear that Kylo wasn’t about to let me go, and you weren’t going to find me, I didn’t have a lot of options and I just sort of got used to the idea of being with him again.” You shrug your shoulders as you look back up at him. “Maybe if you had found me in time, things could have been different.”

               “Possibly,” Poe says eventually, but you just shrug off the apparent sound of regret in his voice.

               “A lot of things could have been different,” you offer, trying to push the conversation away from Kylo yet again. “I mean, if I had spent that night with you in your room, or if you had come to visit me-“

               “I almost did,” Poe offers, and you can’t help your eyebrows from shooting up in surprise. “I mean, I spent most of the night with Snap and Jess, and then after I left, I went to check on things in the command center. I almost went to see you, but Jess said that she had seen you heading down to Kylo’s room earlier in the night and I figured you might want your space after seeing him.”

               “Oh,” you say, blinking rapidly as you glance down. “Yeah.” Somehow, you had almost forgotten that you had gone to see Kylo that night. You hadn’t realized that anyone had seen you go down there either, let alone relay that information back to Poe. In the overall scheme of things, it just hadn’t seemed all that important, but now you could see how going to visit Kylo on the night of his departure from base when you hadn’t seen him in a while could prove suspicious to someone who didn’t understand the situation. “Yeah, I felt something, something to do with Snoke, and so I went to go check it out.” You shake your head from side to side, trying to figure out if that meant anything, but in the end you supposed it didn’t. Poe could have come to your room that night, but he didn’t know that the First Order would show up on your doorstep that night any more than you had. You could only imagine, though, what it would have been like if you had been in bed with Poe, maybe even _intimate_ with Poe, when Kylo barged in on you, and the thought immediately brings a mental picture to the forefront of your mind that you need to banish quickly.

               “You should have done something,” you snap suddenly, trying to cover up your wayward emotions with hostility. “I know why Kylo kidnapped me and Ani, and I knew what to expect from him, but you were supposed to be the good guy, right? The one who saves people? But you didn’t. You didn’t stop him from taking me off that base, and you didn’t find me.” You shake your head back and forth, as if trying to confirm this to yourself. “So after that it just seemed to make more sense to stay with Kylo. At least with him I knew more or less what to expect, and I didn’t have to worry about him disappointing me. At least, you know, for a while.”

               You huff loudly as you attempt to look as irritated as you possibly can manage, which, under the circumstances, wasn’t hard. You had to make it seem like you and Kylo were really over, masking any emotions for him with hatred, but Poe seems to misinterpret where you’re channeling your anger. “I’m sorry,” Poe offers. “I can’t imagine how hard things must have been for you. Your home was with the Resistance, and he took you away from that. You have every right to be angry with him.”

               “Are you not listening to me?” you snap suddenly, and even Poe seems taken aback by your sudden outburst. “I’m not mad at Kylo,” you tell him, almost viciously. “I’m mad at _you._ This is your fault.”

               Poe blinks twice, as if he doesn’t quite understand where you’re coming from. “He took away your chance of a future-“

               “No, you did that,” you yell at him. “Any chance of a future with you depended on one person, and that was you. You’re supposed to be the good guy. You’re supposed to save people. If you really wanted to be with me, you would have found a way to rescue me somehow before I gave up on you, but you didn’t, you just left me there.” You can feel real tears brimming behind your eyes now. “You left me with him, and you don’t know bad it was at first, watching him be there for Ani while I tried to hold out hope that you’d come back until I eventually gave up, and then years went by and I joined in with the First Order and then I _gave up._ I did such terrible things that even Kylo fucking Ren doesn’t want to be with me anymore, and it’s your fault, because if you had just found me on Naboo and taken me back to the Resistance, I wouldn’t have been in a position to be corrupted by the dark side to begin with.”

               You don’t know how much of that you believe, and neither does Poe, but your hands are practically shaking against your sides, and your glare is thick with emotion as you stare him down accusingly. Poe himself looks visibly affected as he looks away from you suddenly, resting his elbow on his knee as he sinks his face into one hand, and for a moment you wonder if he’s about to cry. “Seriously?” you demand as you shake your head in disgust. “Seriously, is that what you’re going to do? Break down and apologize to me for-“

               “No,” Poe says suddenly as he looks up at you, and you can’t help but be taken aback by his solemn demeanor. This was a side of Poe you had never really seen before, and now that you saw it, you weren’t really sure you wanted to. You had never seen him angry before, not really, but you had finally pushed him past that point. “It’s not my fault,” he says, and he almost appears to be scolding you, like a parent talking to a child. “Ren is the one that took you away from base, and I tried to stop him. He took you away and I looked for you, I really did. Those first few months after you left were hell for me and Ladson both. They were hell for everyone. We did everything we could to try to find you, but we just weren’t looking in the right place. So I’m sorry if you feel like I’ve disappointed you, and I can see why you’d need to blame someone besides him in order to keep going for as long as you have, but it’s not my fault.” He spreads his hands at his sides and gives you a lighthearted shrug. “But if it really makes you feel better to blame me for everything, then go right ahead. I’m not stopping you.”

               You can’t help but smirk at this as you shake your head from side to side, pretending to be amused by his speech. In truth, you had to pretend to be amused in order to keep yourself from letting him know how much that hurt. “Look at you, willing to accept the blame for something you just admitted wasn’t your fault,” you muse openly. “Altruistic to the end, I guess.”

               “Stop that,” Poe says suddenly, as if he honestly can’t take what you have to say, and you blink at him in confusion. “I had a long talk with Rey after you left,” he adds quietly, and you stare him down, trying to figure out where this is going. “You hadn’t been gone long, maybe two months, three, when Rey finally sat me down and told me you weren’t coming back.” You narrow your eyes, but stay silent as you wait for him to continue. “She said she always was able to pick up on your thoughts, that you never bothered hiding them, but she thinks that you let her pick up on more than you cared to admit.”

               “Oh?” you ask, feigning indifference. You shrugged your shoulders as if you could really care less, but deep down, you were absolutely terrified of what you had accidently let slip.

               “You really always thought that I was better than you?” Poe asks, and he seems incredulous, as if he still can’t believe it. “She said you always thought that I was too good for you, that it wouldn’t have worked out, and Ren may not have offered you a choice in leaving, but he did offer you an easy way out.” His face hardens, and suddenly you can’t be sure that this is really the Poe that you remembered at all. “I could see why you’d think I’d be better for you and Ani than Ren, but I wouldn’t have been able to deal with you thinking I’m perfect. It wouldn’t have been fair to me, and then I really would have disappointed you.” He shakes his head from side to side. “Honestly, if that’s all you saw in me, if that’s what you really thought, then you’re right, it wouldn’t have worked out.”

               “I guess we’ll never know,” you say with a shrug of your shoulders, as if you really couldn’t care less, but Poe is staring you down, his face set, and you can’t tell if he’s angry or just upset or searching through the myriad of other emotions that are brewing behind his dark eyes. “And for the record, I never thought that you were perfect.” You huff indignantly, but you can’t bring yourself to say what you really wanted. _I always thought that I didn’t deserve you, and you’re proving it right now._ But even still, there’s something about this that doesn’t seem right to you, and it takes you a few moments to figure out why. In the first few weeks after you had made up with Kylo, he had told you again and again that he didn’t deserve you until the point where you were sick of it hearing it yourself. And what had you told him then?

               “It wasn’t a matter of feeling that I didn’t deserve you,” you tell him at length. “No one _deserves_ another person, it’s just choice. I was powerful, and I was smart, and independent, and self-reliant and I knew what I was doing, but I was also linked to Kylo Ren through the Force bond. His mother was the _General_ of your Resistance, and I was the mother of her grandchild. I had a serious amount of baggage and complications, and I never felt right about dragging you into my drama. I know you wanted to be there to help, and I know it never really bothered you, but it bothered _me_ and I don’t know if it ever really would have felt right until Kylo was put down, and even then, I would have felt guilty that I had been the one who lured him in just to kill him, and I don’t know if I would have been okay with that, and it wouldn’t have been fair to you.”

               Poe registers your point as he looks down suddenly, and nods his head a couple of times, as if confirming this to himself. “I’m sorry,” he offers at length, and you can’t help but shake your head. The fact that he was apologizing yet again only stood to prove that he really was the better person. You may have honestly harbored those thoughts about him, that he truly was better than you, but you no longer felt that way and you were not going to apologize for your past way of thinking. “Not for that,” he says at length, and you tilt your head to the side in confusion. “I don’t really know what to say about that, I’d need more time to think it over, but I’m sorry about that night.”

               You just shake your head from side to side in disbelief. “If you had squeezed the trigger, the Storm Troopers would have shot you dead in an instant,” you tell him, and a part of you is glad that you are finally having this conversation, after you had been holding onto it for years and years.

               Poe can’t help but manage a smile at this. “You know, Ladson has a theory that even if he had been there that night too, that Ren would never have killed either of us. Incapacitated, yes, but he knew you’d never forgive him if he happened to kill one of your friends.”

               “Ladson, maybe,” you say with a shrug. “But you’re different, not just because, us, but because of where you stood with the Resistance. I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t want to take any chances.”

               Poe just smiles at you, a knowing smile, and you have to look away. To him, the fact that you were trying to save his life back then spoke volumes, but you were no longer that person and you couldn’t go back to her, not even if you wanted to. “I went to the command center first,” Poe says at length. “My first thought was that they were coming after the General, and they were, but of course she could handle herself. She sealed the blast doors so they couldn’t get in-“

               “That was a smart move,” you tell him, and he almost seems surprised by the reassurance in your voice. “It only made sense that if you heard blasters that you’d run to check on her first. You’ve seen me fight. You know what I can do with my lightsaber. I didn’t need your protection. She did.”

               “But I didn’t even think-“ Poe just sighs as he runs his hand through his hair. “I don’t know why, but I didn’t think they were coming after you. I didn’t even think about Ren, not until I saw-“ He lets his voice trail off, and you could tell that this was something that had haunted him for years, and not just because of you. The First Order had slipped past his defenses, snuck into the hangar, and he hadn’t even had the foresight to think about why they had arrived on base. He was supposed to be a Commander, a leader, able to foresee and predict his enemy’s movements and strategies, and in that, he had failed.

               “You had no idea why they were really on base,” you say with a shake of your head. “It all happened so fast; you couldn’t have known, and even if you had, you can’t be sure that would have changed anything. You were outnumbered, they had the element of surprise, and Kylo had the Force. Even if you had come to me first, you may not have been able to do anything. Leia needed you, and you were able to protect her.”

               Poe seems to consider this for a moment before he shakes his head. “I just wish there was more I could have done,” he admits as he looks back up at you. “You were counting on me to be there for you, and I let you down, and I’m sorry about that.”

               You just shake your head again, and suddenly it feels all of your anger had evaporated out of your core, and all that was left with a tired feeling of exasperation. “Like I said, there was nothing you could have done,” you repeat. “I-I don’t blame you, not really. I just said that to, I don’t know, but I don’t blame you. I’ve never thought it was your fault. If anything, I thought you were maybe mad at me, for not doing more to stop Ani from being taken, or for not finding a way to make it back to the Resistance. I mean, I could have, after a while, but I just thought by that point that you had sort of, I don’t know, moved on.”

               Poe stares at you for a moment, gnawing on his lower lip, as if he’s trying to make his mind up about something. “I never really told you how I felt about you,” he says after a moment, and you can feel a blush rush to your cheeks. “I never said it because I thought you knew, but then once he took you away, I wasn’t so sure.” He seems to have more to say, but he just sits on his words as he glances up at the corner of the roof, as if trying to figure out exactly what he wants to tell you. You can tell he’s debating with himself on whether or not to admit it, and so in a rare burst of courage, you decide to take the emotional power behind his declaration away from him.

               “I’d ask if you still love me, but since I’ve gone dark side, I think we both know the answer to that,” you say idly, and Poe’s eyes burn into yours, as if he can’t believe that you would say it so bluntly.

               “I’m not sure,” he admits after a moment. “I’m not sure who you are anymore.” You simply shrug your shoulders as you look away from him, but he waits until you glance towards him again before he juts his chin towards the stone around your neck. “But the fact that you’re still wearing that tells me something.”

               “It shouldn’t,” you say quickly. You had never quite figured out why you had never taken it off, but if you had to venture a guess… “I don’t honestly know why I’ve never taken it off. It just never felt right. I guess I just didn’t want to forget how good things were back at the Resistance. I didn’t want to forget-“ Your eyes lock on his with such intensity that suddenly you forget how to speak and the last word drifts into the space between you without any audible sound. You can feel an almost electric sort of current building between you now, and for a moment you have to look away from him to keep from being consumed by its pull. “Anyway,” you say quickly. “You’re right. It’s been years, and we’re both two different people now. Things are just different.” You try to stuff down the note of disappointment in your voice, but Poe seems to pick up on it all the same.

               “I’m not going to ask you the same question, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Poe says lightly, trying to inject some good humor into the conversation, but it sounds forced. “I-“

               “I didn’t,” you say quickly, not waiting to let him finish his sentence, and you can’t deny that Poe seems almost taken aback by your honesty. “I’m sorry, I just, I couldn’t really think about that back then. With everything going on with Kylo and the Force bond, and Ani and the Force ghosts-“

               “And that’s fine,” Poe says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I already knew that. You were going through a lot and the timing, it just wasn’t right then.” He shakes his head from side to side before he shrugs his shoulders. “Sometimes I feel like you can only see things clearly looking at them from a different perspective. We liked each other well enough, but I think both of us were afraid to admit that it wouldn’t really have gone anywhere.”

               You don’t know if he’s trying to bait you, but it doesn’t sound like he is. It sounds like someone who’s come to terms with everything that’s happened in the past and has clearly moved on. It’s not until that exact moment that you realize that you hadn’t. You thought you had, but you can hear your heartbeat echoing in your ears and the inside of your chest feels hollow, taut with a paralyzing numbness that seems to have taken over your core.

               “So you didn’t miss me at all?” you ask quietly, and Poe arches an eyebrow as he stares at you in confusion.

               “Of course I did,” he replies. “That’s not what I meant, I just-“

               But you can’t take it anymore, and you quickly put both hands on your knees to hold them steady as you let the words come out of you in a rush, eyes trained intently on the spot of floor in front of your toes. “Don’t.”

               Poe stares at you for a moment, dumbfounded, as he murmurs his next words under his breath. “You can’t admit that you loved me back then because a part of you thinks you still do.” You blush wickedly as you cross your arms over your chest, trying to make yourself small. You had no idea if this was true, or if this was such a fantastic ruse that you were even fooling yourself, but either way, you couldn’t be sure. Eventually you glance up past your bangs to sneak a look at Poe, but he’s looking down and away from your now, his thumb running against his lower lip, trying to figure out what this means, if it means anything at all.

               “It doesn’t,” you tell him quickly. “It doesn’t mean anything.” In retrospect, you should have told him that he was wrong, that he was delusional, but that thought came just a bit too late. Poe just nods his head, as if he’s trying to accept this, but you can tell he’s still thinking it over, and for a moment he looks downright sad, that maybe things could have worked between you. You didn’t know, neither of you knew, and neither of you would ever know. Kylo had taken that away from you, and while you understood why he had to do what he did, a part of you couldn’t help but redirect your anger back at him. At one point, you had truly wanted to be with Poe, and you would never know if things between you could actually have been good, and now Poe was doubting if things ever really could have ever really worked out at all. It hurt you in the worst way, and you couldn’t help but admit that you almost felt sick to your stomach.

               “I’m sorry,” you say quickly, shaking your head from side to side. You had promised yourself that you wouldn’t apologize, but you suddenly couldn’t tell left from right anymore, and you got quickly to your feet. You weren’t quite sure where you were going past that door, but you knew you couldn’t stay here, not with Poe. You were starting to open yourself up to feeling something for him again, and you’d rather run out into the middle of a sandstorm and die rather than stay here with him a moment longer. You couldn’t stay here, you knew what would happen if you did, and as you’re about to run out, Poe suddenly grabs your upper arm and you spin around to face him.

               You can feel your chest bump against his, and you blinked as you realized your lips were no more than an inch apart. You could feel his hot breath on your face, and for a moment you could think of nothing besides the first time you had kissed him, grabbing his face in both hands as you pressed your lips against his for three brief moments before you had pulled away and ran. You could do that again, now, you could just kiss him and knock him out and go, and leave him behind forever. You were about to apologize, tell him you were sorry, but you had to do this, you had to go. You opened your mouth to speak, and for a moment you didn’t even register what was happening as he placed his hands on either side of your head and brought his lips to yours. He hesitated there for a brief moment before he pulled away, giving you a moment to catch your breath.

               You hesitate for a moment, listening to your heartbeat in your chest, and suddenly you felt delirious with sensation. “I’m sorry,” Poe manages after a moment, after you make no move to kiss him back. “I’m sorry, I-“

               Before he can say anything more, you quickly grab him and kiss him again, knocking him back into the wall with the Force, and as you take a few quick steps to meet him, Poe’s hands fist in your hair as he devours you with fervent, hungry kisses. He spins you around as he changes positions and presses you back against the wall, pinning you there with his hips, and you can’t help but groan as you press the back of your head into the wall as if the back of your skull is trying to force its way through it. Poe’s lips trail down your neck sucking at the tender skin at the base of your collar, and you can’t help but pant against him, fisting your hands in his dark, curly hair. His one hand slips underneath your shirt, and you can feel his calloused fingertips sliding across your abdomen.

               “Oh fuck,” you pant breathlessly. “Fuck, Poe-“ His lips reach up to meet yours again, and as his hand cups your cheek, you can’t help but let a whimper rise to your lips as you dissolve into him. Poe pulls away, just slightly, his lips brushing against yours, and his eyes look into yours, seeking permission, as always, waiting to make sure you were comfortable, not taking things a step past where you wanted them to. For a minute, you didn’t think about Kylo, or Ani, or anything but Poe’s lips on yours and his rough hands squeezing your hips on either side of your body.

               “Would you hold it against me if I told you I missed you?” Poe asks, and you can’t help but laugh as you crane your neck forward to plant a stream of kisses along his neck.

               “Do you honestly think I didn’t?” you ask as you press a wet kiss against his neck, and Poe hesitates for the briefest of moments, as if he wasn’t quite sure. You both pull away, almost at the same time, as your eyes lock onto his. “I missed you,” you tell him, almost in an attempt to reassure him.

               “Is that why you’re still wearing that?” Poe asks, nodding down to the stone around your neck.

               “I couldn’t,” you say, but your words come out as a long, drawn out exhale. “I couldn’t take it off. I don’t know why-“

               “You couldn’t let yourself think too much about it,” Poe says, and your head slips forward in an involuntary nod.

               “Yes,” you exclaim, because Poe understood, he really understood. You couldn’t allow yourself to think about him when you were with Kylo Ren, you just couldn’t, and Poe understood that, because Poe understood you. He always seemed to have a knack for understanding why you did things, recognizing your motivations before you ever understood them yourself. Kylo did too, to some extent, but then again he was at least able to read your thoughts. Poe just knew things, because, well, he _knew_ you, and you take a moment as you let it sink in just how much Poe understood you. He suddenly places both hands on either side of your face as he presses his lips to yours again and you put your hands on the nape of his neck as you hold him closer to you, almost wishing you had never left the Resistance base to begin with.

               You kiss him with more intensity now, running your hands across his massive chest, down his large arms, trying to feel as much of him as possible. You moan loudly into his open mouth as his tongue moves in frantic circles against your own, and you allow yourself to lose yourself in the delicious, exhilarating sensation as you focus on him and nothing but. You can feel yourself building against him quickly, every muscles in your body surging with need, as you actively push yourself off the wall and against him, trying to take in as much of him as you possibly can.

               Poe seems to sense this as he pulls away slightly. You continue to kiss him regardless, your tongue shooting out from between your parted lips as you lick his lower lip softly, so caught up in the moment that you hadn’t even realized he had pulled away. “You really did miss me?” Poe asks, somewhere along the line between a statement and a question.

               “I did,” you confirm breathlessly, grabbing two fistfuls of his shirt just above the collarbone as you pull him closer to you. “Do you want me to prove it?” You bite your lip as you look up at him, a spark in your eye, and Poe seems to gaze at you with new wonder, possibly from a memory that had recently resurfaced to the forefront of his mind.

               “Fuck I missed you,” he whispers as he leans forward to kiss you again, and you can’t help but laugh as you lean forward and press your lips against his, closing the space between you. Poe pulls away one last time as he pulls your shirt up and over your head, and your fingers quickly find the buttons of his shirt as you attempt to undo them one by one without looking as you kiss him frantically. Still, you can’t get them undone fast enough, and in a moment of frustration you quickly grab the shirt and rip it down the middle, buttons popping off as the fabric gave under your hands. You weren’t sure if it was your raw strength or the Force or some combination of the two, but you quickly pushed the material off of his shoulders as you took a moment to appraise his body. He looked stronger, somehow, his muscles bigger and a bit more defined than they had been the last time you had seen him. There was a solid purple bruise the ran down from his shoulder to his pec on his left side, and you trailed your fingertips over it gingerly as you tilt your head to the side in wonder.

               “Finn,” Poe tells you, before you can ask, and you bite your lip as you smirk and look up at him.

               “Finn?” you repeat. “Is that who taught you how to fight?”

               “I’m not quite as good as you, but I like to think I’m better than before,” Poe tells you, and you can’t help but blush. For all he knew, your skills could have gotten rusty and he’d have no problem besting you. As it was, he had already seemingly beaten you in combat, that’s how you had been captured, but you attributed that more to the fact that you were dying of thirst than to any real show of skill. If you had been at the top of your game, Poe never would have gotten the upper hand against you, at least that’s what you wanted to think. Even still, though, you weren’t quite sure you would fight Poe if you really had the opportunity. You didn’t want to fight Poe; you didn’t want to hurt him. You wanted to impress him, wanted him to marvel at your skills, and that was the moment that you realized that even though you hadn’t seen him for years, nothing had changed. Your feelings for him hadn’t changed.

               You look back up at him and your eyes seem to convey this as Poe fixes you with a serious look and leans forward to kiss you slowly, seriously, allowing him to pour his emotions for you into the simple point of contact in your lips. “I love you,” you breathe out suddenly, and for a moment you can’t believe that those words had actually escaped your lips. You can feel your hairs standing on end, and you can feel fear prick at every pore in your body, as if you had suddenly caught a chill. You are standing in front of him, completely vulnerable, more vulnerable than you had been with Kylo in quite some time, and you weren’t quite sure why.

               It was almost strange that Kylo seemed like a far-off memory now that you were with Poe, but you didn’t have more than a second to dwell on it as Poe’s eyes met yours. You were serious, and he knew you were serious. For a moment he looked like he almost couldn’t believe that you had said it either before he pushed his face into yours with a hungry growl, and there was an unpleasant click of teeth as he put both hands around your neck, drawing you closer to him as his thumbs skimmed your jawline.

               You pushed him back over to the bed and straddled him quickly, pressing your bare chest into his as you continued to kiss him, running your hands over his hair and his arms, exploring his body as if for the first time. It practically was the first time. You hadn't seen him in quite a while, and for all you knew, this was still a whole new Poe Dameron. While Poe’s warm, calloused hands moved across your overheated skin, his lips worked their way to your cheek, across your face, towards your ear, where he nibbled gently on the lobe as you squirmed with frustration beneath him.

               “If you want me, you’re going to have to say it,” Poe tells you, but it almost seems like something he needs to hear from you as he wraps his arms around your waist.

               “I want you,” you grunt, climbing off of him so that you can yank your pants down and off of you. Poe pulls his pants down as well, and for a moment your eyes skim his naked body, taking him all in, and you can tell he’s doing the same to you. It wasn’t just the nakedness that was intimidating, it was the vulnerability. You had no problem being physically naked with pretty much anyone, but you almost couldn’t believe how you were wearing your emotions on your sleeve and letting Poe get this close, physically admitting that you were weak, that you didn’t just want him, but that you needed him. Somehow, Poe had gotten under your skin in a way that no one else could, and you found yourself almost shy standing before him.

               Poe seems to have similar sentiments as the heat seems to be gone, replaced by a deeper thirst for connection. He holds his hand out for you and you took it without hesitation, although you pause briefly before you climb onto his lap, straddling him with a leg on either side of his. You hesitate as you reached forward and kissed him, slowly, gently, before breaking the kiss so that you can ease yourself onto him, making sure to position his tip at your entrance before slowly lowering yourself onto him, like you were taking him in for the first time. You push him deep inside yourself and you can’t help but release a low moan, and for a moment you just hover there, your hips over his, just taking him in, before you start to slowly grind against him.

               Poe starts to quickly the rhythm as he snakes one arm around your waist, the other brushing your hair back out of your face as he kisses you again, one hand cupping your chin as he guides you close to him. It’s hot in that small room, and the sweat is literally rolling off your hairline in large beads as you kiss him, letting your hands glide over his slick skin. It felt too good, too extraordinarily good, for this to be real, and while your nerve endings screamed with this unfamiliar gratification, you almost couldn’t be sure that this wasn’t some kind of dream. Maybe you hadn’t escaped the First Order after all. Maybe this had been some nightmare that you were having, and when you woke up you would be back on the _Propitiate_ , back in the same mess that you had started with.

               This thought is troubling, and Poe quickly senses something’s wrong as he pulls back slightly to stroke your cheek. “What’s wrong?” he asks, and you’re not sure how to answer him.

               “Is this real?” you ask at length, answering his question with another question, and Poe chuckles lightheartedly as he skim his fingertips down your cheek.

               “Yeah, I’m real,” he says quietly as he looks into your eyes, and you can almost feel yourself melting as you gaze back at him. For a moment you can feel him echoing the same fears, the same doubts that you had, and it’s enough to take you over the edge as you start to really move against him, picking up the pace as fast as you can go. Poe plants both hands firmly on your hips as the pace intensifies, almost faster than either of you can keep up with, and you can feel the tender skin of his shoulder split under your teeth as you feel yourself start to give around him. Your short fingernails scrape down the tender skin of his back and you allow yourself to completely let go, coming so hard that you could have sworn that your vision had completed blacked over while your eyes were still open. You can feel Poe find his release inside you as well, and his whole body seems to shudder as he holds you a little tighter.

               You sit on top of him for another moment, trembling slightly, all of your muscles taut and at attention. In honest truth, the muscles in your upper arms were shaking, your thighs were shaking, and Poe quickly puts his hands on your arms to steady them as he looks up at you, like he’s not quite sure whether it’s a side effect of the adrenaline or not. You’re not quite sure yourself, and you quickly dismount off of him, unsure of what to say or what to do.

               Fortunately for you, Poe doesn’t force you to provide any answers that you’re not ready to give. Instead, he simply holds out his arm as he lies out on the bed and you quickly scoot into his chest. It’s hot, and you’re both sweating, and the body heat he is emanating his almost powerful enough to force you away, but there’s some sort of familiar warmth in his embrace and so you press your face against his sweaty chest all the same, wanting to feel as much of him as possible. He wraps his arms around you, and you can feel his lips tenderly brush against your forehead as you allow your eyelids to flutter shut. For some reason your head was aching, pounding, and although a part of you knew it was from the dehydration, you were too tired to even try to get up and get some water to soothe your parched throat.

               In the back of your mind, though, you knew it was more than that. It had _hurt_ when Poe seemed convinced that it never would have worked between you, like he had spent so much time trying to convince himself of that fact, and that was something that you absolutely could not accept. You didn’t know if it would have worked, there was no way to rewind time and find out, but you at least wanted to remain open to the possibility that it _could_ have, that in some alternate universe, maybe you had stayed behind on base, had moved on, and you were finally achieving your happily ever after with Poe instead. If Poe himself seemed discouraged by the idea, then it only made you doubtful that you would ever achieve any sort of happy conclusion with him. Imaginary or not, you were somewhat invested in at least the idea that you had to have some sort of a happy ending with Poe, at least in some way, just because that was what a secret part of you had wanted, had always wanted, and you couldn’t handle his rejection. After all you had been through with him, you wanted some sort of satisfying conclusion to that chapter of your life, and the way you had been so suddenly escorted from base made Poe seem like unfinished business.

               Not that Kylo would understand, and the idea is sobering as you retreat further into yourself, as if trying to physically distance yourself from Poe without actually moving from within the circle of his arm. Kylo would not understand why you had been intimate with Poe, especially considering your own worsening relationship with him, and it’s then that you realize the extent of what you had just done. You and Kylo were already awkwardly skirting around each other, and now that you had slept with Poe, how did you ever expect him to forgive you for that? You didn’t even have to wonder if he would be angry or not, you knew implicitly that he would be, and for a moment you can’t help but think that this is it, the end of your tale with him. You had been so caught up with trying to convince Poe that it was possible that it _could_ have worked between you, among your own repressed feelings for him, that you hadn’t thought about Kylo and what this meant to your relationship with him. If he wouldn’t forgive you, would that be it? Would that be…over?

               You can feel your heart literally shudder in your chest as a cold front sweeps through you. You didn’t want it to be over. You wanted some resolution with Poe, but you didn’t want to leave Kylo. You wanted to make things work, wanted to make things better, even if you couldn’t be sure how, and this was definitely not the right way to do it. The worst part was that it was over now, it was done. There was no way to take back what you did, and for a moment you’re completely overcome with the permanence of your decision. You had no idea what would happen with Poe, not sure what you _wanted_ to have happen with Poe, but you knew without a doubt that you wanted to be with Kylo, to stay with him, to work things out, and yet that was only what you said. Almost everything that you had physically done in the past few weeks seemed to imply the exact opposite, and you could feel your lower lip tremble instinctively as you suppressed a cry. You didn’t want things with Kylo to be over, and yet you had no idea if he would ever forgive you for this. A small part of you hoped that he would understand, that he could read your thoughts and _understand_ , but even if he did understand, it didn’t necessarily mean he would want to stay with you and work things out.

               Despite the heat, you could feel goosebumps prickle up all over your shivering flesh, despite the beads of sweat that had collected there. It was over now, it was done. Whatever had possessed you from within the First Order, it was clearly too late to get rid of now. Whoever Kylo had met back on the Starkiller Base, she was gone now. The girl that Poe had taken to the Resistance base with him and slowly fallen for? She was gone now too. You had no idea what had happened to her, or who was left standing in her place, but that was the worst part of all. You had no idea who she was, and yet she was inside your skin, walking around, making decisions for you that you would only later live to regret. If you had needed any sort of proof to realize that you were, in fact, a bad person, then this was it. You were a bad person, and this time, there really was no turning back. You could escape the Resistance, and you could escape the First Order, but you could not run from yourself or the guilt of what you had done.

               You kept your eyes firmly shut as a tear slipped down your cheek. You wanted to drop the shield you hadn’t even realized you had put up and tell Kylo that you were sorry, that you were so, so sorry, in the hopes that you could hear him forgive you. But you were a bad person now, and you didn’t deserve Poe’s embrace any more than you did Kylo’s affection. They may have liked who you were before, but you were gone now, and your mind drifted back to the vision that Anakin had given you back on Naboo. You had always known it was a warning, but only now did you really begin to see it for what it was.

               Anakin had warned you that you would end up really and truly alone, and you hadn’t heeded his warning. You had just wanted things to be _okay_ , that was it. You just wanted to be with your family. You just wanted to be happy, but apparently the Force had other plans in store for you, pushing you into one bad decision over another. But was that truly your doing, or was that the Force at work? Was the Force setting you up to be the antagonist to everyone around you for some greater purpose, or had you truly just taken every opportunity to try to make things better and snuffed them out under your heel? It almost felt like the galaxy was offering you two opportunities at any given time, one to make things better, and one to make things worse, and you picked the wrong one each and every time. You weren’t sure why, it wasn’t intentional, and yet there was no one you could blame but yourself.

               As you drifted off to a fitful sleep, you decided to take responsibility for your actions. Whether it was the Force, or destiny, or whatever evil that had crossed into you from the First Order, you could still choose how to act. You could still make decisions, and it was only good logic that the reason why you kept making bad choices was because you were, inherently, a bad person, and there was nothing you could do to change that. Apologies were just words, and words could not take back what had already been done. There was always a possibility that they could make things better, but given your recent penchant for making a situation seemingly as irreparable as it could possibly become, you could not trust to hope. You couldn’t trust yourself, you couldn’t trust the Force, and it was then that you realized that you were really and truly lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got to say, this chapter really takes the cake for me. I know some of you love me for it, some of you probably...don't, but let me just say: if you think the Reader is going to suddenly leave Kylo behind and follow Poe back to the Resistance, that is _not_ going to happen. I've kind of hammered in the parallels between Reader - > Kylo in _Candle_ and Poe - > Reader now, and this just sort of links together how far each of them will go. 
> 
> I know I mention sometimes that the Reader does things that surprise even me, and there was a lot of that in this chapter. The Reader going off on Poe, blaming him for her situation, was kinda a surprise for me, it just sort of came out, but it makes sense with where the Reader is mentally right now. She's not okay, and she wants to, _needs_ to believe that this wasn't inevitable, that she wouldn't have become this person who did all these bad things if the situation was different and she had never left the Resistance, but she can't say for sure, and that really impresses on her strongly, especially when Poe kinda seems to have moved on, saying that it wouldn't have worked out anyway, and that sort of hits Reader's panic button, especially considering where her relationship now stands with Kylo, and so she'll say _anything_ to try to fix things, because she doesn't have a clue what the hell she is doing right now, only that everything she does seems to make everything worse for herself...and she's not exactly helping her own situation. 
> 
> Right now, all I can say is just trust me and the narrative arc, as I've asked probably way too many times before. xD Love me or hate me now, you're all going to hate me in the end anyway. ;) (oh no...too ominous...but I have said there'd be a happy ending before, right?) Either way, if you're not yelling now, you probably will be by the end of Tuesday's chapter. Until then, cheers!!


	34. Chapter 34

               _“It’s been six months, Ani, he’s not coming back.”_

 _“One more day,_ please _.”_

_“It’s been one more day for the past two weeks, Ani. Remember, Kylo told us to go back to our home world if we ever ran into trouble, and we’re almost out of food. I’d call that trouble. Besides, maybe he and Phasma can’t return to Naboo, and they’re waiting for us there.”_

_That was the prompt that Ani needed to finally convince him to leave the planet. You didn’t want to leave Naboo any more than he did, but it was quickly becoming apparent that there was nothing left for you here. The very next day, you packed your bags and headed back towards your old academia, where Kylo had told you to seek refuge if he never came back. He had assured you that he would this time, he had_ promised _, but apparently his word didn’t mean anything more than it had the last time he had abandoned you and left you and Ani to fend for yourselves. You knew you should have just flown back to D’Qar; it was closer, at any rate, but you couldn’t help but hope that he was there waiting for you. You reached out to him with your mind so many times, but you never received an answer, and you weren’t sure if the dark grey cloud of apprehension that seemed to surround you like a fog was because of some sort of disturbance in the Force telling you that something was wrong, or if it was just your way of trying to cope with the fact that Kylo had left you behind – again. Even if he had a good reason for it, you still weren’t sure you could ever completely trust him again._

_The next thing you knew, you found yourself trudging up the steps to Sadie’s house, although it seemed much like the time you had first walked there with Ladson after Kylo had sent you away from the Starkiller Base. Sadie was sitting on a large rock outside the house that you didn’t remember being there before, a large boulder that seemed to jut out of the surface of the planet like a small mountain. Her hair was shorter than the last time you had seen it, and she quickly scoots off the rocks as she walks over to embrace you before she drops down to Ani’s level to greet him._

_“He came back,” you tell her, letting the sadness in your voice speak for itself. “He came back. He came and got me on D’Qar and we ran away together. But then he went away to do something with the First Order and he never came back.”_

_“Come inside,” Sadie says as she takes hold of your arm and leads you indoors, but as you walk into the shop it’s like you completely bypassed the whole front of the store and just entered the backroom to see the familiar low table and four surrounding chairs. You sat down at one of them, resting your head in your hands as you place your elbows on the table, and although Sadie sets down a mug of something hot in front of you, you don’t even glance up at it. There was no tea in the galaxy that could quell the pain of being left behind yet again._

_You’re suddenly disturbed from your melancholy by a poking at your shoulder, and you completely forget where you are for a minute before you stand back up, feeling dizzy and lightheaded. Sadie is standing by your side, although she appears to be wearing a different colored dress than the one she had been wearing when you had arrived. You can’t quite be sure what color it had been when you arrived, but it just seemed altogether different somehow, and you couldn’t quite explain why exactly this unnerved you. “They’re here.”_

_“Who’s here?” you ask, shaking your head from side to side to indicate your confusion._

_“Your friends,” Sadie replies cheerfully. “They’ve come to take you back with them. They’ve come to take you home.”_

_“But I don’t want to go,” you shout, anger flooding through your veins, and suddenly you realize your lightsaber is in your hands without even realizing how it had gotten there. Even still, you don’t expand the blades, and Sadie just nods her head excitedly like she didn’t even hear you. You feel a small bubble of confusion rise in your chest as your feet guide you out of the back room and into the shop, but again, instead of walking through the store, you seem to completely skip over it, stepping out into the bright sunlight of the world outside._

_You close your eyes and cover your face with one arm, trying to adjust to the bright sky overhead which was nothing short of blinding. Before you can even open your eyes and take stock of your surroundings, you feel someone tackle you from the side, picking you up, spinning you around, and you can feel Poe’s familiar hands on your cheeks as he kisses you with all the force he can muster. You smile as you relax into him, resting your head on his shoulder, and for a moment you allow yourself to just_ be _, standing there with Poe’s arms around you, and it’s nice and it’s soothing and you can’t help but let yourself embrace it. “How did you know I was here?” you ask softly as he sets you back down on your feet. The sun is shining so brightly that you can barely see him, so much so that you need to squint and shield your eyes with your hands, and even then, all you can really make out is the bit of dark stubble along his jaw line and the pink of his lower lip as you gaze up at him._

_“Sadie told me,” Poe explains, his voice soft and patient. “I went looking for you here after you first went missing. I told her to call if she ever saw you again so that we could come and bring you home.”_

_“I can’t go back to the Resistance,” you tell him, and you watch as his lips shift into a pout. “I’m sorry, but I can’t go. I need to stay here and wait for Kylo.”_

_“Kylo Ren’s dead,” another voice says, and as you turn around to see who this voice belonged to, it suddenly looks very dark. In fact, the sunlight is gone, and you can barely see anything in the sinister darkness, with not even a star to dot the sky. You can feel the cool chill of the night air against the nape of your neck, and as you turn in a slow circle, it suddenly dawns on you that they’re gone, everyone’s gone, and you’re standing there alone._

_“Kylo’s not dead,” you yell back. “He can’t be dead, I need him, I-“ But something lunges at you from the side, something big, and it almost feels like the earth has been overturned beneath your feet as you go sprawling back into nothingness. There’s a certain sense of weight on your arm, as if something’s latched onto you and won’t let go, and as you fall backwards you kick your legs out to try to hit something, anything, to give you some sense of location, but there’s nothing, and you can hear a low rumbling as you fall backwards now, getting louder and louder, and-_

               You gasp as you sit up with a start, immediately bracing yourself as you grab your head in both hands. Your vision was spotting, placing large black, fuzzy dots all around your field of vision, and you feel ridiculously lightheaded, like the room may start spinning crazily around you at any time. “Here.” You hear a voice off to your right, but you ignore it as you remained curled up in a seated position with your eyes firmly shut, trying to regain at least some sense of self. “Here, you need to drink. You’re seriously dehydrated right now. You need to drink.”

               Your tongue juts out to wet the corner of your upper lip, and the tip of your tongue almost feels like sandpaper as you drag it along your chapped lips. Keeping one hand over both of your eyes, you reach a hand out blindly for the canteen and graze the area just below Poe’s abdomen with the back of your knuckles. If that had been an inch lower, that could have had the potential to be disastrous, and you’re just thankful it wasn’t as he places the canteen into your outstretched hand. You raise it to your lips and drink from it hungrily, gulping it down while Poe just fluffs up the back of your hair and plays with it idly. You try not to jump at his touch, try to seem as unaffected by the gesture as possible, although your heart is still racing from the remnants of the dream that were only now starting to fade away.

               “Sounds like you had some dream last night,” Poe comments, and you stop drinking for a minute as you pull the canteen away from your lips. You raise your shoulders in a shrug, but the movement seems far from natural and you can’t help but make a face as you take another tentative sip.

               “Well,” you begin, testing your voice, and once it sounds steady, you continue. “If I’m as dehydrated as you say I am, then it only stands to reason that I’d have some pretty weird dreams.”

               “Here, come on.” Poe slides his hand down your arm and takes your hand in his as he pulls you to your feet. You let out a little grunt as your muscles protest, but eventually you stand up, feeling your legs creak beneath you. Poe just turns and leads you by the hand into a tiny bathroom, where there was barely enough room for both of you to stand. There was only about two feet of space between the sink and the wall, and then past that was a small toilet and then a small cubicle with a spigot sticking out of the wall to serve as a showerhead.

               “Nice,” you say dryly as you raise the canteen to your lips again. “Glad to know the Resistance really goes all out on their accommodations for you when you have to go undercover.”

               Poe gives you a scandalized look, and you just shrug your shoulders as you take another sip, arms crossed loosely over your chest as you idly watch Poe turn the water on, adjusting the nozzle with his fingertips. Running water on Tatooine was a bit of a luxury in itself, and there was absolutely no chance of having the added benefit of temperature control. “Come on.” He holds his hand out for you, and you arch an eyebrow at him, trying to figure out what his game was.

               “We’re not both going to fit in that,” you tell him, glancing between him and the tiny shower behind him.

               “We need to conserve water,” Poe says hastily as he gestures for you with his hand and you sigh loudly to show your exasperation as you set the canteen down on the sink and head under the water with him.

               There really was no space in the shower. You stood on the wall closest to the spigot, your back to it, and Poe’s chest was almost flush against yours. “Is there a problem?” he asks teasingly, and as you narrow your eyes at him, his expression shifts to concern. “Is this okay?” he asks, and you just sigh as you shake your head.

               “It’s fine,” you tell him quickly. “I don’t know; I guess it’s just a little overwhelming?” You stretch your neck out to one side, letting the lukewarm water run over your sore muscles, and Poe reaches out and brushes your wet hair out of your face.

               “I can see that,” Poe says, although you hate the somber expression on his face when he says it. “If there’s anything I can-“

               “No,” you say quickly, because anything Poe would try to do would just make things worse. You had already slept with him, betrayed Kylo, and then on top of that, gotten into the shower with him, where you were both naked, and extremely vulnerable.

               “What do you want right now?” Poe asks, and you hate that serious expression that’s still on his face. You realized that there was always going to be another question to answer, another mistake to be made, and your head was aching and quite frankly you were just too tired to deal with any of this. Instead, you just quickly tilt your lips up to his as you kiss him, and Poe doesn’t seem all that surprised as he kisses you back. At least it was one way to shut him up, but it didn’t go any further than that. Your head was still pounding, and although you stayed under the spigot and the flow of the hot water, you didn’t think it was helping much. Your hands traversed his wet, warm skin but the action felt strangely detached somehow, like someone else had jumped into your body and was moving your hands of their own accord. When the water finally ran out, you just pulled away and walked back to the bedroom, leaving a small trail of wet footprints behind you as you plopped down onto Poe’s bed, resting your cheek against his pillow.

               You let your eyelids flutter shut, and you don’t know how long it is until Poe is there, stroking your cheek gently with his fingertips. “You’re cold,” he notes, and you just let out a small hum of appreciation to show you heard him.

               “Cause, water,” you murmur between breaths, and Poe smooths your wet hair back away from your face.

               “Have you been sick recently?” Poe asks, the concern palpable in his voice, and you just shake your head from side to side as you force yourself into a seated position.

               “I’m fine,” you say, trying to at least reclaim some semblance of the cocky attitude you had earlier, but it’s gone now, completely gone. It takes tangible effort just to be able to speak, and you can’t help but feel as though someone has cut out a portion of your brain, leaving the rest of your thoughts fuzzy and disconnected.

               “You look like you’ve lost some color,” Poe tells you, and you recoil from him slightly as he places a hand on your forehead. “I’ll go make you some food. You just sit tight and rest, okay?”

               “Sure,” you reply glumly, and Poe works himself back into his pants as you just sit there on the bed, naked and still slightly damp, staring at a spot on the floor past him. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see him glance back at you as if he wants to say something, but decides against it as he heads into the kitchen. Looking around the empty room, you decide you don’t want to sit there naked and quickly pull Poe’s shirt off the floor and pull it over your head. It didn’t cover much, but at least it was something.

               Idly, you fluff out your hair and walk into the bathroom, staring at your reflection in the mirror. Poe was right. You had lost some color in your cheeks, your eyes looking too big for your face, and your lips seemed to be etched in a permanent scowl. You tried to smile, tried to pull your lips upwards at the corners, but they just didn’t seem to want to move that way. Your long, damp hair hung around your face, and it almost gave off the appearance that it was so heavy it was making your neck sag, your shoulders slouching to support the added weight. You stared at yourself for a moment, wanting to try to change something, anything, to lift this gloom that seemed to have descended upon you, to make you different from the person you had suddenly become, and you quickly head into the other room and fish out the small knife that you had hidden inside one of your boots, in case you were in an emergency situation where it felt absolutely necessary to use it in whatever way the situation required.

               This did feel necessary, and it felt almost downright cathartic as you wound the ends of your hair around two fingers before you held the strands taut and began to cut through them in a sawing motion. You did this in short clusters at a time, all the way around your head until it was definitely shorter, falling just to your collarbone. You looked different, but then again, you _were_ different. There was no use trying to pretend anymore. You and Kylo couldn’t get back to the way you used to be because too much had happened, no matter how much you both wished it to. You had lost everything that you wanted to fight to keep, and now you didn’t know if you even had a chance of going back to the way things were.

               And there was no way to describe how much you really wished they would. Right now, you wanted nothing more to be cuddled in his arms on your balcony on Naboo. Poe was familiar, and he still cared for you, you could tell, but if you felt like you hadn’t deserved him before, you definitely didn’t deserve him now. You weren’t being honest with him, you couldn’t be honest with him to protect Kylo, to protect Ani, and, in a way, to protect yourself. You couldn’t go back to the Resistance, so there was no way you could have any kind of future with him, but after what you had just done, was there ever really a chance that you could go back to Kylo? You just weren’t sure, and you absolutely hated that you weren’t sure.

               You went back into the bedroom where Poe was sitting on the bed cross-legged with a plate of food, and he immediately stopped fidgeting as he looked up at you, his eyes going wide. “You cut your hair,” he says, and you can’t help but snort.

               “Observant,” you tease, but there’s not a lot of humor in your voice as you slip your knife back into your boot and join Poe on the bed as you pick up your own plate and pull it into your lap.

               “You’re not really okay, are you?” Poe asks, and you just shrug your shoulders as you start to eat. “I came here to help you. I want to help you.”

               “By getting into my pants?” you ask, raising an eyebrow, and Poe himself looks taken aback, and, if you’re not mistaken, almost a little embarrassed.

               “That was…unplanned,” he says at length, finally deciding on the right choices of words. You look him over, trying to figure out his intended meaning.

               “You mean it was a mistake?” you ask, unable to quell the edge in your voice.

               “Not a mistake,” Poe says as he shakes his head from side to side. “Just unexpected.”

               “Well, at least you were the one to kiss me first this time,” you tease gently, and Poe seems to relax visibly at this. “Should I ask why you did it?”

               “Like I said, I didn’t plan on it,” Poe tells you as he stuffs a forkful of food into his mouth. “I was trying to keep you from leaving, and it just sort of happened.” You pause for a moment, starring down at your plate as you make an unsatisfactory clicking noise with your jaw. “Something wrong?”

               “I just realized something,” you say as you look up at him. “I could get inside your head and figure out if you’re telling the truth. I can see every memory you have, I can see what you’ve been up to all these years, I can figure out your motives and your intentions and I can figure out why you came to Tatooine, how you found me, and what you plan to do with me.”

               Poe pauses for a moment as he looks away, and there’s a brief pause before he looks back at you. “Should I be concerned?”

               “No,” you tell him firmly, pushing a hint of finality into your voice. “I’ve never done that to you before and I’m not going to start now.”

               “Then why-?” Poe asks, as if he truly didn’t understand that point you were trying to make.

               “Whatever you’re planning, it’s not going to work,” you tell him. “You’re not taking me back to the Resistance. You’re not going to try to save me, or whatever it is that you’re trying to do, because I’m stronger than you and I’m not going to let you.”

               “I’m just trying to make sure you’re okay,” Poe says as he looks at you, and you can tell by the glint in his eye that he means it. Whether or not he had other motives, that remained to be seen, but at least his concern was genuine.

               “I’m fine,” you repeat, although your voice is a bit subdued from the intensity of his gaze. You push your food around your plate, and let out a brief snort as a sudden realization strikes you. Poe raises his eyebrows, but you just shake your head, unwilling to say. Still, when Poe just stares at you expectantly, waiting, you feel as though you have no choice but to humor him. “It’s nothing,” you tell him. “I was just going to ask you if you care this much about everyone or if I’m special, but I already know the answer to that. Of course you care about everyone. I remember-“

               “You’re special,” Poe says after a moment, and you stop eating as you glance up at him. “You are. Not to say that if someone was sick right in front of me that I wouldn’t help them, but you do mean something to me.”

               “Why though?” you ask, tilting your head to the side. “It’s been so long; I just don’t understand why.”

               “Why do you still feel something towards me?” Poe asks, and you tilt your head to the side in consideration. A part of you wanted to argue that you didn’t, that you were Kylo’s and you belonged to him and him alone, but you couldn’t deny that there was a part of you that cared for Poe more than you cared to admit. It was one of the reasons why you still wore the stone he gave you around your neck.

               “Because I can’t help it,” you admit, unable to conceal the frustration in your voice, and Poe raises his eyebrows as he nods his head, as if that was the whole point. “Do you realize how stupid that sounds?” you ask suddenly. “The galaxy is at war right now. For the past decade, the First Order and the Resistance and the Republic have been at each other’s throats and you want to stop and take the time to, what? Stop and fuck and-“

               “To live,” Poe says firmly, and you stop as you consider him. “The galaxy may be at war, but that doesn’t mean our lives have to stop because of it. We’re not just soldiers. We want the galaxy to be at peace, and we’re willing to fight for it, maybe even die for it, but only so future generations will have a chance to live, so they’ll never have to make the sort of decisions you and I have to make.” He gestures with his hands as he turns to look at you, really look at you. “Didn’t you tell me that once?” he asks. “Didn’t you tell me that that’s exactly why you wanted to capture Ren all those years ago? To put this whole thing to rest once and for all? For Ani and all of the other people out there who don’t want to fight, who don’t want to get swept up in this constant state of conflict?”

               “I perpetuated it,” you say quietly as you look away. “I know that’s what I said back then, but I’ve been…busy, helping the First Order. I did things that you’d hate me for, if you knew.”

               “I wouldn’t hate you for it,” Poe insists. “You only did it because you thought it was right.”

               “I don’t know why I did it,” you admit hesitantly, instilled with sudden clarity. “I really don’t. I wanted to believe it was to keep Ani and Kylo safe, but I don’t know if I believe that anymore. I think I just let all the power get to my head. I-“ You pause for a moment as you bite your lip. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

               “I believe a lot of things,” Poe says as he spreads his hands. “You remember.”

               You don’t have to ask what he’s referring to, because you do remember. He was always so easy to open up to before, and you tried to think back to the person you were then, the person that had trusted him implicitly. “I think there’s something evil in the heart of the First Order,” you say quietly. “Or, Kylo does. And Ani does. I don’t know, there was a thing that got, like, _into_ me, and I don’t want to say it was possessing me, exactly, but they said it changed me and I just, I don’t know. Part of me could feel it happening but the other part of me was, I don’t know how to describe it…numb, I guess? I don’t know, I really don’t, but I helped them do a lot of things I knew would hurt people and it was like I was totally desensitized to all of it.”

               “Hey, that’s okay,” Poe says softly, as he reaches out his hand and places it comfortingly on your knee. “That’s what happens. Especially if you’re not in the thick of the fighting, you begin to see war like a game of strategy. I’ve seen it happen before, it-“

               “No, no, this is different,” you insist, shrugging his hand off of you, not because you didn’t want it there, but because it just felt too condescending. “This was like an actual, tangible, I don’t know, _evil_.”

               “Rey felt something,” Poe offers. “She felt that something was wrong.”

               “I was weak,” you admit glumly. “I _am_ weak.”

               Poe pauses for a moment as he studies your face. “What really happened?” You raise your eyebrows expectantly, waiting for clarification. “With Ren? I’m not saying you’re lying to me, but I don’t believe you just left him. You two are bonded to each other, and I’ve seen the effect he has on you firsthand. If your connection to him is that strong, then his connection to you must be the same way.”

               “You don’t know anything about the Force bond,” you mutter under your breath.

               “No, but I know you,” Poe insists. “And I know no matter what happened, you’d never just leave Ani behind, and unless he did something seriously horrific to hurt you, I doubt you would leave Ren behind either.”

               “Wouldn’t you want me to though?” you ask curiously. “Wouldn’t you want Ren out of the picture? It means less competition for you.”

               Poe just cracks a grin as he gnaws on his lower lip. “I wasn’t aware this was a competition.”

               You just shake your head from side to side. You needed to give Poe the impression that Kylo was out of the picture to keep him safe, but idly you wondered why neither Kylo nor Ani had tried checking in with you yet. Either the storm was still so bad outside that they had been lying low, or perhaps Kylo had figured out what you had done, took Ani, and left the planet. If that was the case, then it didn’t even really matter what Poe had in store for you. You had left everything that you really wanted behind.

               “It’s not,” you say firmly as you look up at him, staring him down, and Poe just seems amused by this as he pops the last bit of food into his mouth as he leans off the bed and places his plate on the floor next to yours.

               “I know I’m not going to get any answers out of you about what happened with him, so I’m not even going to ask,” Poe begins. “But I do have a question I would like an answer to.”

               “I’ll answer it,” you warn him. “But if it’s something I don’t want to answer, I can’t promise that I won’t be ridiculously sarcastic about it.”

               Poe just cracks a grin and chuckles quietly at this. “Last night you told me you loved me,” he recalls, biting his lip as he glances up at you. “That true?”

               “I-“ You blink and give your head a little shake, waiting for the sarcasm to kick in. You vaguely remembered the words passing your lips in a desperate bid, in a heat of the moment expression, but did you really mean it?

               “It’s okay if you’re not sure,” Poe says idly, like he doesn’t expect you to answer, and if that was the case, it only frustrated you that he had called your attention back to something you had apparently forgotten. “I just…” He rolls his shoulders openly, and you can’t help but scowl at him.

               “Does it make a difference?” you ask bitterly. “Best case, you decide to let me go. Worse case, you bring me back to the Resistance for reconditioning. Worst case, you turn me over to the Republic. I don’t think my answer is going to factor significantly into any of your decisions.”

               “And if I told you it might?” Poe asks, and you hesitate as you stare him down.

               “If it might,” you say with considerable weight in your words. “Then I would ask you if it’s possible to love two people at once.” You glance back up at him, and he seems honestly surprised by your candor.

               He seems to search himself for a brief moment as he fumbles around for an answer. “I think it is,” he says at length.

               “Then that’s your answer,” you tell him firmly. “Kylo’s not here, but you’re right, we are still bonded, although I am pretty sure he would prefer it if we weren’t. And it doesn’t help that he took me away from D’Qar when things really got started between us. It kind of built up all these feelings as to whether or not we would or wouldn’t work out and I just, I don’t know, I always sort of wondered how things would have turned out between us if I had stayed.”

               “And what do you think?” Poe asks. “You think things would have been good between us?”

               “I need you to answer that,” you answer immediately, with a sense of urgency in your voice, because you did. You needed Poe to answer that question, and you couldn’t hear the answer soon enough.

               Poe doesn’t even hesitate as he leans forward to kiss you, cupping your cheek in one hand, and you melt into the kiss as you stretch your legs out on the bed, letting Poe’s body move over yours as he kisses you firmly. “Is this my shirt?” Poe murmurs against your lips as he runs his hand down the length of the fabric over your side.

               “Do you want it back?” you mumble back as your lips move to his jawline to kiss up the side of his face, towards his earlobe, which you placate with a little nip.

               “Keep it,” Poe replies. “It suits you.” You roll your eyes as you fist both hands in his hair and kiss him. You had already made one unforgiveable mistake, and if you weren’t going to be forgiven for the first one, in your present state of mind, it didn’t really matter if you decided to make a second. You had no idea how things would turn out with Kylo, or if you would inevitably be dragged back to the Resistance, and to be honest you just felt completely apathetic when you thought about your future. It was quite clear that nothing was going to turn out the way you wanted it to, and so it was just easier not to care about this, about anything, as you focused on the way Poe’s warm hands moved across your skin. This was real, this was tangible, and this was right here.

               “Do you still like me?” you ask at length. Love and attraction was something else entirely, and Poe seems to get the heart of your question as he takes the time to look you over.

               “You’re different,” he says at length, and inwardly you can feel your heart sink as you wished you had never ventured the question. “You’re hostile, and aggressive, and sarcastic, but then again, that’s exactly how you were when I first met you.”

               “No,” you pout, absolutely refusing to believe that you were the same now as you were back then. “That was-“

               “A front you put on to try to seem stronger?” Poe asks. “To make it seem like you didn’t need any help? To make it seem like you knew what you were doing? You knew you needed help, but you didn’t know where to look for it, or who to ask, and you weren’t sure anyone could help you to begin with, so you decided to just stay quiet and push everyone away.” Your mouth hangs open as you gape at him, trying to figure out if this was a new revelation or something he had prepared himself for. Either way, this was a new revelation for you, and you weren’t quite sure you knew what it meant. “Back then, you were afraid to let me in because you didn’t know if you could trust me. But you did, you opened up to me, and we became friends, and then something more.”

               “And now?” you ask, although your voice feels like it has turned to sludge in your throat.

               “Now,” Poe repeats, and there’s a spark in his eyes that shows that he really believes that he’s reaching you, that you’re really listening. “Now you’re still afraid to let me in because you’re afraid how I’ll react if you told me the truth. Back then you didn’t want anyone to know that your relationship with Ren was a lot more complicated than we initially believed, but you trusted me enough to tell me the truth.”

               “Or maybe I was just that desperate to get some perspective of the situation,” you tell him. “So much so that I would have told anyone anything in order to get them to listen.”

               “And there’s strength in that,” Poe says quietly, and you glance down and away, unable to meet his eyes. Even still, Poe reaches up and cups your cheek in one hand, guiding your eyes back to his face. “I’m not asking for you to tell me everything right now, not right away, but I need to know if you still trust me.”

               “You’re still the guy who wants to save the universe and everyone in it,” you say quietly. “What’s not to trust?”

               “People don’t change,” Poe says, his voice just as soft as yours, and as his eyes search your own you can’t help but think that his lips are moving slightly closer to your own. “People like to think they do, but it’s just the situation that changes. You put them right back in a familiar situation, and all of those old habits start to come back.”

               “I don’t think you ever answered my question,” you say quietly, now fully aware that Poe’s lips are definitely moving closer to yours. “Do you still like me?”

               “I do,” Poe replies as his lips finally press against yours, and you can’t help but plant your hands on both sides of his cheeks as you kiss him. You wanted, needed to feel him again, needed him to convince you that this temporary change was just that, temporary. Poe seemed at least somewhat convinced that you were still the same person you always were, and if he believed it, then perhaps you could believe it as well, just as he had once infected you with his confidence that you could do anything. Thinking back on old memories filled you with a new sense of hunger, a new lust, and you started to attack his lips with more intensity as you quickly thrust yourself into his lap, knees on either side of his hips as you straddled him. Poe’s hands move from your waist to your ass as you kiss him, leaning forward, making noises that sounded almost primal as you kissed him so hard you were almost sure you were going to knock teeth.

               You didn’t need to think about this, and you were grateful that your mind was quiet as his hands skimmed the length of your body. It didn’t matter what he said, whether he told you that he liked you or he loved you or you hadn’t changed; those words would held no meaning for you, but if he was going to get intimate with you, make love to you, fuck you, that was how you knew from that familiar burst of sensation that not all that much had really changed, or at least, so consumed your thoughts that it was a pleasant distraction from what all of this meant, and where it was going to go from here.

               Poe adjusts you to tug down his pants from his hips, and you remain contented to scoot off him but keep up your assault, tasting his skin underneath your lips and your tongue and your teeth. It was so familiar, and as you ran your tongue from his collarbone to his neck, inhaling the scent of him, drinking him in, you almost became lightheaded from the intoxication that _this_ used to be what you had truly wanted, that you used to think about this, long for this, yearn for this, when you weren’t sure that things ever would have worked out with Kylo. Now you were thrust back in that familiar situation again, and Poe, to his credit, was right. Now that Poe was here, his hands on your skin, his lips against your cheek, the tip of his erection against your entrance, you let nostalgia take over as you pushed yourself down onto him. You had no idea if this was just a temporary distraction to subdue you until the rest of the Resistance was ready to storm Tatooine and capture you much like you had done to Kylo, but if that was the case, then you wanted to at least enjoy this moment and not caught up in the details of the dozens of hypothetical scenarios that could occur.

               You worked your hips in a steady rhythm against his, feeling yourself build at a deliciously fast pace as Poe grunted your name in your ear, holding you tightly to him. You kept your hands planted on his shoulders as you let yourself build around him before you finally found your release and came crashing down, biting into his shoulder as you did so. You could hear Poe grunt, both as he found his own release and from the pain of your bite, and you quickly released your grip as you licked the area with the flat of your tongue in a small effort to console him. You sat back slightly, letting Poe reach forward and brush his lips against yours again, and you climbed off of him as you plopped down on the bed. Poe was beside you in an instant, curling you into his arms, and it was clear after a moment’s pause that neither of you knew quite what to say. You didn’t know what Poe planned to do with you, and Poe didn’t seem inclined to share, and so you just reached up and kissed him as you curled into the crook of his arm and let yourself drift off to sleep.

               You weren’t sure how long you had been out for when you thought you heard talking from across the far side of the room. This voice was different though, muffled somehow, and it took you a moment to figure out that the voice sounded so obscured because the person wasn’t actually in the room. Poe was still sound asleep beside you, and you quickly scooted out of the circle of his arm as you made your way barefoot across the room and into the kitchen, where you saw his comlink sitting on a nearby countertop.

               _“…Black Leader, come in. Come in, Black Leader, do you read me? Are you there, Poe? We received your message that you have intercepted Moonstaff and are waiting for your signal. The storm has died down and we are ready for extraction. Goldfox is on standby, repeat, Goldfox is on standby.”_

Your heart jumps in your chest as you hear your old callsign, but that’s far from your concern right now. You hesitate as you stare down at the comlink, trying to figure out what to do, when someone grabs you from behind, snatching the comlink out of your hands. “Moonstaff acquired,” Poe says immediately, pressing down the button on the comlink before you have time to even react, and you stare at him in disbelief as Poe’s eyes meet your own. “Commence the extraction.” Your narrow your eyes, searching him for any sign of guilt or trepidation, but if anything, Poe just seems more determined than before.

               “So this is it then,” you say with finality in your voice as you stare him down. You weren’t sure why a part of you believed he would really let you go. You weren’t quite sure where you were going to go, especially if Kylo didn’t want anything to do with you anymore, but there was no way that you could go back to the Resistance when there was a chance that they could still sell you out to the Republic and put you down at any time.

               “It doesn’t have to be,” Poe tells you as you head into the room to get dressed. “Come back with me.”

               “You’re planning on taking me by force,” you tell him as you hurry into your clothes, pulling Poe’s shirt off of you and throwing it to the ground with deliberate antagonism. “If you really wanted me to come with you, you wouldn’t have an entire Resistance squadron outside these doors waiting to take me out.”

               “I-“ Poe starts, but you don’t want to hear it.

               “How stupid do I look?” you demand, ignoring the fact that as you struggled into your own clothes, pretty damn stupid. “The only reason that you need to take me in by force is because you obviously don’t think I’m going to like where I’m headed very much, and so you need people to contain me.”

               “No,” Poe says immediately. “We just want to bring you back to the Resistance to talk.”

               “We’ve been talking,” you snap at him. “And fucking. There’s no reason we can’t do that here.” Poe stares at you nervously, and you bite your lip. “You could have just asked me to go with you.”

               “And would you have said yes?” Poe asks as you finish dressing, and you don’t answer as you shake your head from side to side, unwilling to prove his point for him.

               “I’m going,” you say firmly. “Don’t come after me.”

               “Don’t?” Poe asks with a sigh, and you hesitate for the briefest of moments. He takes your hand in his as he turns you around to face him. “Don’t go.” He looks sad, but more than that, he looks tired, and for a minute you try to put yourself in his position. He had been searching the galaxy for you for years, always holding out hope that he would find you, and he had. You had led him on, led him to think that Kylo was out of the picture, that you wanted him again, and now, in his mind, you were running off and leaving him again, this time, by your own choice. For the briefest of moments, you wanted to go with him, to leave everything behind and head back to the Resistance with him, and that was why you had to go.

               Nevertheless, you put your hands on either side of his face as you reach up to kiss him. It’s supposed to be a last kiss, a final kiss, and you suspect Poe must know this as he allows you to kiss him, making barely any attempt to kiss you back.

               Suddenly the door bursts open and you jump away from Poe, throwing your leg back in a fighting stance, getting ready to fight an entire army for your freedom. Instead, just one person enters, closing the door behind him. As he frees up the mask away from his face, you can’t help but let your jaw drop. It shouldn’t have surprised you, really, and you make a quick attempt to cover your shock as you snap your jaw shut with a faint click. “Black Leader,” he says, nodding at Poe before turning to you. “Moonstaff.”

               “Please tell me you’re not Goldfox,” you say after a moment, and Ladson just grins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, I think the Reader is almost slightly enamored by her relationship with Poe, because it's one of those relationships where you're not sure if it will work out, but you can't actually envision yourselves breaking up either. They never had time to really get past the "honeymoon stage" of the beginning of their relationship so it was all new and fun and then she left and how the hell do you pick up the pieces years after that? The short answer is, you don't, and that's not something either of them really wants to think about or admit to right now in the wake of everything else going on. 
> 
> Not that that really matters now, because the game is up, the Reader knows the Resistance knows she's here, and Ladson's arrived to help bring her in!! I don't think I have to tell you OH SNAP because after what happened on Naboo, I can't guarantee how happy Ladson will be to see his "old friend" again......Thursday is going to be one hell of a chapter. ;) Until then, cheers!!
> 
> By the by, I don't know if anyone here are Tom Hiddleston fans, but my little sister started writing her own fanfiction story centered around him. It's one of those really cute fanfic-y stories that is happy and silly and fluffy. English isn't her first language but she's really trying her best, and each chapter is pretty short (right now her whole story is about the length of two of my chapters. xD) If you want to check it out, the story is called [Before Sunrise](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7028866/chapters/15993913) and I can't tell you how much it would make her day to go check it out (she seriously sits there refreshing the page waiting for comments, bless her tender heart.) It's cute, it's adorable, and silly as heck and I can almost guarantee it will put a smile on your face (especially after all the feels this story provides.) xD


	35. Chapter 35

               “Still cooler than Moonstaff,” Ladson teases, and he seems to be in considerably better spirits than the last time you saw him on Naboo. He glances over at Poe and nods his head forward firmly, as if to confirm something. “Do you still have it?”

               “Yeah,” Poe replies. “Just waiting for the right time.” Your eyes widen in alarm as you spin around to face him, and that’s when you feel something cold and solid clamp around your wrist from out of nowhere. You make a small cry in the back of your throat as Ladson rushes forward and grabs your other arm, holding it so tightly you’re almost sure he’s going to leave a bruise as Poe secures the clasp on your other wrist. You glance down in panic at the brace around your wrists, shackling them together, and you can’t help your look of disgust as Poe looks down and away, having the decency to appear ashamed.

               “You are going to die for this,” you whisper with such venom in your voice that it could have poisoned him if he was standing any closer. Your wrists may have been shackled together, but you hold up both hands towards him, trying to push him back with the Force. He doesn’t move, though, doesn’t look the least bit intimidated, just sad, and you can feel a whole new type of terror rush through your veins as you realize that your Force abilities aren’t working. “What did you do to me? Poe, what did you do to me?” He just looks away, and you can feel tears stinging in the corners of your eyes. “What did you _do_ to me, Dameron?”

               It’s Ladson that speaks up instead, and you whirl around to face him. “A new type of technology that the Republic had us specially commission,” Ladson explains. “Rey helped them make it. You remember the Force lock Luke put on Ren’s door? Basically she helped them harness that same effect in a special set of restraints that limits your Force abilities. Don’t ask me how it works, but all I know is, with those around your wrists, you’re not able to use the Force to your advantage any more than I am.”

               Your breath catches in your throat, and you hesitate for a moment as goosebumps prick at your skin. “You will remove these restraints,” you tell him as calmly as you can. You had no idea if mind tricks would still work without the Force, but it was at least worth a shot. Ladson’s lip just quirks up into a smile as he shakes his head, and you turn back to Poe, beseechingly. “You will remove these restraints.”

               “Not until we get you off the planet,” Poe says quietly, and you can’t help but let a small whimper rise out of your chest. You throw yourself down on the ground, pulling your legs into your chest and burying your face in your knees as you try to focus on the Force, trying to think of anything and everything you can do to get out of these. If your connection to the Force was dampened, it meant that you wouldn’t be able to simply unlock these shackles with the Force, meant that you wouldn’t be able to defend yourself if attacked, and it meant that you wouldn’t be able to telepathically reach out to Kylo or Ani for help either. This last one causes fear to rise up in your chest like never before, and you could only hope that Kylo and Ani had sensed your connection to them being snuffed out and silenced so that they could potentially try to rescue you.

               “Are you crying?” Ladson asks, and you jolt slightly to the side as he kicks the side of your calf with the top of his steel-toed boot.

               “Stop it,” Poe commands, unable to hide the frustration in his voice.

               “You know, Sadie was crying too,” Ladson continues. “She knew you were missing and wanted to help try to bring you and Ani back. We didn’t know that Hux was involved, and we didn’t know you would ally with him, especially after what he did to her. She’s still not okay after what happened back there on Naboo, and that wasn’t because of Hux. That was because of what you did to her. You-“

               “Leave her alone,” Poe snaps suddenly, with such authority in his voice that even you flinch.

               Ladson’s quiet for a moment before you hear his incredulous, “You didn’t actually sleep with her, did you?” Poe says nothing and you can hear him move around the room, presumably getting dressed. “Seriously?” Ladson asks, but this time is question is accompanied by a dry laugh. You can feel the toe of his boot crash into the side of your leg again, a bit harder this time, commanding your attention. “So what’s Ren going to do when he finds out, hmm?”

               “Have you gathered any tangible evidence that he’s on this planet?” Poe asks, and Ladson is silent for a moment.

               “No,” he admits quietly. “No, no one’s been able to locate him or Ani. Snap and Asher have been monitoring the planet from orbit, but it doesn’t look like they’ve left.”

               “If they were ever here,” Poe says with an edge of agitation in his voice. “She says they’re both still on the _Propitiate_ , that she came here alone.”

               “She always was a terrible liar,” Ladson says, and you bite your lip to keep yourself from responding, still trying to channel whatever bits of the Force you can to free you from this situation.

               “Stop it,” Poe repeats. “I know you’re still upset about what happened back on Naboo, but this isn’t the time. If Ren is here, then we need to leave quickly.” Poe bends down beside you, brushing your hair back and out of your face. “If he is here, you need to tell us.”

               “No,” you reply firmly, not caring to elaborate on whether you were simply answering his question or refusing to cooperate.

               Poe just nods quietly and doesn’t seem willing to push you any further as he stands up and looks back at Ladson. “I understand you’re angry with her right now, but we need to get off Tatooine in one piece, and I’m going to need your help to do it. Can you do that?”

               “If she cooperates, then we won’t have any problems,” Ladson tells him, kicking your shin lightly with the toe of his boot again.

               “Stop kicking me,” you say firmly, making it clear that you were not going to tell him a second time. You may not have had the Force, and your hands were tied, but you could still fight.

               “Yeah?” Ladson asks. “And who’s going to make me? You?”

               “I’m going to kill you the second they remove these restraints,” you growl at him, your upper lip curling up into a snarl as you hold your shackled hands out in front of you.

               “I warned you to stop taunting her or I might just let her,” Poe says as he heads into the kitchen, and you can hear him saying something over the comlink as you turn back to Ladson.

               “You abandoned us,” Ladson says sharply. “You could have come back with us, hell, you could have come back at any time. We all thought that Ren was keeping you captive, or worse, but instead we find out that you’ve been in league with the First Order, with Hux, this entire time. After everything that happened-“

               “I was trying to protect my family,” you shoot back. “You know the Republic put a bounty on my head. I was trying to protect Kylo, and Ani, and myself, and the First Order seemed to be the best way to do it.”

               Ladson just shakes his head from side to side. “So where is he, then? If you’re doing all of this to protect him and Ani, then where are they?”

               “Far away from here,” you tell him glumly, letting the sad timbre resonate in your voice.

               “Why?” Ladson asks at length. “What did he do to finally make you leave for good?”

               “You think I would have left Ani with him if he did something?” you ask as you raise your eyebrows, and Ladson shakes his head sadly as he looks away.

               “Rey said something happened to you,” he says after a brief pause. “Guess she was right.”

               “Fuck Rey,” you spit angrily as you jump to your feet, staggering a little in a vain attempt to catch your balance. “None of you have a clue about what I went through or the choices that I had to make. Kylo kidnapped me from D’Qar, and then suddenly I’m a target to the Republic, and Kylo’s telling me that you’d have no choice but to hand me over if I ever went back. So why would I? Why would I go back and risk that?” Ladson looks down and away, but you’re not finished. “You think I wanted to be in that position to go back and ask you to protect me? Do you think I wanted to put Poe in that position? Or Leia? The situation of them versus the First Order was precarious enough as it was. Do you really think I wanted the Republic turning around and declaring war on the Resistance or something because of _me_?” You shake your head. “It was just better for everyone if I was gone, and stayed gone. I just wanted to hide out on Naboo, just spend time with Kylo and Ani, but then Hux showed up and roped me into things and then _you_ showed up and I had no choice but to follow them to the First Order.”

               “Why would Hux ever want to get you involved with the First Order?” Ladson asks, shaking his head as if he honestly doesn’t understand. “Hux _hated_ you.”

               “And yet he was able to see my potential as a valuable ally to him,” you snap back. “I’m sure he must have hated Shayne too, but he was still able to see that he was smart, that he was worth something to the Order.”

               “Shayne?” Ladson practically shouts as he spins around to face you. “Shayne is _alive_?”

               “And kicking,” you reply, smirking at the mix of shock and horror across his face. “Hux even put him in charge of his own little team up there. Apparently he’s a lot smarter than we all gave him credit for.”

               Ladson narrows his eyes at you. “So I guess the two of you are the best of buds, now, aren’t you?”

               You snort and do nothing to hide the look of surprise on your face. “Seriously?” you ask as you arch an eyebrow. “I know you absolutely hated Shayne, but I couldn’t really stand him either.” Ladson just tilts his head to the side in consideration, and you try to cross your arms over your chest before you realize the brace makes it impossible. “You know, I know it’s only been a few years, but you could at least try to pretend you remember something about me.”

               “I remember you were always a pain in the ass,” Ladson retorts, but there’s some humor in his voice as he says it. You stare at each other for a moment, letting a silent understanding pass between you. “You doing okay?”

               “I don’t think okay is the word I’d use,” you reply flatly. “Kylo’s gone, I can’t use my Force powers, and if I’m not mistaken, I’m about to be dragged back to D’Qar against my will.”

               “You’re not mistaken,” Poe says as he steps out of the doorway, and you almost wonder for a moment if he was giving you and Ladson time to briefly come to terms with each other before you headed back out. “The container’s all set.”

               “Container?” you ask flatly, unable to quell the horror in your voice, and Poe emits a light chuckle as he shakes his head from side to side.

               “Our ship’s parked a ways from here in order to keep our presence on this planet as inconspicuous as possible,” Poe replies. “We’ve got a transport that’s going to take us there and make sure we’re not seen.”

               “Excellent,” you mutter under your breath. Not only would Kylo not be able to feel you through the Force, but he wouldn’t even be able to see you being physically taken out of town. You see Poe looking at you, watching your reaction, but you quickly drop your gaze.

               “You ready?” he asks, and you simply nod your head in defeat as he grabs your upper arm and pulls you through the door. As soon as he opens it, you’re guided into the back of a small truck with two benches on either side. You scoot down and sit on the right, and Ladson files in as Poe shuts the door behind them, sealing the lock with a click before he sits down next to Ladson so they’re both facing you.

               “How long is this drive going to take?” you ask, fidgeting your wrists back and forth in your restraints. “These things are really cutting off my circulation, seriously, my fingers are starting to go numb.”

               Ladson looks at you before he turns aside to Poe, who is looking at you with consideration. “We’ll take them off once we’re through the planet’s atmosphere,” he says finally, and you can’t help but pout as you turn to both of them.

               “Come on,” you say pleadingly, letting your shoulders slouch. “I’m not going to do anything. You both know me.”

               “Yeah,” Ladson snorts. “I’m pretty sure we do, which is exactly why those restraints are staying on.” You bite down your lip to conceal a smirk as you glance towards the doors. “If you prefer, we could knock you out instead so you’re not even aware you’re wearing them.”

               “No,” you say with such sudden acrimony in your voice that Ladson looks taken aback. Poe just nods in understanding as he looks at Ladson and then back at you. You had already been knocked out to be taken off of D’Qar, and you weren’t going to be knocked out again if you could help it. At least with your eyes open and your brain still working, you could claim to at least have some control over your situation. If they rendered you unconscious, you would be completely helpless, and that wasn’t a position you wanted to find yourself in ever, ever again.               

               “They’ll be off soon,” he says dismissively, and you can’t help but pout as you close your eyes, feeling the rough bump of the tires along the coarse Tatooine sand. You try to push all of your consciousness into embracing that one sensation in order to distract you from the cold metal of the brace around your wrists, when you begin to feel something else. It starts in your shoulder blades before it trickles down your back and into your chest, warming you from the bottom of your lungs to the very top of your sternum. You can’t describe the feeling, exactly, but you feel as though you’re being consumed with a sense of warmth as a small smile tugs at the corners of your lips.

               “What’s going on?” Ladson asks, the alarm palpable in his voice. “What’s she doing?”

               “No idea,” you hear Poe mumble, before you finally open your eyes to face them.

               “You might want to release me if you don’t want to die,” you tell him, and there’s something in your eyes that makes him believe you. To your surprise, he immediately goes to a pack in his side to retrieve the key to remove the brace, but it’s already too late. The truck topples violently to the left and there’s a flying of limbs as it rolls over onto its side. Luckily, you had at least somewhat prepared for this, using your feet to kick out in front of you so that you more or less landed on your knees. Albeit, it was a bit of a rough landing, and you were pretty sure that the side of your head had struck the edge of the opposing bench by the pain that seemed to be emanating just above your left eye, but that wasn’t really a concern for you. Ignoring Poe and Ladson, you quickly scooted yourself to the doors, ignoring the pounding in both of  your knees as you tried to kick it open with your foot.

               Fortunately, one of the doors opened and someone grabbed you by the elbow as they pulled you out into the dimming twilight. The sky was a mix of deep purple and red and blue that bordered on black, and for a moment you saw that and nothing but until the figure in front of you grabbed you by your shoulders, forcing you to turn your attention to him. “Are you all right?” Kylo asks, brushing your hair out of your face, and you blink at him for a moment, unable to answer.

               He didn’t abandon you after all.

               He came back.

               “Kylo,” you breathe, and he grabs both sides of your face as he kisses your forehead. You hold your wrists up in front of him, pouting miserably. “Kylo, they made something, it stops the Force-“

               “I know,” Kylo says, and you’re thankful that while it seemed to suppress the Force user, that someone else with the Force was able to unlock and dismantle it. Kylo holds up one hand and there’s a click as the locks disengage and the brace tumbles off of your wrists and into the sand at your feet. You massage your sore wrists for no more than a second before you quickly throw your face into his chest, wrapping your arms around him.

               “You came back for me,” you murmur through the thick fabric, and Kylo seems to relax as he puts a hand on the top of your head.

               “It’s okay,” he says quietly as he smooths your hair back, and it’s only then that you notice that you’re shaking, you’re actually shaking. Poe had almost succeeded in taking you off of Tatooine, away from Kylo forever, and what’s worse is that you almost let him. You can feel hot tears prick in the corners of your eyes, and you squeeze Kylo with as much strength as you can muster.       

               “How did you find me?” you ask. “If that dampened my connection to the Force, I thought you’d never be able to find me.”

               “It did,” Kylo replies as he pulls away from you slightly, a bemused expression on his face. “But you and I are bonded, and there’s no technology in the galaxy that can separate me from you if I truly want to find you.”

               You hesitate for a moment as your previous misdeeds with Poe flit through your mind, and you let the guilt rise up like a bubble in your throat. “Kylo-“ You stop suddenly, holding up your hand in the air, just in time to stop the blaster bolt that was coming towards you. Ladson is squatting at the entrance to the back of the truck, half behind the other sealed door for protection, blaster raised. You can see shiny streaks of blood dripping down the side of his head, and you let out a grunt as you thrust the blaster bolt into the ground beside you, flinching only slightly as it kicks a plethora of sand grains in your direction.

               “You-“ you scream, and your voice is hoarse and loud in the stillness of the night that was quickly coming on. You use the Force to pull Ladson out of the truck, throwing him roughly against the side, causing one of the tires to spin slightly. You wait for a moment, wait for the other blaster bolt to come from inside, but Poe seems to think better of attacking as he emerges at the entrance of the truck. Using the Force, you drop him down onto his knees, and Poe braces himself in the sand with one hand before he holds his fingertips to his temples in obvious surrender. “I’m going to kill the both of you.”

               “Leave them,” Kylo says, tugging on your arm, but you shrug him off.

               “You kidnapped me and you collared me and you were going to take me away,” you shriek, your anger bubbling inside of you like a pot of boiling water that was ready to burst into a cloudy fit of steam at any moment. You can feel hot, angry tears drip down your face as you gaze from Ladson to Poe, who just gnaws on his lower lip and tries to keep his expression concealed.

               “Now’s not the time,” Kylo says quietly, and you spin around as you turn to look at him, picking up something in his tone.

               “Where’s Ani?” you ask, your eyes glancing searchingly behind Kylo, but Ani was nowhere to be found.

               “He’s safe,” Kylo replies quickly. “But we need to leave before-“

               He looks up and to the right suddenly, sensing it before you do. A figure jumps from the roof of one of the houses and lands in the sand between you and the truck. The figure gets up from her knees, and as she does, she extends two twin blades from either side of a hilt that you could only guess was made from Mandalorian iron. These blades, though, were a bright shade of green, and as she moved the hilt into the customary position for a formal duel salute, she turned the staff through full two full turns before she brought it up at an angle across her face, indicating that she was ready for battle.

               “Take Ani and go,” you tell Kylo quietly, giving his hand a firm squeeze. “I’ll handle this.”

               “No,” Kylo says firmly. “We-“

               “Go,” you shout at him, never taking your eyes off Rey’s face. You had never seen her look like this, not ever. Her eyes were cold and unforgiving, prepared to do what she needed to do. Kylo’s silent for a moment before he turns to go, giving your hand a final squeeze as he does so.

               “Stop,” Rey shouts, taking a step forward, and you quickly bring your amber lightsaber into your hand, holding it out in a horizontal in front of you.

               “No,” you say firmly. “No, this is our fight, just you and me.” You had no idea where this sudden surge of antagonism for her was coming from, but you assumed she must have felt it all the same. Rey worked with the Resistance, worked with the enemy, and while Poe and Ladson could try to hurt you, Rey actually had the power and the skill and the means in order to do so. She had once been your teacher, your mentor, and through that connection she had felt you surrender to the dark side. You had no idea if she took such a betrayal personally, but for whatever the reason, you could feel your own anger for her pulsing right back at you from her direction.

               Rey just inclines her head forward as she spins her blades in a figure-eight across the front of her body before letting it land in a diagonal at her side. From behind her, you can see Poe glance between the two of you, his expression almost incredulous. “We can talk this out. We don’t need to fight.”

               “She wants to,” Rey says without the slightly bit of hesitation. “She wants to fight me.”

               Poe looks to you, his expression still incredulous, while you incline your head forward. You weren’t sure if you wanted to fight Rey, specifically, but you needed to fight someone, anyone, to release the anger that was burning through your veins like acid, making your muscles twitch and shake with agitation, and aside from Kylo, only Rey could provide you with the challenge that you so desperately needed. “I’m stronger than you, Rey. I beat you last time, and I can do it again.”

               “This is your last chance,” Rey warns, but even as she says it, you can see her tighten her grip on her lightsaber. “Come back with us to the Resistance.”

               “Not a chance,” you reply, and that’s when Rey rushes towards you, thrusting her lightsaber down in a high, vertical strike. You dropped back into a lunge as you thrust your lightsaber into a high block, catching it at one of the corner of your blades. You disengaged quickly as you dipped to one side, sweeping one of the blades in a low strike. Rey jumped instantly, swinging her lightsaber around as she dodged your blow. You dodged hers, sweeping yourself back and to the side as you pulled your torso out of the lightsaber’s path, and that’s when you realized that Rey wasn’t fighting to capture you, she was fighting for the kill.

               A few feet apart, you wait until Rey comes in for another strike, and you block it quickly, not disengaging but keeping your hold on her steady, looking at her through the crackling _X_ that your blades had made. Her eyes were set in concentration, teeth gritted, and you could tell that although something had changed in you, something was different in her as well. Why else would her lightsaber have been green instead of the usual blue it was before? Did that one break? Had Snoke destroyed it when she had fought him? What had happened to her while you were gone? Had the same evil that had been possessing you infected her as well?

               Or did she just hate you? The last time you had been in the same room with her was when you had succumbed to Kylo’s overwhelming power when you were weak and resting in the med bay and you had choked her out until Luke came to her aid. Maybe she hated you for that, hated that you had hurt her, hated that, despite her training, that you were weak enough to let yourself be manipulated and controlled. You felt an overwhelming sense of anger rush up from inside you now, as you realized that you had let yourself be both manipulated and controlled again, without even being truly aware that it was happening. It had made you almost lose Kylo before, and after what had happened with Poe, you were sure that you were going to lose him for good. You told Hux on the _Propitiate_ that your loyalties were to your family, first and foremost, and you had betrayed that sense of honor, and no matter how many times you told yourself that you only did it to keep Poe from believing Kylo was still on this planet, you knew that it was a flimsy excuse, a child’s excuse, and you wouldn’t have been surprised if Poe told you that he had seen right through it.

               You let out a cry of anger as you push Rey off to one side and sweep her leg out from under her, knocking her down onto her knees. You bring your lightsaber around in a sideways slash, but Rey manages to roll around to one side just as the tip of your lightsaber grazes the sleeve of her arm. She lets out a small cry as she grits her teeth, and you could only guess by the charred hole in the cloth that you had burned a small portion of skin underneath as well. Rey jumps to her feet as she lunges at you suddenly, and you quickly defend yourself, blocking her attacks right and left, right and left, making sure to keep a conscious awareness of your footwork as you take yourself back, step after step, foot behind foot. Rey’s attacks are getting more vicious, more reckless with every swing, and you can’t help but wonder where this change in her had come from.

               “What happened to you?” you shout at her, above the crackling of your blades. You see a quick flash of green in front of you and quickly provide your own stripe of amber as your blades meet again, bouncing off each other with an audible charge.

               “What happened to you?” Rey counters, and although the intense expression on her face does not relax, it lessens somewhat, and for a moment you wonder if this wasn’t about what had happened to Rey, but about what happened to you. She had been able to feel that something had changed in you, but was she able to tell that you were really and truly lost to the dark side for good? Did she think that she had failed you in some way, and now she was going to have to correct and take responsibility for her mistake, much like Luke wished he could do with Kylo?

               Did she truly believe that she had been the one that failed you and caused you to turn to the dark side…?

               As this thought strikes you, she manages to catch you off-guard, sweeping both legs out from underneath you. Your lightsaber tumbles out of your hands and off to one side as you fall over onto your back. You’re about to get up, about to pull yourself into a seated position when you see the flash of green in front of your vision and freeze as you see Rey standing above you with one tip of her verdant blade pointed at your throat. “I’m sorry about this,” she sniffs, holding her chin upright as she looks down at you. “I really am.” You close your eyes and brace for the impact when suddenly Rey lets out a girlish shriek from above you. You quickly drop backwards onto your back and roll towards your lightsaber, scooping it up in one hand as you jump to your feet.

               You look up just in time to see Ani coming out between two buildings, hand raised, his nose screwed up and the taut skin between his eyes crinkling as he screws his face up in concentration. You realize what he’s trying to do, and while you feel a momentarily flash of pride, you know he’s nowhere near strong enough to take Rey out. Instead, you just hold up your hand and use all the Force you can muster as Rey slumps down to her knees, gritting her teeth. She’s trying so hard to fight it, just as Kylo had, but Ani was a lot stronger than she remembered and she wasn’t going to be strong enough to take you both. From somewhere behind the truck, you can see your shuttle settle into the place between two wide buildings, and for once you’re glad that the shuttle that you now called home wasn’t all that big if it could get you out of these tight situations. You can see Kylo descend off the boarding ramp towards you with his helmet on, hand raised, and Rey cannot withstand the combined strength of all three of you, especially not as powerful as someone like Kylo. She slumps down to the side, collapsing into the sandy floor as her head lulls to one side, and Kylo walks over to her as he turns her over, removing something from her belt that you hadn’t noticed before.

               “What’s that?” Ani asks as he walks over to him, and without answering, Kylo just expands the blue blade as he stares down at it, a crease forming on his brow.

               “This is the lightsaber that once belonged to Anakin Skywalker,” Kylo tells him as he releases the blade and puts it in Ani’s hands. “And now it belongs to you.” The look of shock on Ani’s face matches your own, but you don’t have time to react as you notice Ladson quietly trying to get away. You hold out your hand and he trips dramatically, falling face forward into the sand as he emits a string of curses.

               “What do we do with them?” Ani asks, looking between you and Kylo, and you just grit your teeth, your face set. Ani seems to understand your intention without saying anything, and you’re almost perturbed by the look of shock that crosses his face. “We can’t kill them.”

               “Put them on board,” Kylo says after a moment before he looks down at Rey. “Leave the girl.”

               “Yes sir,” you reply with a sarcastic salute as you turn towards Poe and walk over to him, the corner of your lips quirked upwards in a sneer. “Well, well, look how the tables have turned.”

               “I guess they have,” Poe says as you take his blaster out of his belt and nudge it into his side.

               “Well, let’s get going,” you say as you jut your chin forward, signaling for Poe to walk towards your ship. He does so, Ladson in front of him, and for a moment you wonder where exactly you’re going to put them before you remember that the ship fortunately had a brig with two cells, one for each of them.

               “You mind me asking where we’re going?” Poe asks, although his voice sounds tired, drained. “Are you taking us to the First Order?”

               You tilt your head to the side in consideration as you walk up the boarding ramp into the ship. The First Order and Hux, especially, surely couldn’t have been all that pleased when you had left, but if you managed to return to them with Captain Dameron, then you would probably be more or less forgiven. Heck, that might even be the key to securing your freedom. If you disappeared into the galaxy without a trace only to reemerge with one top Resistance official, who was to say that you couldn’t do it a second time? Or a third? Maybe you didn’t have to stay on the _Propitiate_ to work for the First Order. Maybe you could, in a sense, become bounty hunters, working for the First Order and relying on them for safety and protection while still maintaining your individual freedom. It sounded perfect. It sounded like exactly what you wanted.

               “I guess you’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTES: The reason we have tires instead of hovertracks is because Tatooine is a poor planet, and hovertracks are expensive. Wheeled vehicles are slow, sure, but they're cheap and they don't attract much attention which is exactly what they were going for. 
> 
> But that aside, Ani finally got a lightsaber, and not just any lightsaber!! Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber!! Cue the feels!! And Reader now has Ladson and Poe in custody, but what will she do with them? All things considered, she can't exactly take them back to the First Order and risk exposing herself to the same evil she faced on the _Propitiate_ again, can she? And will she really be so quick to turn over Poe after she went through such great lengths defending him before? And how are things going to play out now that she and Kylo are reunited again? Decisions are going to have to be made, but the real question is: how can things possibly get any worse from here on out? Guess you'll just have to see on Saturday. ;) Until then, cheers!!


	36. Chapter 36

               “I don’t like this,” Ani says nervously as he fidgets with the hilt of his new lightsaber, turning it over and over in his hands, and you can’t help but roll your eyes as you cross your arms over your chest. Ani had made his feelings about capturing Poe and Ladson quite clear as you locked them up, as you sealed the boarding ramp, as you started the ship and lifted it out of Tatooine’s atmosphere, and now he was saying it, once again, in the cockpit of your small commercial shuttle as he and Kylo sat at the controls with you standing somewhat irritably behind them.

               “Like I told you,” you say, trying to keep your voice even. “It’s a bad situation, none of us like it, Kylo and I don’t like it, but it could be necessary to ensure our freedom. We _have_ Poe Dameron. He’s worth a lot to the Republic and even more to the Resistance, not to mention the First Order. Surely we can leverage one of those parties into stopping their hunt for us so we don’t have to worry about being killed or captured every time we show our faces on some back alley planet.”

               “I guess,” Ani relents with a sigh. “I still don’t see why we had to just leave Rey behind though.”

               “She was trying to kill your mother,” Kylo says flatly, narrowing his gaze at Ani, who just purses his lips as he looks away.

               “Besides,” you add hastily. “Think of the power Rey holds. She’s too strong. We would have to have someone keep watch on her at all times, and even then, it took the three of us to bring her down. Bringing her on board would have been more of a risk than we need right now.”

               “She wasn’t trying to kill you,” Ani offers, but you just shake your head. You weren’t sure if Rey would have gone through with that fatal strike or not, but at least now you were away from her. Yet, that still begged the question that ran off your mind and through Ani’s parted lips. “Why would she even want to kill you?”

               “I don’t know,” you admit. “Rey seemed to convince Poe that I’d gone completely dark side. Whatever happened to me, she felt it too.”

               “It seemed to affect her too,” Kylo murmurs, almost under his breath, and you pause as you turn to look at him. You had sensed that Rey seemed different somehow, not only by the vivid green of her lightsaber, but also by the way her demeanor towards you seemed completely different from what you had expected. You had at first thought that Rey would have tried to reason with you to get you to join them in going back to the Resistance, but either she sensed that you were unwilling to comply or she wanted to fight as much as you did.

               “So you think Rey and I are both affected by what’s going on?” you ask, raising your eyebrows, and Kylo turns back to look at you, his face troubled.

               “She was kind of like your teacher, wasn’t she? Your mentor?” Ani asks. “Is it possible that you two are still somewhat connected?”

               You pause for a moment, thinking it over. You had let Rey see all of your memories of Kylo, just as she had let you see all of her memories of him as well. You had spent so much time not just meditating about the Force together, but bonding, that you could easily skirt in and out of each other’s heads in order to pass a quick remark when it seemed faster than forming the words on your tongue. Not only that, but she seemed to open up a channel to herself back when you had headed off to the _Resolute_ to capture Kylo, allowing you to draw from her well of strength when you needed it.

               “It’s possible,” you admit hesitantly, and Kylo nods his head as if in confirmation. “I mean, I’m not bonded to her as strongly as I am to you,” you say as you nod in Kylo’s direction, “but we’re still connected.” You gnaw on your lower lip as you try to figure out what this means. It definitely meant something, but you weren’t quite sure of what. “What if this isn’t my weakness after all? What if, whatever is going on with me, isn’t directly linked to the _Propitiate?_ What if it’s connected to Rey somehow?”

               “You think something happened to Rey?” Ani asks, the concern palpable in his voice, and you just roll your shoulders back absent-mindedly.

               “Either something happened to me up there and I influenced Rey, or the other way around,” you say as you look to Kylo, but he doesn’t seem to be in the mood for talking. He looks pensive, more so than you’ve really ever seen him, and that was saying something. “Well, I guess there’s only one way to find out.” You start to turn around to leave when you hear Kylo stand up behind you.

               “Where are you going?” he asks. He doesn’t snap at you, but there is a definite edge to his voice.

               “Just going back to check on the prisoners,” you tell him, trying to make your voice sound as innocent as possible. “They might know something. Maybe Rey went somewhere or something specific happened that they know about.”

               Kylo purses his lips together in a tight frown as he reaches up and strokes your hair back away from your neck, letting the freshly cut ends of your hair brush over his knuckles. You keep your face even, not looking at him, trying to keep your thoughts shielded, letting him puzzle over if this was something the Resistance had done to you or if this was something you had done to yourself. You’re trying to think of some sort of excuse, some sort of reason as to why you had done it, perhaps in a vain attempt to disguise yourself from being recognized, but Kylo decides against asking. “Are you okay?” he asks at length, and you just nod your head forward in a short series of nods, not meeting his eyes.

               You had no idea how to tell him what you had done with Poe, no idea what would become of your relationship after, and while you didn’t want to hover in the middle ground of abeyance and simply wait and see how it all turned out when you could turn around and have things out with him right here, right now, a part of you still held back. Part of him knew, you told yourself, part of him _had_ to know, you were as transparent as crystalline glass, and so you figured Kylo would confront you about it when he was ready to confront you about it. He at least deserved that much, deserved to address things on his own terms, when he was ready to do so, although that didn’t make the waiting any less unbearable.

               You head down to the brig in no particular hurry, taking your time to sit on the floor in the corner of the passage that led to the cells. It wasn’t as though either of them were Force sensitive and could sense your approach, and so you just sat there and stared at the door, wondering if they were talking about you inside. They had accepted their defeat almost wordlessly, and you could imagine that they either had nothing to say, or they were concerned with saying the wrong thing and ending up with their heads disconnected from their shoulders. You were an enemy to them now; truly, you had them locked up and their lives, their fate, were in jeopardy, subject to whatever you planned on doing with them. Although, to be fair, you were treating them with the same amount of civility that they had treated you with. Poe himself seemed more sentimental than you would have otherwise expected, but at least Ladson, of all people, seemed to appreciate the fact that this was war, and in war there were hard choices and less-than-stellar decision making. Poe was leading you back to the Resistance in chains because he really thought that that was the best thing he could do to help you, and although he was wrong, extremely wrong, in his mind, he was trying to help, trying to do the right thing.

               You had tried doing the right thing in every situation, not too long ago. It didn’t seem to ever really pan out for you the way that you had truly wanted it to, and so you just let it go. Whatever loose sense of morality you had before, it was gone now.

               You had no idea what to say to them, but you couldn’t just sit out in the hallway forever, and so you slowly got to your feet and made your way down the passage, pushing open the door to the cellblock. The room was small, containing two small cells with a small bench and a toilet in each, and a long metal bench along the far wall opposite the cells. Ladson was in the cell closest to the door, and he looked up at you from where he had been seated on his own bench as soon as you entered the room. “Well, well, well, look who finally decided to show up.”

               “I’m here with questions,” you say, trying to keep your voice aloof. Your eyes skirt to Poe’s in the other cell, who is sitting with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of his mouth as he appraises the situation. “I want answers, and I think you both know I like them answered both quickly and directly.”

               Ladson looks down and over at Poe through the bars that separated both cells, deferring the lead to Poe, and he seems to consider this for a moment before he pulls his clasped hands away from his mouth. “What do you want to know?”

               “Tell me about Rey,” you say, scooting down on the bench opposite him so that you could speak eye to eye. Granted you were separated by bars, but you knew the effect your body language could have if you were towering over him. You wanted Poe to tell you as much as he knew without the added threat of having to draw it out of him. He knew you could, it was written all over his face, and the tension between you seemed to crackle with as much energy as Kylo’s lightsaber, albeit charged with much less aggression and hostility, if there was any there at all.

               “Didn’t know you cared,” Ladson replies lamely, but you and Poe both ignore him.

               “She’s different,” you say firmly. “The green lightsaber, for starters, that’s new. How long has she had that for?”

               “Her old one was destroyed when she defeated Snoke,” Poe tells you, and you consider this for a brief moment. “Luke gave her his old lightsaber after that, the one you gave to Ani, but she wanted to build one of her own.”

               “And she built a staff,” you say under your breath. _Copycat._ Granted, Rey had probably been training with her quarterstaff much longer than you had trained with yours, but even still, you could still remember how much of a stir your double-bladed lightsaber had made, although you weren’t quite sure if it was just because it was a staff, or because of its amber color. You had no idea how many other Force wielders in history had amber blades or wielded a lightsaber staff, but you would have loved to have had the opportunity to meet them and compare your techniques. “Do you know why it’s green?”

               Poe just shrugs and lets his jaw drop open, like he hadn’t really given it much thought. “Uh, I don’t know,” he admits, and you shrug your shoulders.

               “Okay, so she built a new one,” you say, pushing that topic of conversation aside. You should have known Poe would probably have had about as much knowledge of lightsabers and their respective colors as Ladson did. “But what about after she defeated Snoke? How did she act when she came back?”

               “Uh,” Poe scratches the back of his head, like he’s trying to remember.

               “We didn’t really have a lot of time to take notes,” Ladson says as he stands up and takes a few steps towards you, taking the bars of his cell in both hands as he leans forward. “You know, considering when they got back, you were gone.”

               Poe’s ears prick up like he suddenly remembered something as he turns back to Ladson. “That’s right,” he says after a moment. “I wasn’t there when they got back.” You can’t help but quirk an eyebrow skeptically as you cross your arms over your chest. All right, it had been many years since that had transpired, but shouldn’t he have remembered a significant detail like that? Heck, you could imagine with Snoke gone, the Resistance would have had one hell of a celebration.

               “Where were you?” you ask quickly, and Poe turns to you, almost in disbelief.

               “Trying to find you,” he replies, and you shut your mouth as you look back towards Ladson.

               “You didn’t miss much,” Ladson says dismissively to Poe as he turns back to address you. “The Republic wanted you found the second they found out you were gone. Leia let Luke know immediately, in case he or Rey happened to get any feelings or anything while they were headed back, but otherwise you were a pretty hot topic of conversation for quite a while.”

               You bite your lip as you look down and away. “Ladson tried to steal a ship to look for you himself,” Poe offers, and that jerks your head right up. “Had a brawl with Asher right there in the hangar. I guess he thought me and the rest of the Starfighter Corps weren’t doing a good enough job ourselves.”

               “Not my fault you had Red Squadron sitting on their asses back on base,” Ladson starts to argue, but Poe only shakes his head.

               “Someone needed to stay back and defend D’Qar,” Poe insists, and you can tell this was something that they had been arguing about for quite a while. You had always thought Poe and Ladson got along well before, but maybe that was only because you were always around whenever they were in a room together. Other than that, you couldn’t think of a single time when you had seen Poe and Ladson spending time together of their own volition.

               “Well, I can see why he never made you a Squadron pilot,” you say to Ladson with a note of good humor in your voice. “Seriously? Is that really how you speak to everyone in the Resistance? Even your commanding officer?”

               “They say he gets it from you and Asher,” Poe responds, and Ladson crosses his arms over his chest as he rolls his eyes. Still, that doesn’t stop Poe from shooting a dirty look his way. “He can barely keep his mouth shut when he disagrees with one of my orders either, but at least he _listens_.”

               “Maybe if you had come back to base with us you would have gotten to meet him,” Ladson offers as he looks at you, completely ignoring Poe, and you just turn your head away.

               “The past is the past, it doesn’t matter now,” you say, unable to hide the bitterness in your voice. “Although now that you’ve brought him up, why didn’t you ever want me to meet him in the first place? Why all the secrecy?”

               “Because he was one of Poe’s pilots,” Ladson says defensively. “I don’t know, you were screwing the Commander, and then to find out that I was messing around with one of his pilots? I don’t know, I just figured you’d get all weird about it.”

               “Why would I get weird?” you ask immediately. You honestly couldn’t think of any reason why that would have bothered you then, but maybe you were just so detached from the person you had been then that you couldn’t be sure of how you would have responded. “I didn’t even really know any of his pilots.”

               “Like I told you before, Jess was planning some kind of party for you to meet everyone, but you were gone before that could happen,” Ladson says, before quickly adding, “I mean, it was supposed to happen sooner, but _Poe_ here was against it.”

               Poe turns to him, clearly affronted, and you readjust your arms over your chest as you lean forward, awaiting his explanation. “With everything that was going on with Ren, it just didn’t seem like the right time,” Poe explains, shrugging his shoulders uncomfortably. “It’s not like I didn’t want you to meet them, I just wanted to wait for the right time.”

               “That’s fair,” you say as you lean back against the wall. “You know I don’t like large groups of people, especially not after how things went down at the gathering with the Republic. You made the right call.”

               Poe visibly relaxes and cracks a grin. “This would have been much smaller,” he assures you. “Much more low-key. You would have had a good time.” For a moment you allow yourself to picture it, meeting Poe’s closest friends and comrades, being shy and awkward and nervous about it, but at the same time, eager to see another side of Poe from his friends that had known him for years, the people who had served with him, and fought with him, trusting his judgement and leadership in order to pull them through mission after mission against the First Order. You want to dwell on the memory, but you can’t, you just can’t, because that was the past and that was a place that you could never, never go back to. To tell the truth, you weren’t quite sure you wanted to go back even if you could. Things were so different now, and you didn’t know if you really would have preferred that life to the one you had with Kylo. You didn’t know, couldn’t guess, and thus it wasn’t even worth the energy thinking about.

               “But Rey’s been okay, lately, right?” you ask, trying to get back to the matter at hand.

               “More or less,” Poe replies. “I didn’t see her much in the first few weeks after she got back. We were searching for you and she went off on some special retreat with Luke and was gone for quite a while, I remember because Leia started to get worried that something had happened to them.” He forces a smile to his lips. “She gets nervous now whenever he doesn’t check in when he says he will, she-“

               “Okay,” you say quickly. Honestly, at this point in time, you couldn’t really have cared much for Leia or Luke or their weird sibling history. You didn’t have any brothers or sisters of your own, but you still couldn’t piece together why Luke had just up and bolted without telling his own sister where he went, putting her on a possibly lifelong, dangerous search to finding him when it directly put her life in jeopardy again and again. You didn’t have a clear answer to that question, but their affairs did not even make the list of your most pressing concerns to date. “But lately, like, when Rey said there was something wrong with me, did she seem okay?”   

               “She’s been spending a lot more time to herself lately,” Ladson tells you. “Off alone in her Green Room. The only reason I know is because Asher commented on it, because Finn was talking about it.” He shrugs his shoulders. “But if there’s something going on with you and her and the Force, we don’t know anything about that. We wouldn’t. No one really talks about the Force at the Resistance, you have to at least remember that.”

               You purse your lips as you make a noise deep in your throat, trying to process this new piece of information. It wasn’t a lot to go on. If anything, Rey’s sudden withdrawal could have simply been her trying to channel the Force to see what you were up to, and she didn’t say anything outright because she didn’t want to cause anyone any unnecessary concern. Either way, it was clear you were never going to get any answers from them. The only person who could provide you answers with any certainty was Rey herself, and you had left her unconscious on Tatooine, which, in retrospect, was not putting her in the best of positions. Still, you had faith that Rey would probably be fine. It wasn’t like there weren’t other members of the Resistance on the planet, and once they realized Poe hadn’t checked in, they’d be quick to investigate.

               “You think something’s wrong?” Poe asks, raising his eyebrows, and you shrug your shoulders absent-mindedly.

               “Nothing’s wrong,” you say out of habit. “Everything’s fine.” Poe frowns at you, but he doesn’t seem to know what to say. Neither does Ladson, and the room descends into uncomfortable silence as you lean with your back against the corner of the far wall, stretching your legs out along the bench. A long time passes as your eyes glaze over as you stare out into space, letting your thoughts drift away from you.

               “What are you doing here?” Ladson asks suddenly. You hadn’t realized he had been sitting down, and now he stands up again, leaning against the bars. “Don’t you have somewhere to be? Why aren’t you off with Ani? Or your precious Kylo?” You just make a noise in the back of your throat as you adjust yourself and stare at the door, pretending that you hadn’t heard him. “I knew you were lying; I just knew it. No way you would let him out of your sight for long, not after all those years you spent waiting for him.” You hear him turn in his cell as he addresses Poe next. “You know they can communicate telepathically, right? She could have killed you, or worse, told him where you were so _he_ could have killed you.”

               “But she didn’t,” Poe says quietly, and Ladson lets an incredulous scoff pass through his lips as he looks between you and Poe.

               “Did you really sleep with him?” Ladson asks, but when you won’t answer, he turns to Poe. “Did you really sleep with her? Actually? I know you needed to keep her distracted, but-“

               “It’s none of your business,” you snap after a moment, and both of them turn to look at you, detecting the anxiety in your voice.

               “Bet Ren isn’t real happy with you right now,” Ladson mutters under his breath, and your gaze hardens as you focus on the door.

               “I’m not in full control of myself right now,” you say, far too quietly, the danger in your voice palpable. “I would be _very_ careful with what you plan to say around me. I don’t know how to control myself, and I don’t know how Ani would take it if I had to drag your headless body off this ship.”

               To his credit, Ladson sits back down and keeps his mouth shut. He knew what you could do, they both did, and they don’t push you any further. Nevertheless, you cast a side glance at Poe, who meets your gaze. There’s a frown etched into the corners of his lips, and you let your eyes drop to the floor before they glance back at the door. You don’t know when your eyes eventually slip shut but they do, and you let your head rest against the cool metal wall of the shuttle as you drift off to sleep.

               _You’re struck immediately by the fruity scent of her shampoo that seemed to be lingering in her hair as she wraps her slender arms around you, squeezing you in what could perhaps be the tightest hug you’ve ever received in your entire life. “Calm down, Jess,” Poe says as he puts a hand on her shoulder, but there’s good humor in his voice as he says it. If anything, his eyes look concerned to see how you’ll react, but you just force a smile to the corners of your lips as you pat her on the back reassuringly._

_“Nice to meet you too,” you squeak, your voice strained by the fact that Jess was almost crushing your chest, and she finally pulls away but keeps her hands on your upper arms, holding you at arm’s length._

_“I thought Poe was_ never _going to introduce us,” Jess says with a smile. You can see Poe’s smile falter as he tries to come up with an explanation, but she quickly continues, seemingly without noticing. “I guess he wanted to keep you all to himself.”_

_“Maybe,” you reply noncommittally, not sure how to answer that, and you’re almost relieved when she lets you go. Poe had warned you that Jess could come on a little strong, but you didn’t mind it all that much. She had been the one to set this party up for you, and although you weren’t exactly keen on parties, Jess had kept her promise to Poe and kept it small, inviting members of the Black, Red, and Blue squadrons, and some mechanics and other Resistance people around the base that she felt that you might cross paths with, just to get initial introductions out of the way. Apparently she had gone over the list with Poe not once but twice to make sure that you would be comfortable with everything and everyone there, and while you appreciated the amount of attention she was putting into you, you couldn’t help but feel it was all unnecessary._

_“Jess,” Snap says, hitting her shoulder lightly. You had been introduced to Snap once or twice before when in the command center waiting for Leia, but you had never really spoken to him one on one. “Don’t mind her, she doesn’t know when to stop talking.”_

_“Only because I’m usually the one that has to say what everyone else is thinking,” Jess points out. “You remember that siege back on Dri’Tara?”_

_Snap rolls his eyes as he shakes his head. “She’s never going to let you live that down, Poe.” Poe, to his credit, just laughs and shakes his head, and you make a mental note to ask about that later. There was probably a good story in there somewhere, and you wanted to hear it. Poe’s adventures always sounded so exciting, especially the way he told them; he could make a simple delivery run seem like the most interesting, life-altering mission in the galaxy. “Anyway,” Snap turns back to you, hitting your upper arm lightly. He didn’t go in for a hug, and for that you were grateful. If Jessika Pava’s hug could crush you, then an embrace from Snap could_ definitely _crack your ribs. “Welcome to the family.”_

 _“Family?” you repeat blankly as you blink at them, and for a moment you swear your cheeks were turning red at the insinuation. You and Poe were just, well, you weren’t really anything. You were kissing, and sleeping together, and fucking, and going on mission runs together, sometimes taking your son with you, but that didn’t really make you anything, at least, nothing that you wanted to admit to them. Your feelings for Poe had always been private in nature, pushed deep down where you never really had to admit them to anyone else, except now you were_ here _, being introduced to his closest friends that were more like a family to him._

_“To the Resistance,” Snap replies, without missing a beat. “We’re a family here, we’re always looking out for each other. You ever need anything from any of us, just let us know.” You nod your head appreciatively, and Poe puts his hand on the middle of your back, rubbing it reassuringly. Even still, you can’t help but find his gesture more frustrating than anything._

_This was so,_ so _stupid. Here you were, acting shy and out of place, when you could have easily killed anyone in that room with the lightsaber on your belt if you really wanted to do it. Apparently Jess had taken the added step of making sure that each guest that came knew not to talk to you about your lightsaber or Kylo Ren. You, yourself, weren’t exactly sure why she didn’t want anyone to ask you about your lightsaber, although maybe she felt that you didn’t want to be asked a thousand times about your duel with Rey. If that was the case, then you appreciated the foresight. You were just here as_ you, _as Poe’s, well,_ something _, not as the Champion of the Republic or whatever they wanted to call you._

_“So, uh, hey.” You hear a voice from behind you and you immediately turn around to see Ladson heading towards you, almost being pulled along by a guy with a stocky build, a little on the short side, with dirty blonde hair that was spiked up in the front. That was hardly the most striking thing about him, though. His eyes were the most peculiar thing you had ever seen in your entire existence on the galaxy. His left eye was split in a perfect diagonal between a hazel green and a pale blue, and his right eye was a dark brown that was speckled with tiny bursts of gold, tiny coronas that dotted his iris. You had no idea if these were cybernetic enhancements or signs to indicate that he was something other than human, but you pushed a smile to your face and tried not make it obvious that you were staring. He probably was already used to everyone staring, probably understood, but you wanted to be different._

_“Name’s Asher,” he says without any preamble or sign of introduction. He doesn’t gesture to himself or try to shake your hand or make any move to touch you. Instead, he stated it as simply as if he was stating the weather._

_“I’d tell you my name, but I think you already know it,” you reply with a smirk, but Asher just shrugs._

_“Lad doesn’t talk about you much, believe it or not,” Asher says as his eyes roll over to him. “But then again, I’m sure you know he’s not much of a talker.”_

_You look over to Ladson who seemed to be willing to make eye contact with anything in the room that wasn’t another human being, droid, or alien species. You weren’t sure if Ladson was or wasn’t a talker, he had always just seemed to talk a normal amount to you, but then again, you always seemed to have a lot to say and he was always there to listen. Not that you talked his ear off, at least, you liked to think you didn’t, but you felt that you and Ladson generally had a pretty good give and take in terms of your conversations. Then again, thinking it over, he never said much around dinner, although you had always attributed it to him being shy around groups. You weren’t sure what this meant, if anything, and you definitely weren’t sure how to feel about Asher._

_“You look familiar,” you offer, trying to change the subject into something you felt a bit more comfortable discussing. “Have I seen you around the base before?”_

_“Ash spends a lot of the time in the hangar,” Poe offers._

_“Yeah, I do a lot of maintenance stuff,” Ash says with a slight jerk of his chin. “But you might remember me from a different base. Starkiller? I think you might have interpreted for me once or twice, with one of the Tortutaru.”_

_Your jaw drops open, your mouth moves, and yet no sound escapes your lips as you try to put the pieces together. “You were_ there _?”_

_“Pretty much a Storm Trooper from birth, just like Finn,” Asher tells you. “You probably don’t remember me, not that I hold it against you. There was only four of you, and a lot of us. Not to mention you kind of made a name for yourself, attracting Kylo Ren’s special attention.”_

_“Asher,” Ladson scolds, hitting his arm lightly, and you bite your lip, not sure how to respond to him. You don’t know what to say to that, especially not in front of Poe, and the rest of his friends, and you close your eyes suddenly wishing you were somewhere else, anywhere else…_

_And suddenly you are. You’re back in Poe’s room, pinned against the far wall by his hips as his lips attack you with a sense of fervent urgency that was somewhat unlike him. His hands are underneath your shirt, greedily sliding over the taut skin of your abdomen as you arch your back and return the kiss, embracing the sudden, delicious feeling of lightheadedness as you kissed him back._

_“See?” Poe asks, although his words are muffled against your parted lips. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”_

_“Guess not,” you reply immediately, although it’s almost as if someone else is speaking for you, using your lips and your voice to make the sound, and suddenly you weren’t sure that your words were coming from you directly. And that’s when you realize that they’re not, that you’re outside your own body, watching yourself make out with Poe, and you don’t have more than a split second to realize what’s odd about this before the door suddenly bursts open and Kylo walks through. It’s weird that you heard the door open, but as you turn to look towards him, it looks as though the door had never been opened, as if he had somehow walked straight through the door or just teleported into Poe’s room._

_He looks, in one word, bad. His hair, which was usually so wavy and perfect, seemed matted and strung-out, as if he had been sweating intensely for some time without washing it for weeks. His armor was ripped in places, revealing a different shade of black as well as the other bits of armor he was wearing underneath, and one of the edges of his scarf looked as though it had been torn to tatters. That, however, was far from the worst thing about him. His face looked to be swollen on one side, possibly from a long scratch on his cheek that looked as though it was turning a purple-yellow from the bruising, and there was dried blood on his forehead that seemed to have dripped down from his hairline and down the far side of his face. He looked like he had just gotten out of a battle that he had barely survived, and you couldn’t help but feel your heart jump in your chest as your body flooded with nervous, anxious anticipation to see him this way._

_It did not occur to you, however, what exactly he was doing in Poe’s room. The odd nature of his very appearance here at the Resistance seemed lost on you, and yet you couldn’t peel your eyes away from him to see Poe’s reaction, or even your own. Your eyes were fixed on Kylo, whose shoulders now looked to be quivering with rage as he balled his hands into fists at his sides. “Traitor!” he shouts, his white teeth gleaming in the dim light. “You betrayed me!”_

I didn’t _, you say, at least, that’s what you want to say, but it doesn’t seem like Kylo can hear you when you’re not even sure you can hear yourself. Instead of looking off to the side, you’re standing directly in front of him now, and Kylo doesn’t say anything as he pulls his signature lightsaber into his hand, letting the blade emerge from the hilt in a fiery, crimson blaze. You immediately duck your head and hold your hands up in front of your face to prepare yourself for the blow that’s about to come, and as the red sword swings towards you…_

…you wake up.

               You sit up with a start as you breathe in a frantic gasp of air, almost slipping off the bench as you remember where you are. You’re still on the shuttle, still lying on the bench outside the cells, and from within their respective cages, Ladson and Poe are still there, watching you intently. You let out a slow breath out through your nostrils before you dare yourself to sit up completely, rubbing at your temple distractedly, trying not to give away the fact that your heart was pounding in your chest so hard that you honestly thought it might explode.

               You focus on your breathing, trying to quell the rising pressure in your chest with slow exhalations until you felt as though you could think again. No one says anything, perhaps waiting for you to speak first, but that wasn’t going to happen. You were fortunate enough that they were the only two people on board this ship that couldn’t see inside your dream; they had no idea what you were dreaming about, but you tentatively make eye contact with Poe all the same.

               “You okay?” he asks after a moment, and you want to treat his question with sarcasm and derision before you realize that you’re still too shaken to work up to your usual levels of snark. You just nod your head forward, avoiding their gaze for another moment before Poe’s shifting in his cell draws your attention back to him. “When did you start having nightmares?”

               “I don’t have nightmares.” The reply is instantaneous, automatic, and you regretted it as soon as the words left your lips. You were lying, and now they knew it, not just by your words but by the speed of your response. Denial rung out like a bell, loud and clear, and the cell block was just quiet enough to hear every dulcet ring.

               “What were you dreaming about then?” Ladson asks, and you turn your head to scowl in his direction. “Come on, you might as well tell us. We already know.” You quirk an eyebrow as you plant both feet on the floor, stretching out the muscles in your lower back and ignore him as you convince yourself that he’s wrong, that he doesn’t know anything. “You were calling out Poe’s name in your sleep, and I’m pretty sure I heard a moan in there too.”

               “Shut up,” you snap angrily, and Ladson’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. That’s when you realize that he had been taunting you, merely playing you, and you had fallen into his trap and taken the bait perfectly. Poe, too, looks surprised, and he opens his mouth to speak although no words come out. Neither of them know what to say, and you can’t help but let your face flush angrily. “I wasn’t dreaming about anything. No nightmares-“ you say to Poe before you turn deliberately to Ladson. “-and no sex dreams either.”

               “You’re a terrible liar,” Ladson says, but his voice is at the height of disinterest as he collapses backwards onto the bench behind him with a heavy sigh. “This cell is really stuffy; if you’re going to keep us prisoner here can you at least let us out to stretch our legs?” You narrow your eyes and Ladson groans loudly. “Oh come on, I’m pretty sure you can Force choke me to death if you really wanted to. You stripped us of our weapons, how are we supposed to fight back, exactly?”

               “We’re fine where we are,” Poe says patiently, without even looking in his direction, and you turn to him curiously. If Poe had some sort of long game plan that he was playing, you had no idea what it was. He was trapped here, same as Ladson, and you couldn’t imagine how being stuck here on board with Kylo Ren and your emotionally volatile self could be considered auspicious in any way.

               No, luck was not on his side, and although you could have quite easily gone into his mind and seen what exactly his plan was, you didn’t have time. As the door opened up, you sat up straight, almost expecting Kylo to walk in, bloody and bruised from battle, with his glowing crimson lightsaber in hand. But no, it was only Ani, who gives Ladson and Poe a visible frown as he looks them over. “I’m sorry for this unpleasantness,” he begins, but you quickly cut him off.

               “You shouldn’t be back here, Ani,” you tell him, mostly because you didn’t know what Poe or Ladson might say in order to convince him to set them free. In Ani’s current state, it wouldn’t take much at all. “What do you want?”

               Ani bites his lip as he meets your eyes, and you can feel your heart sink in his chest. _He knows. Kylo knows. They all know._

               “Father wants to see you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH SNAP. Things are about to go down next chapter!! Kylo and Reader are finally going to have their "talk" although I can't promise how much talking will get done as opposed to yelling. Will tempers flare? Will tears be shed? Will they be able to reconcile or decide after all the conflict they went through on the _Propitiate_ that they're just two separate people and decide to part ways completely? I know it's been said that I'm an evil person...but how evil am I, exactly? I guess you'll have to wait and see. ;) 
> 
> PS: In case you saw my picture on Instagram, I really did send someone a little Star Wars goodie bag and an autographed Funko Pop, signed by me because of how much they kept telling me they were my number one fan of this story. It was meant as an inside joke and I didn't mean anything by it, but I've already gotten a message from someone saying that I "ruined" the collector's value of the Pop. I just want to say that, firstly, I'm sorry if that offended anyone, it was an inside joke, and two, Captain Phasma is a common. Believe me, as someone with a constantly growing Pop collection, I take them very seriously: right now I'm actually haggling with someone over a Holographic Darth Vader Pop from the 2012 SDCC, so let's just say I take my Pop collection very seriously. And you know me, Darth Maul = ultimate fav...until they finally decide to make Pops for the prequels, and then I can get my Qui-Gon Jinn and Mace Windu Pops. I'M WAITING, FUNKO!! JUST TAKE MY MONEY ALREADY!! xD Anyway, I just wanted to clear that up. Until Tuesday, cheers!!


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things you'll need for this chapter:  
> -a box of tissues  
> -a bag of rocks to punch yourself in the face with  
> -more tissues
> 
> Things I'll need for this chapter:  
> -a thesaurus with a thousand different ways to say, "I'm sorry..."

               You can’t help but let the words wash over you as you bite your lip. You knew this was coming, eventually, although you had honestly hoped that it would be later rather than sooner. To be fair, you were almost embarrassed with yourself by the way you seemed to be avoiding Kylo like a small child, afraid of getting in trouble when it was obvious that you had done something wrong. You couldn’t ignore Kylo and hope that he would just forget about it, and the longer you delayed the inevitable, the worse it would become. Your mind wanted to think of a million hypothetical scenarios of how your _conversation_ would play out, but honestly the only one that kept running through your mind was watching yourself become impaled by his lightsaber over and over again. As far as punishments went, you decided that death was honestly preferable to permanent ostracization.

               You just nod your head forward as you get to your feet, and you could have done without Ladson’s idle commentary from the sidelines. “What’s the matter?” he asks, his tone mocking. “I remember way back when you would have done just about _anything_ to get a chance just to speak to him, and now you look almost _nervous_.”

               “Shut up,” you hiss back at him. Ani fumbles with his hands, looking almost as uncomfortable with the whole situation as you are, and you honestly don’t know what to say to him. You don’t know how to explain it to him any better than you had the first time, although you were starting to think that it was just sheer luck that Ani had been a child the first time you had gotten involved with Poe, and most of the subtleties that you were afraid he had picked up on really had gone over his head. Now, however, he was older, and he could figure things out for himself.  

               You ignore Ladson, but cast a weary look back at Poe, almost looking for the well of his old confidence that he used to inspire you with. In its place, you find none. Instead, it’s replaced with a candid look of what you could only describe as fear that does nothing to relieve the current lump in your throat. “Just say it’s my fault,” he tells you, and although his voice sounds a bit resigned, there’s an element of distress in there that you had only heard from him one time before. “Just blame me.”

               You could see now why Poe had wanted to get off Tatooine as soon as the storm cleared up. He knew that if Kylo really was on Tatooine, he would probably fly into a rage and kill him as soon as he saw you. The fact that he was still alive probably meant, at least to him, that Kylo was going to slowly torture him first. He had already been tortured, both by Kylo and the First Order and their new IT-000 droid, and you could only imagine the dread that was coursing through him of possibly facing his impending torture, death, or worse. Even still, he seemed to bear it with a quiet sense of dignity, and that was what frustrated you more than anything. He was only in this position because of you, and granted, he had been the one to kidnap you first, but you had been the one to tell him Kylo was no longer in the picture. Would he had still slept with you if you had told the truth? You doubted it, but then again, you couldn’t be certain, and the only purpose those thoughts served was to distract you from the reality of your present situation, which you had to face sooner or later.

               “No,” you say coldly as you turn away from him, and out of the corner of your eye you can just manage to catch Poe’s face turn from dread to surprise as you follow Ani out of the cell block. What happened was your fault. No one forced you to sleep with Poe. You had a choice, and you made it. You lied to him, and you fucked him, and although you could always say that you did it to try to keep Kylo safe, to try to protect him and keep up his cover, none of that _fucking_ mattered. Reasons didn’t matter because no matter how they left your lips, they would just sound like excuses to Kylo’s ears. You had done something you knew you shouldn’t have, and you deserved whatever punishment Kylo was going to throw your way.

               To his credit, Ani doesn’t say anything to you as he heads back towards the cockpit, which honestly does alleviate your fears at least somewhat. Surely if Kylo was planning on killing you, Ani would want to at least take the time to say his final goodbye. Then again, Kylo could do much, much worse. He could keep you around to help take care of Ani and simply ignore you, pretending that you didn’t exist, and that was a reality that you didn’t quite want to face. Nevertheless, you knew hypotheticals were going to get you nowhere, and so you gritted your teeth as you made a left, continuing past the cockpit and down the hall that led to your bedroom.

               Kylo was inside, pacing back and forth with his hands clasped behind his back, his thumb and middle finger closed over the wrist of his opposite hand. His helmet was off, and for that you were almost grateful. If he was planning on killing you, he’d keep it on. Likewise, if he really wanted to have the upper hand, he would want to conceal his expression so that you would be unable to see the emotions playing behind the mask’s cold exterior. Nevertheless, as he looks up at you, you can see _something_ stirring behind his eyes, and you can feel your lower lip tremble just a little bit as you appraise him.

               You decided right then and there that you were not going to cry. You were an adult, and you were not going to drop to your knees and cry and grovel for forgiveness. If you wanted to be treated like his equal, you had to act like one. You had to be rational, and that did not involve breaking down or throwing tantrums or displaying any violent fits of emotion like Kylo had once been prone to. You had to confess what you did calmly and simply apologize, and let Kylo take it from there. Poe was afraid that Kylo was going to kill him, or you, or the both of you, but he still thought of Kylo as a person with the same deranged temper that led him to commit all of those atrocities years ago, and while you thought that he was still more than capable of it, Kylo was older now, a bit more mature, and more subdued. You weren’t sure if it had more to do with you and Ani constantly being there to help him balance his mood, or if it was because Snoke disappeared, considering they happened around the same time, but whatever the case, that Kylo was not your Kylo.

               If he was still your Kylo.

               “What happened on Tatooine?” he asks, and his voice is quiet as he stops pacing and turns to look at you.

               “Um,” you offer, but that’s about as much as you want to say. You could offer for him to just put his fingers to your temple and _look_ , but you didn’t want to show him anything, not even the part where you had been beaten by Poe that led him to capture you in the first place. You knew deep down that Kylo would never have believed that you were capable of being captured if you didn’t want to be, and to tell the truth, you weren’t quite sure he was wrong in that. You could have used brute force and snapped your attacker’s neck the minute he attacked you, but you hadn’t. You had waited to see who they were working for, what they wanted from you, and in retrospect, you were almost glad that you had shown restraint. If you had killed Poe, it wouldn’t have mattered that you hadn’t slept with him because you would never have been able to forgive yourself, not now, not ever.

               “What happened with the pilot?” Kylo asks. His voice isn’t gentle, just low, and you can tell that he’s waiting for your answer, waiting for you to confirm what he already knows. You close your eyes for a quick second as you swallow hard, and for the first time you think you can actually feel your heart not just beating, but shuddering in your rib cage, as if it was physically trying to make its way through your chest and out the door.

               “I-“ you start, but you can’t get the words out. Your tongue brushes against the back of your teeth, but no, the words won’t come. You had done the deed, but you were too much of a coward to admit it to Kylo’s face.

               “You slept with the pilot,” Kylo says, and the assertion forces your chin up as you meet his eyes. He doesn’t look _angry_ , not exactly, and you wonder idly if he’s waiting for you to deny it so that you can move past this. Maybe he was hoping that you hadn’t, that you honestly hadn’t, and that’s the final push you needed in order to confess the truth once and for all.

               “I did,” you confirm. You were not going to get Kylo’s hopes up only to dash them at his feet. “I did, I slept with him.” You say it boldly, chest out, shoulders back, almost as if you had no remorse over what you had done. Kylo’s face barely changes as he stares you down, perhaps calculating his next move or what to say next.

               He seems to consider his next words carefully as he appraises you, perhaps mistaking your boldness for indifference. “Does that mean you plan to go back?” Kylo asks, and your eyes widen in surprise. “To the Resistance? Do you plan to return with them to D’Qar?”

               “No,” you reply immediately, all traces of your former confidence gone. Your mouth opens and then closes again, as if you were truly at a loss for words. “No, I don’t want to go back there, I-“ You shake your head, as if something doesn’t quite make sense to you. “No, I don’t want to go back, I want to stay with you, I-“ But Kylo just stands there, his face expressionless from years of practiced rehearsal, and you wished that you could have had the same composure. But you didn’t, and it was more than obvious from the way that your hands were shaking by your sides. Your heart was pounding in your chest, your lower lip was trembling dramatically, and you can feel the familiar tightness in the base of your nostrils that signaled that you were about to cry. You didn’t even feel any tears, but you knew at any moment that they would be there, especially after Kylo told you that he was done with you, once and for all. “It was a mistake, it was, I wasn’t _thinking_ and then afterwards, after I just, I just realized it was too late. It was gone. Everything was gone and I-“

               You stop suddenly, let everything stop, as you try to get a hold of yourself. You try to focus on your breathing as you stare at the scuffed toes of Kylo’s boots, focusing on the shallow inhalation and exhalation of your breath. You had cried in front of him before, had hated it, but this didn’t seem as humiliating as it usually did, maybe because this was more raw, more cathartic, than you had initially expected it to be. You had held everything inside for the past several days, and the truth was finally bubbling to the surface. Now you would never have to wonder how Kylo would react when you told him, now you were finally going to let the repercussions of your actions take hold, and there was a certain sense of relief in the fact that you didn’t have to torture yourself with mere hypotheticals any longer. Kylo would react how he was going to react, and then you could pick yourself up and move on from there.

               Kylo still isn’t saying anything, but you still don’t look at him, and you can imagine that he’s trying to pick up on your emotions through the Force bond. You can feel the tears flowing in earnest down your cheeks now as you realize that silence probably _was_ his answer. He wasn’t going to hurt you with his words or his saber, no, he was going to simply ignore you, treat you as if you were nothing, and while you couldn’t imagine a worse existence, you had to realize that you had this coming. You had done something wrong, and if Kylo didn’t want to have anything more to do with you after that, then you couldn’t blame him. What was done was done, and you would have to live with the consequences of your choices.

               “Keep going.” There’s a slight waver of uncertainty in his voice, and your eyebrows knot together in confusion as you continue to stare down at the toes of his boots. He wanted you to keep…going? What did that mean? Did he want you to keep talking? To confess your sins and let them come spilling out of you? If that was what he wanted, you could do that, you could let your words pour out of you as readily as the wet teardrops that trailed down your cheeks, although you could be sure that your words would flow far less smoothly.

               “I-I-“ you stutter awkwardly, not knowing how to begin. “I don’t know. I, Poe captured me, I went out, I shouldn’t have, I’m sorry, I’m _so_ sorry I shouldn’t have left the ship and then I got caught in a sandstorm and someone attacked me and, and I didn’t kill him, he captured me and took me back to, I don’t know, a place. And then we talked and I told him that you were gone, you know, cause I didn’t know how many other people from the Resistance or the Republic were there, I told him that you were still on the _Propitiate_ , but you weren’t _here_ , and then, um, we talked and then I was going to _go_ , and he grabbed my arm and he kissed me and it sort of just, uh, happened.”

               Your eyes skirt up to meet his quickly and then drop back down without actually catching a glimpse of anything. Kylo seems to be waiting for something, and his silence is starting to slow ebb away at the remaining threads of your dignity. You had no idea what he was waiting for, maybe he wanted to see you break down and drop to your knees in an emotional outcry, and while you didn’t want to, while you really didn’t want to, his silence was starting to press upon you like a pressure on your skin and you would do anything, anything to get rid of the uncomfortable, sick feeling that seemed to have taken up residence in your chest.

               “I’m sorry,” you burst out, and although you look up to see him again, your vision is streaked with tears and you can’t get a clear glimpse of his expression. “And if you’re going to ask me if I’m sorry that I did it or I’m sorry for what’s going to happen, then I’m sorry for what’s going to happen more because I didn’t mean to do this, I didn’t mean to lose everything. I have no idea if I did it because of whatever was going on with me or if I just did it because I missed him, but the point is that it doesn’t _matter_ because whatever happened, I still did it. I mean, at the time I didn’t really think about it, think about what I was doing or how it would affect you, and I know that sounds like a shitty excuse but I don’t know, I was just frustrated because I felt like ever since we left the _Propitiate_ I felt like I was losing you and I did nothing to try to fix it, nothing, and now I’ve slammed that door shut and-“ You shake your head, not quite sure what you’re saying. “I didn’t do this to lose you and I, I know that I did, that I have, and I don’t want to and I know it’s too late to try to fix anything, like, I know that, Kylo, I _know. that._ and I’m not going to ask you to forgive me for what happened but just-“ You close your eyes and try to think of your next words carefully. “I didn’t know what I wanted before, after we left the _Propitiate._ I just didn’t know. And then when Poe captured me, I realized that I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t. I really, really didn’t. I wanted to stay here, with you, and yes, the irony is not lost on me that I was able to figure out what I really wanted after I lost you but I just, I’m sorry, Kylo. I am. I’m sorry. So do whatever you want with me, punish me however you want, because, I, I don’t-“ Your jaw opens, but no more words tumble out. Your head is starting to pound and while you don’t feel the least bit better at your confession, at least it was all out now. Your skin feels chilled and the fine hairs on your arms feel as though they’re standing at attention, but that hardly means anything to you as you just stand there pitifully in front of Kylo with shaking hands and wet cheeks.

               “You don’t want to go back to the Resistance?” Kylo asks, and for a moment time seems to stop, and you’re more than just slightly aware of the fact that your heart stopped beating for at least a literal moment in time. Out of your entire confession, that was what he got out of that?

               “Nuh, no,” you manage as you shake your head back and forth. “I want to stay with you, I-“ Kylo’s lip quirks upwards as if he’s pleased, and suddenly all of your sadness melts away into a sea of sheer and utter confusion. Was he happy because you didn’t want to go back to the Resistance with Poe? Was he happy to see you like this, crying and vulnerable before him? You just couldn’t be sure.

               Kylo lets out a deep breath, as if this was something that he’s been holding in for a while, and you suppose he had been preparing this speech since you had left Tatooine. “What I did to you before wasn’t fair,” he begins quietly, and you can’t help but take an involuntary step back in your confusion. You were apologizing to him and now he is was apologizing…to you? Kylo gives you a moment to seemingly collect yourself before he continues. “I took you away from the Resistance and your relationship with the pilot never truly ended on your own terms. You never truly got the opportunity to choose, to make that choice, and it’s one you need to make now.”

               You bite your lower lip, trying to think of something, anything to say, but you’re in too much shock to actually speak.

               “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least somewhat happy to see you this way,” Kylo admits, and you’re back to being confused again, if you ever stopped. “This pain, it shows me that you care. In honesty, it’s the most vulnerable you’ve been, the most you’ve shown you’ve felt anything for me in a while.”

               You just shake your head from side to side, unwilling to accept this. “No,” you say quietly, your voice barely above a whisper. “No, it’s proof that I’m bad, I’m a bad person, I’m bad, I’m, I’m bad for you, just all around bad.” You shake your head again. “I’m a bad person. You shouldn’t be with me anymore, you’re too good for me, you wouldn’t-“

               Kylo laughs. Fuck the Force, he actually _laughs_ , although it’s a strained sound that still twists in your chest cavity. “Do you not remember the awful things that I’ve done?” Kylo demands. “When we were back on the _Resolute_ , I tried to _kill_ you.”

               “That wasn’t your fault,” you say quietly. “You wouldn’t have gone through with it.”

               “I abandoned you for _years_ ,” Kylo goes on, throwing one arm out to the side dramatically, and you’re quiet, deciding it’s better not to argue his point. He sees you backing down and straightens up a bit; when he speaks again, his voice is clear. “I can’t hold anything you do against you, because I made you this way.” You try to speak, but he doesn’t stop. “I did. I made you this way. Through the Force bond, I’ve, I’ve corrupted you, somehow, and I know that, I do. I see how this is my fault. I’m the one who put you in this situation to begin with, and I can’t hold anything against you when this is all my fault.” He shakes his head from side to side. “Maybe I should have left you alone, back on D’Qar. You would be in a lot less pain and danger than you are now.”

               “Why didn’t you?” you ask quietly. You knew why, at least, you had always thought you had known why, but now was your chance to hear Kylo finally tell you himself.

               “Because of our bond,” he tells you forcefully, and you can’t help but flinch. It wasn’t because of love, or affection, it was because of the hold the Force had over you. You can feel your heart literally slipping down your windpipe where it could be slowly dissolved in your stomach acid as Kylo keeps going. “It’s constantly pulling us together, allowing us to feel each other.” He pauses for a moment as he runs a hand through his hair, as if trying to figure out the right words to say. “I feel how desperate you are for me, right now, and that makes me just as desperate for you as well.”

               You don’t know what to say to that, if you can say anything, and Kylo seems to bounce on his toes for a moment before he strides towards you quickly and kisses you, holding your face in both hands. You just stand there, completely frozen, trying to figure out what to do or what this means or _what_. You had expected Kylo to want nothing more to do with you, and yet here he was, apologizing to _you_. Sure, he had put you in this situation, but it was always on you to choose how to respond to it, and in that you had failed miserably. He had put you in that situation, but that did not excuse any of the poor decisions that you had made.

               As he kisses you, you can’t help but think things over in your head. You had become such a danger and a liability to everyone around you: to Ani, to Kylo, to Poe, to Ladson, to everyone, and you weren’t worth that, you just weren’t. Ani and Kylo would constantly be on the run with you, Poe and the others would constantly be trying to find you, and you weren’t worth Kylo’s desperate attempts to protect you or the Resistance’s effort to try to get you back. You weren’t _worth_ it, you just _weren’t_ , and you couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of pity for yourself that disgusted you to your core.

               Kylo only wanted you to stay because of the Force bond; he had pretty much just confirmed as much himself. He felt your desperation for him to forgive you, and he had, simply because your emotions influenced his just as much as his influenced yours. If you hadn’t been bonded by the Force, if you had been bonded by just archaic love or affection and he hadn’t been able to feel _your_ emotions this strongly, you felt sure that he would not forgive you for what you had just done. It was only because he felt how much you _wanted_ to be forgiven that he did, and that’s when you realize that you can’t do this anymore. It wasn’t fair to him to stay with you simply because of this attachment, because of the pull through the Force bond. Neither of you had asked for it, but you still had to take at least some of the responsibility for it.

               You steady your resolve, and in the back of your mind you know that this is what you can do to redeem yourself, not just for your tryst with Poe, but for what you had done on the _Propitiate_ , for everything. The path of redemption lied in self-sacrifice, and while you were not generally a person to apologize for your existence or what you had done to get where you were, this was something that you _had_ to do. It was hard, it was arduous, it was beyond linguistic comprehension how difficult this was for you, and while every cell in your body screamed at you to just keep kissing him, to let the moment pass away, you couldn’t. You could keep your mouth shut, and you could stay with him, you could do that, and pretend things could get better, and maybe, perhaps one day, they could, but you had more than just this to atone for, and against what was decidedly your better judgement, you pulled away.

               “End this,” you say quietly, dropping your eyes down to the floor. The insides of your cheeks were starting to pulse, and you were aware that your whole body was shaking now, an involuntary seam ripping through your shoulders as you started to come apart in front of him. You feel Kylo’s confusion through the bond, and you can’t wait for him to get a grasp on your meaning. If you did, you would change your mind and your whole resolve would collapse at your feet. “Take away the bond.”

               Kylo pauses for a moment, and when he speaks again, his voice betrays a touch of bewilderment. “I’m not going to kill you.”

               “You don’t have to,” you respond quickly, although in a way you almost felt that death might be more merciful than what you were about to suggest. “Take away the Force bond.” You can _feel_ Kylo freeze, and you just grit your teeth as you continue. “Do what Luke was going to do to you. Siphon the Force out of me until there’s nothing left, no more bond. You can do it; I know you’re strong enough to.”

               Kylo is staring at you now with a look you’ve never quite seen from him before. He seemed to be almost terrified of what you were suggesting, and you suppose, in a way, he was. He knew you, he did, he _knew_ you. He knew how much having the Force meant to you. You didn’t grow up with the Force, didn’t grow up knowing that you had these abilities, and once you had found out that you had them, you had worked for them, putting in hours and hours of training, not just with Rey, but with him. He hadn’t forgotten the nights you used to spend sparring with him any more than the times you used to sit cross-legged on his bed while you tried to lift your staff into the air in front of him. The happiest he had probably seen you, ever, was when you were training with him, developing your powers so that you could become _strong_ , and now you were willing to give all of that up for…what? You weren’t quite sure yourself, but it felt like atonement, if for nothing else, then for the life that you had taken. At least this way, Kylo wouldn’t be compelled to be with you, wouldn’t have to feel your emotions through the Force causing him to _want_ to forgive you. If Kylo wanted to be with you after you had lost the Force bond, then fine, but you had started to take your powers for granted, had started abusing them, and you no longer deserved them.

               You didn’t want this. This was the opposite of what you wanted, of what you had ever wanted, but you couldn’t think of anything else, any other fitting means of resolution, and so you just simply grit your teeth and squint your eyes shut as Kylo quietly resigns himself and places both hands on either side of your head. You had expected him to argue with you, to say that he couldn’t do that, that he could never do that, but his silence was, again, proof that Kylo truly wanted to be rid of you, once and for all. A small part of you didn’t actually think that he would have gone through with it, but now here he was, preparing himself, and this was happening, this was _really_ happening. A shudder runs through your body, and you hold your hands at your sides, capturing the cloth underneath your palms in your fists as you squeeze them shut, trying to brace yourself for how much this was probably going to hurt.

               “Is this, uh, is this going to hurt?” you ask him after a quiet moment, as you run your tongue along your upper lip. You can feel beads of sweat starting to bead in your hairline, and your breath is suddenly hot and thick in your throat. “I’m not backing down, I just, I just want to know so I can figure out how to brace myself.”

               “Quite a lot, I would imagine,” Kylo tells you softly.

               “Okay,” you say softly with a quick nod to your head as if to confirm this to yourself as you brace for impact.

               “Are you sure?” Kylo asks. “This is going to be very painful. The Force is bonded with your soul, and extracting the two is no easy process. It will feel as though I’m trying to pick apart every cell in your bloodstream, one at a time, over and over again until there’s nothing left of you. I have no idea how you’d be able to deal with the pain now…or after.”

               … _after?_ You squeeze your eyes shut as you think about how you had hurt him, about how you had hurt Ani, and Poe, and Rey, and Ladson, and Sadie. You weren’t just terrible to everyone around you, you were _dangerous_ , and if you kept up the way you were going, you could be sure that it wouldn’t be long until you really hurt someone you cared for, and you couldn’t take that risk.

               _I’m sorry,_ you say quietly in the back of your mind, hoping that it would ring out loud and clear to whoever you had hurt the most. Right now, that person was Kylo, but you couldn’t help but think about all the ways in which you had disappointed Ani. You hadn’t been there for him, hadn’t tried to protect him, and while he had become remarkably self-reliant and independent, it should have been you sacrificing for him, not the other way around. But you were selfish, really and truly selfish, putting yourself and your wants and your needs ahead of everyone else, and now you had to answer for that. You could only hope that, without the Force, you would no longer be blinded by whatever evil was trying to corrupt you and you could begin to make amends with your family, if they still wanted anything to do with you when all was said and done. There was always a chance that they would consider you a liability now that you were unable to truly defend yourself as you had before and say that you were better off living the rest of your days on some faraway planet, maybe back on your home planet, and if that was the case, then you had to accept that. You had taken a life, you had _murdered_ someone, and now it was only fair that your quality of life be snuffed away as a result. You had abused the Force, and in so doing, you no longer deserved it.

 _I’m so sorry._ That last apology was reserved for yourself. You had worked so hard for this, had worked so hard to develop your Force abilities to defend yourself, to defend Ani, and yet you had allowed yourself to be manipulated and corrupted. You were now violent, and power hungry, someone that Taro wouldn’t even have bothered protecting if he had seen you this way back on the Starkiller Base, and you knew implicitly that Kylo wouldn’t have looked your way twice if he knew that this was the person you had turned into. You had betrayed your friends, you had betrayed your family, and you had completely lost sight of the person that you were. But you still had to live with yourself after this, and at least giving up the one thing that made you proud to be who you were felt like a worthwhile sacrifice. It made you feel noble, and you could at least find solace that despite your recent actions of late, you could still be strong enough to do this one, last selfless thing, sacrificing the strongest part of yourself to help find yourself again.

You can feel a single tear drip down your cheek, and your throat is raw with words and apologies that you’ve yet to make. But that doesn’t matter now, and you give another firm nod to yourself as you clench your fists so tightly you can feel your slender wrists trembling as your knuckles turn white at the edges. “Okay,” you say, but your voice comes out as nothing more than a shaky, tear-streaked whisper. You clear your throat, mentally willing yourself to be strong, to be brave. This was good, this was right, and if this was the only way to get your family to forgive you, for you to forgive yourself for the terrible atrocities you had committed, then you would accept the consequences of your actions.

               “Take away the bond.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Reader is desperate for redemption, up to the point where she is ready to lose the Force, something that she has worked so, so hard to obtain, and her bond with Kylo. Like, just stopping for a second and thinking about how much the Force means to her, thinking about how she went to town on that chair on the Starkiller Base because she felt so weak and defenseless and out of control, and now she realizes that she _has_ that power, and yet she is still out of control, and she realizes how dangerous she's become and she wants to find any sort of forgiveness or sense of retribution that she can, even if she's not thinking it through...she feels like she's lost everything, so sacrificing everything is, in her fragile state, the only way that she can really make up for the damage that she's done to everyone around her. She's, in a word, reckless, feeling like she's lost all capability of figuring out how to deal with anything and everything, and I can't imagine a more painful position to be in. 
> 
> But will Kylo really go through with it? Would he really pull the Force away from the Reader and sever his connection to her for good? Or will Ani burst into the room going, _What the FUCK are you doing???_ because honestly that might not be a terrible option on the list of "Shit that is going to go down next chapter." To be fair, even if Kylo does sever his bond to the Reader and strips her of the Force, that doesn't _necessarily_ mean that they would break up, although it would cause a lot of tension between them as the Reader struggled to cope and adjust to her life post-Force. 
> 
> BUT AM I TRULY THAT EVIL? WOULD I REALLY DO SUCH A THING? Check back on Thursday to find out. In the meantime, I'm going to go hike a 15-mile trail in the blazing sun as my own personal atonement for the hell that this chapter has put you all through. So, until Thursday...I'm sorry? ='( 
> 
> PS: I'm seriously not going to lie, I know this chapter was really rough, if you were crying, I was crying, I don't remember it being this hellish when I first wrote it, but damn, when I read it again I honestly felt like I had just been sucker punched in the gut, so if you feel that way too, you are definitely not alone. <3 *hugs*


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, you guys are awesome. Seriously, I mean it. <3 I put you through hell, and you just keep trudging along through the flames. 
> 
> In appreciation for your faith, you have been rewarded, with smut and happy feelings. 
> 
> You. Are. Welcome.

               You wait for the explosion, the inevitable jolt of pain, but it doesn’t come. Instead, Kylo presses his lips to your forehead gently before he pulls away from you, leaving you standing in the middle of the room, shaking worse than before. The trembling in your fingers has spread up to your arms, and you physically have to squeeze your upper arm in each hand to try to quell the distressed quaking in your muscles as they struggled for every last iota of control so you could fight for self-preservation.

               When Kylo speaks, his voice is quiet, and your ears are fixated intently on every word. “I would never, could never, do that to you,” he tells you. “We are bonded, and I want things to stay that way. I like being able to sense you, being able to feel you. It’s become as much a part of me as you are, and I don’t want to lose that part of myself any more than you do.”

               Your mouth opens and shuts, and you think tears have started to drip down your cheeks again, although you couldn’t be sure. You had just given Kylo the option of being rid of you, being rid of the bond, and instead he had chosen to stay with you? After what you had just done? You had been so ready to lose this part of yourself, to scrub that part of yourself clean, and you could feel your heart trembling in your chest as you tried to make sense of the situation. Every hair on the nape of your neck was standing straight up, and you could feel goosebumps prickling up and down your frozen skin. You felt cold, both inside and out, and you couldn’t be sure that you weren’t slipping into a desperate state of shock.

               Kylo just brushes a stray strand of hair behind one of your ears, and a smile tugs at the corners of his lips as he tries to comfort you. “I know you want me,” he says quietly. “When we left D’Qar, you tried to fight me. You wanted to stay there, with him. I couldn’t express my happiness when I found out that the Republic labelled you a traitor, knowing that you could never return, or my elation when you said you never would want to. I always feared that, given the choice, you would go back to him. I can never be forgiven for killing Han Solo, but you? They would forgive you instantly, and surely the pilot’s appearance here confirms it.”

               He seems to wrestle with himself for a moment. “You can do it. You can go back; I have no doubt that is what Ani now wants as well. You can leave; you and Ani can go back to D’Qar. You can go back and have the life you wanted with him before I intervened.”

               “But I don’t want that,” you tell him, eagerly, desperately. “I don’t want that, Kylo. I don’t want him, I want _you_ , I want to stay here with you-“ You stop talking as Kylo puts a hand on your head, smoothing back your hair.

               “I know,” he says softly, the corner of his lips quirking up in a sad smile. “I always thought that if you had the opportunity to go back to the Resistance, you would leave me in an instant, but here you are. You want to stay.” His eyes flick back to yours, and there’s almost a speck of dry humor hidden in his features. “I cannot turn you away when I want to be with you too, not when this is the most open you’ve been with me in weeks.”

               Your lower lip trembles as the reality of what he’s saying finally starts to settle on you. “You don’t just want to be with me because of the Force bond?” you ask quietly, and Kylo shake his head.

               “No,” he confirms, and he can’t help but sound taken aback by the question. “The Force bond helps me feel connected to you, but it does not control how I feel about you. That aspect of the bond is, and always has been, left up to choice.”

               You replay the words over in your head, letting them sink in as you realize what that means. “I love you,” you offer quietly as you look up at him, finally meeting his dark brown eyes. “I want to stay. I don’t want to leave you.”

               “Good,” Kylo breathes, and he places both hand on your neck, thumbs skimming your cheeks as he kisses you again. It’s a deep kiss, a passionate kiss, but as much as you want to sink into him and let this whole thing go, a part of you is still resistant to the fact that he could have forgiven you for what you deemed the most sinful act you could have committed against him.

               “But-“ you start as you nervously pull away again. “Poe-“

               “I don’t care.” Kylo raises his voice as he pulls away, but your feet remain frozen to the floor. “I don’t care that you slept with the pilot, I don’t. I know you want me to, I know you want me to hate you for it, but I don’t, I can’t, because I truly, honestly, don’t care. I want you to choose me, no matter what you do or what you’ve done, I want you to choose me and you have.” As your eyes sweep over his face, you can’t help but notice the honesty, the sincerity, pooling through his dark eyes. “It doesn’t matter to me,” he says, his voice lower, and as he spreads both arms out to his sides, you can feel his sincerity, and that’s when it occurs to you that he’s telling the truth. A part of him was hurt that you slept with Poe, yes, but that hurt was masked by guilt for taking you away from D’Qar, for putting you in that position in the first place. You wanted to argue that it wasn’t his fault, that he had nothing to feel guilty about because this was all on you, but you could tell that more than any disappointment Kylo might have felt towards your actions, he wanted to let this go. This wasn’t just about Poe, this was about the rocky relationship that you had sustained over the past several weeks, and it was only after you had slept with Poe and realized that you were about to lose Kylo that allowed yourself to break down and let him know how you really felt, that you did still want to be with him. Despite what you had done, you had still chosen him, and that’s all Kylo wanted from you. Before, you stayed because it was easy, or because of Ani, or because of the Republic’s threat of treason, but now you were choosing him simply because you could. It would be easy for you to go back to the Resistance. You would have a comfortable life there, you could, Kylo was right, you could be forgiven and you could try to go back to the way things used to be, but it wasn’t until Poe actually came back that you finally saw that it truly wasn’t the kind of life that you wanted anymore. If there was a life without Kylo in it, then it wasn’t worth living.

               Kylo seems to register your thoughts as he looks over your face, and that’s when you realize that he’s waiting for you to make the first move. Without hesitation, you rush towards him and wrap your arms around his neck, jumping up so that he can catch you as he grabs your thighs under each large hand to keep you upright. You wanted this, you _more_ than wanted this, you wanted him, and for once you could be sure that Kylo wanted you just as much. In the back of your mind, the doubts still held on, and you supposed they always would, but as long as he was beside you, you felt certain that you would be able to move past whatever darkness had taken over you, whether it was due to Rey’s influence or whatever happened on the _Propitiate_ , Kylo would be there to support you no matter what you did. He had promised you that, once, that no matter what you did it would never change the way he felt about you, and while you had believed it to be a meaningless platitude at the time, you supposed it was true. Kylo had left the First Order for _you_ , finally, he had put you first, and to even think about losing you would mean that he would be really and truly alone, and he didn’t want that any more than you did. In a sense, he had to forgive you, because if he didn’t, if he held onto your betrayal, he would be alone, and-

               “Stop,” Kylo orders over your parted lips, and you just kiss him harder, trying to spur him on as well. You had doubts that needed to be erased, and you knew for certain that he was the only one that could erase them. It would take time, of course, to repair the rift that had been created between you over the past several weeks, but you were bonded to each other, and what’s more, you still wanted to be. You still wanted to be, after everything that had happened, you still _wanted_ to be with him, even if it meant an uncomfortable life on the run, you would keep running and running as long as he was there beside you.

               “Help me,” you whisper against his lips, and although you’re not quite sure what you’re asking him to help with, Kylo seems to understand regardless. You wanted to let go of all the pain and the doubt that you had been feeling, the heavy pressure that seemed to have asserted itself around your shoulders from the moment you stepped on the _Propitiate_. You had not been able to truly relax since that time, never felt free to let yourself just be, and Kylo kisses you harder than ever, his hands grasping the sides of your face almost painfully as he pulls out your bottom lip with his own, his front teeth gently nipping at your lower lip while you fisted your hands in his dark hair.

               Kylo pulls away for a split second so that he can pull off his shirt, and you mimic his action, pulling your own off as well. His hands slip around your waist, sliding off your pants, and you again mirror his movements by sliding his down his hips as well before reaching up and skimming the tight skin of his abdomen with your fingertips. Kylo wastes no time kissing you again, hands around the base of your neck with his fingers buried in your hair before he picks you up under both thighs and carries you over to the bed, plopping you down lazily on your back. You reach up to wrap your arms around his shoulders and glide your hands over his muscles, relishing the feeling of him underneath your hands as he tilts your head to the side to allow him better access to your neck.

               It felt familiar, and a part of you was grateful for that because you wanted it to feel familiar, and intimate. You needed it to, needed Kylo to remind you that he knew you both inside and out, and while you wanted it to feel new, and charged, and exciting and almost a little bit awkward, you took solace in how comfortable Kylo was with you, and you with him. It was the sort of comfort that you only achieved after knowing someone for years and years, and while a part of you wanted that newness, wanted that thrill of the unknown, it wasn’t worth sacrificing what had initially taken you so long to achieve. At one point in your life, you would have done anything, absolutely anything to be with Kylo, and while that feeling had occasionally ebbed into casual indifference after being so close to him for five years, you almost hated how it had taken the thought of losing him completely for you to actually come to terms with how much he meant to you.

               “I love you,” you whisper as you arch your back off the bed, pushing your chest into his, and Kylo responds by jutting his tongue into your sweet spot, the hollow where your jaw met your neck. His tongue continues up the base of your ear, and you can’t help but shudder beneath him as you run your fingertips down the smooth skin of his back. You wanted this, you really and truly did, you wanted _him,_ and you couldn’t help but moan his name as Kylo planted a neat, vertical column of kisses down your abdomen as he worked his way down to your clit. His lips hovered there for a moment, barely brushing against your sensitive skin before he parted his lips and caressed you with the flat part of his tongue.

               You bite your lip and arch your back off the bed as Kylo starts to lap at your entrance with steady, fervent laps. The result is dizzying, and you slowly move your hips in a slow rhythmic circle towards his mouth as your hands grab the blanket on either side of you. You wrap your legs around his head, thighs over his shoulders as you push yourself into his open mouth, desperate for more sensation. Kylo keeps pace with you, his warm, calloused hands gliding over the smooth skin of your outer thigh as he holds you steady.

               As you feel yourself building, you’re silently thankful for the fact that your thoughts have seemed to quiet themselves of their own accord. You had always known that Kylo had a sort of numbing effect on you, seemingly able to distract you from whatever it was that was going on, and you honestly couldn’t believe that you hadn’t taken advantage of it sooner. Kylo wanted to be there to support you, to be there for you, and yet for some reason you had felt yourself hiding away from him, as if you felt that you had to be strong on your own merits without relying on him at all. That was not partnership, nor teamwork, and it would be a sure way to watch your relationship implode. No, although you were afraid to be weak in front of him, you knew Kylo would never judge you and you had to be willing to rely on him when you needed to.

               And right now, you really needed to, not just at this moment, but to get your relationship back on track you had to be vulnerable with him in a way that you hadn’t been previously. You had always thought that you were good at communicating your needs, but somewhere along the line you had simply pushed that aside and acted as though you operated on a completely independent scale from him. If anything showed that wouldn’t, couldn’t possibly work, it was the results of the past several weeks.

               _Stop thinking_ , Kylo tells you, and you can’t help but grin as you hear his voice inside your head again. You liked hearing his voice in your head, especially now, proving once and for all how close you truly were to each other. Right as you feel as though you are about to climax, Kylo pulls his lips away from your clit and you can’t help but groan out in frustration. The sound quickly melts into a whimper of pleasure as Kylo thrusts into you, hovering his large body over your own. You push your chest up into his as you wrap your legs around his waist, holding him tightly to you. Kylo doesn’t thrust, he doesn’t move, and yet his cock twitches pleasantly inside of you as he stares down at you, his dark eyes burning into yours.

               _Do you want this?_ he asks, his eyes searching yours for an immediate answer with such intensity that you can almost feel the air being sucked from your chest.

               _Yes._

 _Do you want_ me?

               Yes.

               The answer is fast and sure, and Kylo lips find yours as he kisses you, his hands on either side of your face. You melt into him, thrusting your hips up into his, spurring him on, and you can’t help but tremble as Kylo starts to move inside of you. It felt better than before, somehow. You couldn’t explain exactly why, but the sensation of him filling you was almost enough to compensate for his languid speed. You can tell he wants to take this slow, wants you to feel as much of him as you can, and you screw your eyes shut as you prepare to let him take you however he wants to.

               “Look at me,” he commands, but his voice is gentle, and you just run your fingertips in slow motions up and down his back, enjoying this, enjoying him, being there with you. Out of all the ways you imagined your conversation with him ending, you had not quite expected it to end like this, but you couldn’t say that you weren’t glad it did. You nuzzle him softly, appreciatively, and Kylo returns the gesture as he runs his lips over your soft skin and whispers your name in your ear as he starts to increase his rhythm.

               You bite your lip to stop yourself from telling him to go faster, but Kylo seems to register your need all the same as he increases his rhythm, pushing into you with increased speed. You can feel yourself building, the adrenaline making the muscles in your upper arms itch, and you break the kiss to attack his shoulder, nipping the skin over his collarbone with your teeth. Kylo responds in kind by applying a rapid burst of suction to your neck, but it doesn’t stop there. You can literally feel his teeth in the side of your neck, and a shiver runs through you as he continues his assault, sliding the tip of his tongue around the bite marks before he closes his lips together to plant a firm kiss against your skin and repeating the motion all over again. It’s a bit painful, but no more than you’re used to, and you hold him tighter to you as you feel yourself getting closer and closer.

               Kylo lets out a grunt in your ear as he slows his pace and pulls out slightly, and for a moment you consider that he is going to punish you after all. You bite your lip as a surge of desperation floods through you as you decide that he isn’t going to let you cum, that he’s going to leave you wanting and desperate for him to make sure that you stayed aching for him. You whimper audibly behind your pursed lips at the realization, and Kylo smirks wickedly from above you.

               “Do you truly think I’m that cruel?” he asks, giving your earlobe a tender, playful nip, and you just screw your eyes shut as you try to push your hips against him, trying to get as much friction as you can against his cock. You don’t know how to answer that question, don’t want to answer; you just want him to keep going.

               “Do you want me to beg?” you ask after a moment, and Kylo’s eyebrows widen in surprise. He seems amused by your offer, and you can’t blame him. You didn’t like to beg, you hated begging, and yet you were desperate enough to do anything, absolutely anything right now to get your release.

               “Just this once,” Kylo whispers as he runs his tongue along the base of your jawline, and that’s when you know that you really and truly couldn’t take it anymore.

               “Please Kylo,” you beg him. “Please, I need you to fuck me, to do whatever you want with me, just, please, please just let me cum. I… _fuck-“_

               Kylo reaches up and puts his fingertips to your temple, opening up your mental connection to him like had done so many times in the past. You can feel him, all of the adrenaline and the emotions that he’s experiencing as if it were your own, and you’re immediately flooded with a sense of sadness that was more akin to pity than to your actions as of late. It was rooted in a deep sense of guilt, convincing himself over and over again that the struggles that you were dealing with were his fault and his alone. It’s not true, and while you silently try to convince him that it’s not, you can begin to feel something else. Mixed in with all of his doubt and his pity over his inner sense of darkness, however, is desire, stronger than you’ve ever felt it, and this is what you tap into now as you focus on the feeling of his cock brushing against your slick walls, helping to distract him from the situation.

               You can hear Kylo let out a small whimper as he feels what you feel, and you let your desperation for him build as well as you focus on the full feeling of him inside of you, and the tender brush of his lips against yours as he reaches own to kiss you. Finally, it’s too much for him to take, and Kylo decides to impart his mercy on you as he begins to thrust inside you again at a much faster rhythm than before, and it’s all you can do not to cry out. You don’t want to, and you had always tried to stay more or less quiet in the past knowing that Ani or Phasma was usually always within earshot, but now you can’t help it as you throw your head back into the pillows and gasp as loud as you can, making absolutely no effort to temper your sound. You grit your teeth as you continue to moan, your noises becoming more frantic in response to your erratic breathing as Kylo continues his rapid pace. You don’t want him to stop, not again, not while you’re so close, and you let the sound of your frantic gasps and pleas for him not to stop fill your ears as you find your release.

               Usually you felt yourself build up and up until the high point of your release, but today it felt like you were dropping off the side of a cliff. Your thighs spasmed, and your fingers and toes clenched and unclenched as your stomach seemed to drop into your abdominal cavity. Kylo himself lets out a slow breath as he releases himself inside of you, spurred on by your own intense contractions. He smooths your hair back as you continue to tremble beneath him, pulling his lips towards yours as you remain desperate for any bit of closeness that you can get.

               “Don’t go,” you whisper. You had come, you didn’t need to beg him anymore, and yet you couldn’t help but think now that Kylo had gotten what he wanted he was going to leave. He had never given you any indication that that was what he was planning on doing, never even thought it, but the doubts surfaced nonetheless. You didn’t know where this mistrust of him had suddenly come from, but you wanted it gone. You had known him for years, you _knew_ him, probably better than anyone in the galaxy, and yet you couldn’t understand why you were suddenly distrusting his motives, especially when you could look into his thoughts and read his emotions.

               “I’m not going anywhere,” Kylo assures you as he brushes your hair out of your face. He pulls out of you slowly as he wraps his arms around you, never once breaking contact with you to show that he would stay by your side. You curl into his chest and look up at him, pouting your lower lip out slightly as you meet his eyes.

               “So things are okay between us?” you ask softly, and when Kylo nods his head forward, you just wrap your arms around him tightly, like a little kid, burying your face in his chest. His skin is slick with sweat and overheated, but you press your cheek against him and inhale the smell of him anyway, a unique combination of scents that was all his own. You don’t want to ask the next question, but it slips through your lips anyway. “Why?”

               Kylo lets out a sigh as he smooths back your hair, as if this was something that he had thought about for far too long himself. “Because you mean too much to me to just let you go,” he answers simply. “I know you see it as a betrayal, but I just can’t bring myself to hold it against you with everything that’s happened. You haven’t been yourself as of late, and it wouldn’t be fair to condemn you for something when I’m not sure you’re entirely in control of yourself just yet.”

               You just pout and let the candor of his words sink in. Kylo wasn’t sure you were entirely back to your old self yet, and to tell the truth, neither were you. Even still, you pull away from him slightly so that you can get a good look at his face. “When did this happen?” you ask suddenly. “When did you get so remarkably mature?”

               A grin tugs at the corner of his lips, and you can’t help but feel a small burst of elation as you see it, as you see _him_ , happy. “I wouldn’t say that,” he says at length. “When I found out that you were missing, when I figured out who you were with, well…”

               “Is some part of the ship marked with scorch marks from your lightsaber?” you ask teasingly.

               “The cargo hold,” Kylo responds, dipping his gaze, and you can’t help but grin yourself as you reach forward and kiss him, planting your hands on both of his cheeks as you press yourself against him. “When I came back and found you gone, I feared the worst.”

               “Don’t,” you tell him, as firmly as you can muster while still keeping your voice quiet. “I mean it, Kylo, you don’t have to worry about that because I am never leaving you, ever. I don’t know any way that I can prove that to you, but short of me being kidnapped or captured, I will never leave your side.”

               “Or ignore a direct order to stay put?” Kylo asks dryly as he raises an eyebrow, and you blush sheepishly as you avoid his gaze.

               “I should have listened to you,” you admit as your shoulders slump. “You were only trying to protect me the way I kept saying I was trying to protect you. When we were on the _Propitiate,_ I thought I was protecting you, I thought I was doing the right thing, but I ended up doing more harm than good.”

               “That was what I told myself when I sent you away and never came back for you,” Kylo says softly as he strokes your arm. “You’re starting to remind me of myself more and more as the days pass.”

               “Don’t do that,” you tell him as you shake your head from side to side. “This isn’t your fault, at all. I’m the one who made the bad decisions, I’m the one-“

               “Not about the pilot,” Kylo interrupts you. “Or the time we spent on the _Propitiate._ I’ve taken for granted so many times you’ve been there for me over the years. You gave up your life to raise Ani. You didn’t ask for the complications that being with me brought to your life, but you never complained about it, not once.”

               “Only because you weren’t there to hear it,” you joke lightly. “I’m sure Sadie and Ladson heard more than just an earful from me.”

               Kylo shakes his head, as if that’s not what he meant. “It’s not just that,” he insists. “When I took you away from D’Qar, you decided to stay. You didn’t want to. I still remember that first day. I remember how much pain you were in, I remember your despair, because I felt it as if it was my own. And somehow, you chose to forgive me, for everything. You chose to comfort me even when you hated me, simply because you could, because that’s the kind of person you are.”

               “I never hated you,” you say with a quick shake of your head.

               “You didn’t like me much,” Kylo replies quickly. You expect to hear a bit of amusement in his tone, but instead his voice is somber. “And just when you were happy on Naboo, I took you away again, brought you to base after base while you just _sat_ there, day after day, taking care of Ani, putting his and my needs before your own, for _years_. You’ve been there for me in ways I could never be there for you.”

               You just shrug your shoulders uncomfortably. “I’m not a needy person,” you say at length. “Besides, someone had to do it. And don’t act like you didn’t do anything. You were the one who was keeping us safe. Without you, I probably would have been captured by the Republic and Ani would have ended up who knows where.”

               “No,” Kylo says as he shakes his head. “No, they would never be able to capture you.” You’re about to ask him how, when Kylo continues without any prompting. “Because you’re strong. Not just physically, or through the Force, but when you want something, you don’t let anything stop you. When you think you are doing the right thing, you’re unstoppable. You felt it when you were with the Resistance, when you came to capture me on the _Resolute_. You didn’t want to, but you still went through with it, because you felt you were doing the right thing.”

               “I didn’t know what I wanted at the time,” you admit. “But that’s not fair, Kylo. It’s not fair that you can just forgive me when I do something wrong because I’ve forgiven you for worse, or because I’ve been there for you more in the past. It doesn’t-“ you shake your head from side to side. “It doesn’t make it right.”

               “It doesn’t have to,” Kylo says as he strokes your cheek. “I don’t hold this against you, and I don’t want to. I want the same things you want.”

               “I just want you,” you tell him. “I just want you and Ani and I want to find a place like Naboo where we can just be safe and happy and where no one will ever find us, where we can just _be_.”

               “One day,” Kylo tells you as he kisses you again and pulls you into his arms, and you don’t fight it as you bury your face in his chest and run your hand absent-mindedly up and down his side in a soft, gentle motion.

               A small part of you couldn’t honestly believe that everything had worked out the way it had. Out of all of the ways that your conversation could have ended, you hadn’t honestly believed that it would end with you lying here in Kylo’s arms with his nose buried in your hair. A part of you couldn’t believe that you were still together, that you hadn’t lost everything after all. Your family was the most important thing to you, and for you to do something that could have risked that only helped to confirm that Kylo was right. Something had happened to you, but he wanted to stay with you regardless and help you to work through it, and there were no absolutely words you could use to adequately convey your appreciation for his understanding. You felt lost, but you weren’t. As long as Kylo was there beside you, he would not let you lose your way, and as long as he was willing to be there for you and you for him, you knew you would be together, always.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sniffs* =')
> 
> So Kylo and Reader have made up, but Poe and Ladson are still stuck in the brig, and there are plenty of new ways for shit to go down before we reach the end of our tale...but if Kylo and Reader are a team, that's all that matters, right? ......right? >.> Haha, I can't trick you guys. I bet more than half of you are going, "Oh great, we got a happy chapter, what shit is going to go down on Saturday?" To which I can only reply, I guess you'll just have to wait and see!! ^_^ Until then, cheers!!


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More NSFW content ahead, because I think you've all earned it ;)
> 
> PS: And today we learned from the novel, Aftermath: Life Debt by Chuck Wendig that Hux's first name is apparently Armitage, and apparently he is _not_ the child of Brendol Hux and his wife, but apparently he's illegitimate...here's the passage:
> 
> "Sloane bristles at being interrupted. Hux undercuts her because he thinks she's not important. It is vital she make a show of countermanding that - honestly, her greatest desire right now is to slam her fork through the back of his hand and chastise him for the intrusion. But that would defy Rax, and she's aware suddenly of the keen and delicate balance of power.
> 
> Instead, she does her own brand of undercutting.
> 
> "Brendol," she [Sloane] says. "I understand you have a son. Not of your wife - an illegitimate child? Will _he_ be the best the Empire has to offer?" That is a stab from a double-sided dagger: first the fact that he has an illegitimate son, and second the inference that no matter how good the cadets at his academy became, they still weren't enough to save the Empire from it's fate. 
> 
> His eyes pinch and blink as if he were just slapped. "I...Armitage is a weak-willed boy. Thin as a slip of paper and just as useless. But I'll teach him. You'll...you'll see. He has potential."
> 
> Around the table, the others chuckle."
> 
> I am, admittedly, in the camp that is not a fan of Chuck's writing, but you know, there can be important canon backstory stuff to be gained through reading, so I plug away, as it has been confirmed that these books are canon, and Life Debt is the second in the Aftermath trilogy. If you're interested in picking it up, it should be available for download or pick it up at a bookstore near you on Tuesday, July 12th.
> 
> PS: Another super secret fun fact, the actor Richard Armitage, who you probably know better as Thorin, actually had one of his first roles as a Naboo Fighter Pilot in The Phantom Menace in 1999. BOOM. FUN FACTS.

               “Hey, Ani, how’s it going up here?”

               You plop into the co-pilot’s seat beside Ani, and he tears his eyes away from the wavy lines of hyperspace to look at you, nervous apprehension in his eyes. It’s not hard to understand why. You and Kylo had disappeared for the entire day, and most of the next, just spending time with each other and being intimate in a way that you hadn’t been recently. It probably would have been smart to at least check in with Ani and see how things were going in case he needed something, but you knew that he would have reached out if something urgent had arisen.

               “Are things good now?” he asks tentatively, and you force a smile to your lips.

               “Yeah,” you reply, brushing a damp strand of hair away from your face. “Your dad’s just finishing up in the shower, but he should be along to relieve you so that you can get some rest as well.”

               “I’ve slept off and on,” Ani says with an indifferent shrug. “But are things, you know, okay now? Between you and dad?”

               “Yes,” you reply firmly, and the relief is palpable on Ani’s face. His expression strikes a pang of guilt through your chest, and you bite your lip, not sure how to explain yourself to him. “Look, Ani-“

               “You don’t have to say anything,” he says quickly. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Rey recently. I know we haven’t seen her in years, and I know I was just a kid at the time, but there seemed to be something dark in her. I don’t know what it was, but I could just, I don’t know, I could just sense it.” He turns to look at you suddenly. “Do you really think whatever happened to you was because of her?”

               “Or vice versa,” you say softly, but you can’t really bring yourself to say much more than that.

               “Dad used to explain to me how easy it was to fall to the dark side,” Ani explains. “He used to say that you never thought you were influenced by it until you were in too deep, and by the time you realized just how badly you were in, you felt like you had done too much bad to even try to get out. It finds a way to mess with your head, with your perception of yourself. It makes you think that you’ve lost everything even when there’s a really simple, fixable solution right in front of you.”

               “That does sound extremely applicable to my situation right now,” you admit hesitantly, but Ani just looks at you, seemingly undeterred.       

               “But that’s okay,” he says. “Because you have me and dad to help you. I don’t understand what it’s like, you know I don’t, but dad does, and he can help you.” He pauses for a moment. “He really does want to help you. He wants you to trust him again.”

               “I do trust him,” you say quickly. “Always have, always will. I don’t know, things just got complicated for a little while, but they’re better now. Kylo and I will work to make things better, you don’t have to worry about that. Things have always found a way of becoming difficult for us, but Kylo and I always find our way back to each other in the end.”

               “Because you’re family,” Ani says, and you can’t help but smile at this.

               “Because _we’re_ a family,” you correct him. “And we’ll stay together no matter what, right?”

               “Right,” Ani confirms, and you can’t help but smile as you get to your feet.

               “I should head back and check on the prisoners,” you tell him. “Have you given them anything to eat yet?”

               “Yeah,” Ani says with a quick nod of his head. “Yeah, Ladson was starting to complain pretty loudly, and I didn’t want him to disturb you and dad.”

               “So thoughtful,” you muse teasingly.

               “Although,” Ani says, and his face looks troubled again. “I think Poe’s really worried about you.” He bites his lip as he looks back up at you, and you don’t know what he’s asking for, but all you can give him is reassurance.

               “You know things have always been difficult with Poe,” you manage. “We care about each other and that makes things, well, complicated.”

               Ani just shrugs, like he doesn’t quite know what to say, and you suppose that’s fair. If the situation had been reversed, you wouldn’t quite be sure what to say either. “I don’t like how we’re calling them prisoners,” Ani says after a while. “What are we even going to do with them? Why have them here at all if we’re just going to let them go?”

               “Weighing our alternatives,” you tell him. “It was kind of a heat of the moment decision. We have all three divided factions of the galaxy chasing us, so it seemed like a good idea to have someone whose safety we can barter with if we ever get captured.”

               Ani’s face falls. “But you wouldn’t really hurt them, would you?”

               “No,” you practically exclaim. “No, Ladson is like family. I know he doesn’t like me very much right now, but I suppose he has good reason for that and Poe is, well, I wouldn’t hurt him, so you have nothing to worry about there.”

               “Then why can’t we free them?” Ani presses. “If we just explain our situation to them, they might listen.”

               “Or they might try to commandeer this ship and drive it straight back to D’Qar,” you tell him. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to take that chance.”

               “Would it really be that bad?” Ani asks. “Heading back to the Resistance?”

               Your face falls and you tilt your head to the side. “Ani, you know what will happen to your dad if we go back. And me.”

               “Yeah,” Ani says shaking his head from side to side with disappointment. “I know.”

               “Hey,” you say, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Things could look up yet. We don’t know how things are going to play out yet, so let’s try to keep an open mind, okay?”

               “Okay,” Ani relents, and you quickly force a smile to your lips to try to erase the nagging sense of tension.

               “It’ll all be okay,” you tell him. “Remember, with the three of us together, there’s nothing that can stand in our way.”

               “You said Force sensitive people are supposed to be luckier, right?” Ani asks as you turn to go. “I feel like things haven’t really been going in our favor, as of late.”

               “They will,” you say with a brief nod of your head. “You’ll see, Ani. Sometimes you just have to _want_ things to get better badly enough, and they will. You need to ask the Force for what you want, and if you’re lucky, the Force will answer.”

               Ani just nods and turns back to the static waves of hyperspace, and you turn as you head back towards the cell block. You consider grabbing some food on the way there, but oddly enough, your nerves are still a bit torn, but not frayed, and you can’t really imagine being able to hold anything down in your current state. Things were better between you and Kylo now, better than they had been in what felt like ages, but you couldn’t help but be afraid that having Poe and Ladson so close by would only serve to make things worse. Then again, maybe it was just the fact that Poe was so close to you that put you ill at ease. You weren’t quite sure how to act around him, and you knew implicitly that the feeling was mutual. Poe was probably doing whatever he could not to get himself killed, which meant that he would have to choose his words carefully around you. He still imagined Kylo’s temper to be unstable and erratic, but you assumed that he was starting to get a taste for just how volatile your own emotions could be. In other words, if he was afraid of Kylo more than he was of you, he was fearing the wrong person.

               Even still, you put on a cheery demeanor as you headed into the cell block, and you were almost surprised that it wasn’t all that hard to do. In a way, you had felt a bit lighter after Kylo had placated you with his affection, but it almost felt as though you were simply flipping a switch inside of you, pressing whatever emotion to the surface that you wanted to shine through your features. It concerned you, but then again, almost everything concerned you as of late.

               “Hey there,” you say brightly as you enter the cell block. Ladson and Poe were both sitting on the bench, silently, apparently deep in their own thoughts. Ladson doesn’t look up right away, but Poe does, his eyebrows raised in surprise as his eyes search your face. “Well, don’t all greet me at once.”

               “I don’t think we really have a lot to say to you right now,” Ladson murmurs under his breath as Poe stands up and makes his way to the bars of his cell.

               “You all right?” he asks, and you roll your eyes gently and you pull a smirk to the corners of your lips.

               “Of course I’m all right,” you tell him. “Why wouldn’t I be?” You sit down on the bench and stretch your legs out in front of you as you look up at Poe, letting sincerity take hold of your expression. Poe appraises you nervously, and you notice that his eyes sweep down to your neck. The mirror in the bathroom had been fogged over from the hot steam of the shower where Kylo had taken you not once, but twice, and you hadn’t been able to see the extent of the damage. His hickeys always looked worse than they felt the day after, but you supposed that was the whole point.

               “They’ve been fucking,” Ladson says, barely looking up at you, and you can’t help but purse your lips together as you cross your arms over your chest and make a face.

               “I’m not going to confirm nor deny that statement,” you say at length.

               “At least you’re alive,” Poe says appreciatively, and you arch an eyebrow as you turn your head away from Ladson to look at him.

               “I’m going to say this once,” you say clearly. “So please, when I ask you to listen, really listen to what I’m saying. I know what Kylo’s done in the past. I know he tortured you, but he’s mellowed out a lot since then. He-“

               “Not too long ago, he wiped out three defenseless Pau’an villages on Utapau,” Poe tells you, his voice deadpan.

               “What?” you demand incredulously. You pause for a moment as you tried to think back. “Wait, was that in the Tarabba sector?” Poe’s eyes skirt to the side for a moment as he thinks before he nods his head forward once in confirmation. You immediately relax, puffing air out of your cheeks. “Okay, nevermind, I knew about that.” 

               “So that makes it okay?” Ladson asks, and his voice is full of dry humor.

               “It makes it okay because I sanctioned it,” you snap back and both Ladson and Poe pause for a moment as they look at you, really look, although you don’t have a clue what they’re hoping they’ll see or not see.

               “You?” Poe asks, unable to conceal the shock in his voice.

               “Okay, well _Hux_ sanctioned it,” you admit. “But it may have been more or less my idea to go there in the first place.”

               “Why?” Poe asks, and his expression is serious now. “I know the Empire used to have a stronghold there, but Utapau was one of the first planets to join the New Republic.”

               “But that was a while ago, wasn’t it?” you ask coyly, tilting your head to one side. “The amount of faith in the New Republic has dwindled, especially in the Outer Rim territories. The season’s ripe for change.”

               “Do you even hear yourself right now?” Ladson asks, and he sounds almost disgusted with you as he pushes himself away from the bars on his cell.

               “What does the First Order want with Utapau?” Poe asks, and you can’t help but purse your lips together as you study him.

               “Yes, because it would be a fantastic idea to divulge First Order strategies with you,” you say dryly. “You already know about Utapau, but if you haven’t been able to figure out why they were there already, I’m not going to clue you in.”

               “We have our theories,” Poe says stiffly as he looks down at you, and there is a certain level of contempt in his voice that you don’t like at all. “But why the secrecy? I thought you left the First Order. You have no allegiance to them now.”

               “Maybe,” you reply. “But if the First Order finds out that I told you anything, it can make things very unpleasant for me and my family. Keeping my mouth shuts seems to be in my best interests right now.”

               “It doesn’t have to be,” Poe tells you. “Take us back to D’Qar. We can work something out. We’ll keep you safe from the First Order, and then we can end things, once and for all.”

               “D’Qar won’t be safe for long,” you muse openly, waiting to incite a reaction. “Not with that superweapon that Hux has spent the past few years creating.” Poe’s jaw drops as he looks at you, and you can’t help but smirk. “I know you think your little shield around the planet is going to keep you safe, but it’s not. Not from this.”

               Poe’s jaw open and closes, and for a minute he looks hurt that you, of all people, would help the First Order acquire resources that would wipe the Resistance headquarters off the map, especially considering it had once been a place you had called home. “But-“ Poe’s voice is shaky, and that’s when you realize that _hurt_ doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of how wounded he looks.

               “Oh relax,” Ladson says dismissively. “Look at her. She’s lying to get a rise out of you.” You hold your tongue between your teeth as you make a face at him. “See what I mean?”

               “There’s a weapon,” you reply indignantly. “If it’s strong enough to penetrate through D’Qar’s defensive shields, though, that I can’t say.”

               “Even if there is one, you wouldn’t know anything about it,” Ladson replies firmly. “Things can change in a few years, but the First Order trusting you with details of their advanced planet-destroying weaponry is not one of them, especially when you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

               You just shrug, but you can’t deny that Ladson had a point. He knew you and what you were capable of, and while you were fine to talk strategy and logistics, the schematics behind planning a weapon of that scale were completely lost on you. “Fine,” you say with an idle shrug of your shoulders. “Say I don’t know anything about that, but when was the last time you heard of the Republic winning a fleet engagement against the First Order? You want details, cause here’s some: Deuterium laser, single boosted. Meranian alloy mounts, Kyber boosted. Firing arc, six-point-one steradians, pulse count three-three per second. Ring a bell?”

               Ladson just gives you a blank look as you shift your attention over to Poe. “No? Okay then, _Captain_ , your turn. Anything?”

               Poe tilts his head to the side slightly before he answers you, as if trying to figure out what your game is. “That’s a standard First Order point-defense laser.”

               “All right,” you say with a quick nod of your head. “One point for you, now let’s give you a harder one. Nova laser, serial crystal resonator, quad-mounted coaxial ripple fire, plasma-cooled.”

               Poe narrows his eyes, suddenly paying much, much more attention to you than he had just a minute ago. “Those are the main cannons on a T-85C X-Wing.”

               You make a small noise of appreciation in the back of your throat as you turn to Ladson, spreading your hands at your sides. “What’d I say?” you taunt him. “Is this guy good, or what?” You turn back to Poe, much more smug and confident than either of them are clearly comfortable with.

               “Two more questions,” you warn him. “Plasma-jacketed deuterium laser, quad-mounted coaxial _continuous fire_ , pyronium stabilized, _variable camber._ And there are three hundred and forty-seven mounted to the hull, all capable of firing simultaneously.”

               You can see Poe adding something up in his head quickly before his eyes widen and his jaw drops in shock. This is the exact kind of reaction you were hoping to provoke, and you can’t help but let your lips pull back in a wide grin as you smirk at him, crossing your arms over your chest as you lean back against the wall. “No…no, that’s impossible,” Poe says as he shakes his head in disbelief. “The heat of even a second of that many artillery mounts firing at the same time would cook the entire weapons division alive.” You just shrug your shoulders, as if this doesn’t make any difference to you. “Although I have to give credit where it’s due, who’s the one responsible for coming up with the idea of using a variable camber?”

               “That would be me,” you say smugly as you tilt your head to the side in gloating appreciation. “Easier to gauge the lasers than it is to change the power levels, so I’m honestly not sure why no one’s thought of it before. I can’t claim credit for the heat management, though. Without it, the Republic spy corvette they sent after us weeks ago might have escaped. I had meant to order a search of the wreckage for evidence tracing the ship back to Deso, but my gunnery crews did their jobs so well there wasn’t any sign the ship ever existed, just a cloud of atomized iron where there was once a ship.”

               To be fair, it had never really been your decision, or your gunnery crews. You had been in the command center with General Hux assessing the situation when he asked you whether or not you should let the ship escape or be blasted out of the sky. You had told him to blast away, although it wasn’t as though you really had any choice in the matter. Even if you had told Hux to let the ship escape, you weren’t quite sure that he would have appreciated your compassion, and that was something that you didn’t want to risk when you had still been trying to alleviate the tensions between him and Kylo.

               But neither Poe nor Ladson know that, and you can see the look of unease across Ladson’s face as he glances between you and Poe with deep confusion. If there was one thing that you were good at, it was listening, and although you weren’t entirely sure what everything you said meant, you at least had more or less of an idea how you could use what limited knowledge you did have to evoke the best response from them. Just knowing the terms of the advanced technical jargon didn’t make you smart, but it sure made you sound knowledgeable enough about the topic to make Poe and Ladson just slightly more on their guard around you than they were before.

               Regardless, whereas Ladson at least has the decency to appear intimidated, Poe looks much more skeptical, perhaps doubting that Hux had trusted you enough to not only let you command your own crew on the _Propitiate_ , but to also provide you with the sole authority to fire on a Republic spy ship. In retrospect, it sounded a tad farfetched even to your own ears, but you had been more than just a little insulted by Ladson’s insinuation that you had no idea what you were talking about in terms of the vast military technology that the First Order possessed. True, you hadn’t known anything about it back when you were with the Resistance, but you were just as intelligent and capable of learning and adapting to your situation as anyone.

               “Last one,” you say, your voice a bit colder than before to help disguise your wounded sense of pride. “Diameter, classified. Meranian alloy lens, cortosis steel beam guides. Tributary beams? Nine. Power source? Twin Kyber crystal boosting arrays. Classification? Dreadnought primary.” You can’t help but shoot a scathing gaze back towards Ladson. “And no, I may not have built the model the design was based off of, but I’m the one who pitched the idea to Hux in order to help them compensate with some other issues they were having recreating the superweapon from the Starkiller Base.”

               As you turn back to Poe, you’re almost not prepared to see the sudden solemn look that has since taken over his features, as if he was truly trying to decide whether or not you really took the time to deliberate the consequences of bringing such an idea to Hux’s attention. You hadn’t, but you had only said what you had in order to try to protect your family, to make it seem like you had a vested interest in the valued interests of the First Order and that you were committed to serving them in every way. At the time, it hadn’t occurred to you just how terribly this could backfire on you in the event that you ever had to leave the First Order. At the time, the _Propitiate_ had seemed like an indestructible safe haven and the thought of yourself unwillingly surrendering to the dark side just hadn’t occurred to you.

               “Were you really going to fire on D’Qar?” Poe asks quietly, as if the decisions was yours to make, and you can’t help but blink at him as you shake your head from side to side.

               “I, I didn’t, I…” you stammer as you shake your head. “The model was based off of a blaster that Phasma gave to Ani when we first got to Naboo, and I just advised Hux to use the same technique of plasma and Kyber crystals and apply it to the dreadnought since they couldn’t replicate what they had done with the superweapon on the Starkiller Base. I just gave him the idea, though, and helped him try to take control of the planets that had the resources he needed, but I was never involved with the building of it or anything.” That makes you sound like you hadn’t really done much at all, and so you struggle to maintain at least some semblance of authority. “I mean, I directed a lot of the _operations_ on the _Propitiate_ , but Hux would never relinquish control of his main weapon to anyone.”

               Poe looks like he’s about to ask something else, but fortunately the conversation comes to an abrupt halt as the door slides open and Kylo Ren steps through, his signature helmet covering his features while his cape billows out behind him. Your outstretched legs snap together and you sit up straight, trying to make it seem like you were actually on guard instead of just making idle chatter with the prisoners. You notice out of the corner of your eye that Poe is paying more attention to your reaction than he is to Kylo, and you quickly try to ignore the feeling of his eyes on you as you stare up into the slit of Kylo’s mask.

               “Hi,” you murmur meekly, and for some reason, you suddenly feel very small in front of him as he looms over you, extending something in his hand. As you take the miniature holo in your hand, you can’t help but flinch at his next words.

               “General Hux would like to speak to you,” Kylo says, the distortion of his mask making the words sound more foreboding than you would have preferred. You steady your resolve as you position the holo in front of you, but make no move to activate it as you look up at Kylo.

               “Shouldn’t you speak to him?” you ask, but Kylo just stares down at you and stays silent, either because he had already spoken to Hux, who had been unsatisfied with his answer, or because he thought considering everything that had happened that you were the best person to speak to Hux and tell him what he wanted to hear. You glance back up nervously at the cells to see their reaction, but Ladson has literally turned his back on you and looked to be fidgeting with his lower lip. Poe, however, has a frown etched into his face as he studies you, and you just give him a curt nod as you look back up at Kylo. His mask gives nothing away, but you can feel his support flowing through the Force, and that was when you realized that he was literally putting the lives of everyone on the ship in your hands. You had always wanted your choices to matter, for your decisions to have weight, and now you were finally going to get to decide whether you wanted to return to the First Order and trade Poe’s life for Hux’s forgiveness, or if you wanted to stay on the run with Kylo and Ani and leave Poe and Ladson’s futures in your uncertain hands.

               You turn to the comlink and take a deep breath before you switch it on, mentally bracing yourself as a tiny hologram of Hux pops up in front of you. Your face immediately changes as you see him, and for a moment you let Poe and Ladson and even Kylo fall away as Hux says your name, and you focus your full attention on him.

               “Well done,” Hux muses. “It’s reached my attention that you’ve been hiding out at Tatooine and have managed to come into possession of the Resistance Captain and interim General.”

               “He’s here,” you reply coolly, trying to remain as aloof as Hux usually appeared to be. “I apologize for not contacting you with my whereabouts sooner, but I felt the best way to catch Dameron was going in deep undercover. I didn’t want to risk the possibility of a Resistance spy tipping them off and turning the tables on us.”

               “Not a concern,” Hux says dismissively. “Captain Phasma already explained everything.” You can feel Kylo’s troubled energy through the Force, and you resist the urge to flick your eyes towards him to see his expression. You know even if you do that all you’ll be able to see is the dark slit in his helmet, and so you keep your eyes focused on Hux. 

               “Good to hear it,” you reply simply. You didn’t know if Phasma lied to cover your tracks or if she had told him the truth, but either way you had something Hux wanted, and as much as you hated to say it, Poe was powerful leverage.

               “It’s a shame, though, that you could not capture the girl,” Hux says with a sigh. “Our soldiers were able to pick up her location, but unfortunately she was able to escape.”

               “Hence why we left her,” you say with an indifferent shrug. “She is much too powerful to consider capturing-“

               “You left her?” Hux speaks with his jaw set, his voice close to a snarl, and you simply glare at his tiny holo in return as you realize that you had perhaps chosen the wrong words. “If you crossed paths, then why is she not _dead_?”

               “We deemed Dameron’s capture more important,” you insist, almost taken aback by Hux’s sudden burst of anger. “Surely one Jedi can’t pose that much of a threat to the might of the First Order, can it?”

               If looks could kill, Hux’s glare would have split you in two. “You brought Ren with you,” Hux says, but this time, his voice is soft, even more dangerous than his countenance. “Surely it couldn’t have been that difficult for one of you to eliminate her while the other captured Dameron.”

               “I’m sorry, but were you there?” you demand. “Dameron wasn’t alone, and even if you want to deem _me_ sentimental, you know how much Kylo hates her. If he could have eliminated her, he would have.” You stare him down, not daring yourself to blink, making your gaze seem as convincing as possible.

               “Very well,” Hux relents, and you can feel an involuntary smirk tug at the corner of your lips as the chill of his icy gaze finally begins to thaw. “I’ll send out a fighter escort to accompany you back to the _Propitiate_.”

               “No need,” you say firmly, with as much authority in your voice as you can muster. “We were tailed by Resistance ships heading out of Tatooine’s atmosphere. The airspace is probably crawling with squadrons from both the Republic and the Resistance trying to find him, and a fighter escort will only serve to draw their attention.”

               “Then the more of their ships we can eliminate the better,” Hux replies, but you just shake your head.

               “No,” you insist. “This ship is not equipped to handle sustained combat, and I am not going to risk getting pulverized by the enemy because you want to get overzealous. We are headed back to the _Propitiate_ now, and you will await us when we dock.”

               “Are you defying a direct order?” Hux asks, but there’s an undercurrent of amusement in his voice, as if he expects you to challenge him.

               “I think I’ve made my intentions and my loyalties quite clear,” you reply, and Hux seems pleased with your answer. There is a brief period of silence as you stare each other down, and the moment stretches on so long that out of the corner of your eye you can see Poe glance over at Kylo, as if hoping for some answer as to what was going on. The nature of your non-existent relationship with Hux was complicated, to say the least, and that was definitely not something that you wanted to share with Poe, of all people.

               “I’ll be in touch,” you tell him with finality. “If we do end up requiring any sort of assistance, you’ll be the first to hear of it. Otherwise, we’ll be there as soon as possible. We’re taking the long route so as to not draw any suspicion to ourselves. If any of their vessels notices a ship heading directly to the _Propitiate_ from Hutt space, it’s going to draw their attention and that is something I plan to avoid at all costs.”

               “That may no longer be a concern, Commander,” Hux says, and you suddenly don’t like the gloat that has since taken over his tone. “Your suspicions concerning the Hutt Empire were correct. They could only be trusted to take the course of action leading to their greatest benefit at our expense. In retaliation, Nal Hutta and Nar Shadda have been destroyed. Your proposed alterations to the weapon have proven most effective.”

               _Wait, what?_

The superweapon hadn’t been working. The tiny model blaster Phasma had shown you could have taken out a battalion of Storm Troopers at best, but it didn’t have the power to destroy the molten core of an entire planet. And yet, somehow, because of _your_ idea, Hux had somehow found someone to put two and two together and create a superweapon that not only _could_ destroy two planets, but _did._ A cold feeling sinks into the pit of your stomach as you realize that the dreadnought was now a very real thing, and you were now complicit in the destruction of the Hutt Empire. You hadn’t really even remembered telling Hux anything about them, other than the fact that they would probably double-cross him at the earliest opportunity because that was the kind of self-interested opportunism that the Hutts were known for having, but you had no idea that Hux would retaliate against them in such a way.

               Regardless, you have just seconds to respond, and you hope that the blank look of shock across your features can be mistaken as casual indifference through the holo. “That’s, uh, unfortunate,” you offer him. “They seemed like they could be such promising allies, if only they could have been trusted to abide by the terms of our treaty. I will await the full debriefing upon my arrival.”

               “Very well,” Hux repeats as he inclines his head forward and switches off the holo. You hand it back to Kylo and let out a deep breath as you rub your temple with the fingertips of one hand, holding your opposite elbow in the other, trying to disguise just how stressful that was. Kylo reaches out and runs his gloves fingers through your hair, and you can’t help but smile softly as you glance up at him.

               “Do you think that was convincing enough?” you ask him, and Kylo just nods his head twice.

               Poe, who has been looking back and forth between you now, suddenly can’t hold his silence any longer. “So I’m guessing by that comment that we _don’t_ have to worry about being turned over to the First Order?”

               “I’m still weighing our options,” Kylo tells him, the familiar voice distortion of the mask muffling his voice, and for some strange reason, it makes you feel better just to hear it as he turns back to you. “Do you require anything else from me?”

               You know that he can feel how troubled you are through the bond and he wants to know if you want to talk about it, or if you need more time to digest what had happened, and you silently appreciate his thoughtfulness. A part of you considered that he might have wanted to appear to be gentle with you more for Poe’s sake than your own, but you still appreciated his courtesy towards you nonetheless. “So it looks like the Hutt cartel is gone,” you say to no one in particular before you glance back up at Kylo. “So it looks like now we’re both complicit in the destruction of thousands of people. Good job, us.”

               “Not people,” Kylo informs you, and you’re about to ask if that really matters when Poe, of all people, comes to his defense.

               “He’s got a point,” Poe tells you firmly, as if he’s hoping his words will really sink in. “Hosnian Prime was the New Republic capital and contained billions of Republic citizens. The Hutt cartel operated independently of the Republic, and I doubt there were any humans there that weren’t indentured slaves or worse.” He shakes his head. “No, the Republic’s going to turn a blind eye to this, and even if they didn’t, you haven’t been out of my sight the entire time we were on Tatooine. You didn’t give the order, and you weren’t there, so you can’t be complicit.”

               Kylo turns back to you and gives a firm nod of his head, silently, and begrudgingly, if you could read him right, admitting that Poe was telling the truth. The Hutt cartel caused the Republic more trouble than it was worth, and there was probably more than one Senator that had helped conspire with its shady dealings. Now that the Hutt cartel was gone, that would be one less nuisance that the Republic would have to deal with, and it was also one less ally that the First Order could look to if they again encountered desperate times. No, for all intents and purposes, this was hardly as troubling as some of the other events that had transpired as of late, but even still, you couldn’t overlook the seriousness of what this meant.

               “Okay, maybe I’m not complicit to this,” you admit. “But now that Hux knows that he can fire this successfully, what happens when he decides to turn the its scopes to another system, say, one that includes D’Qar? You think the Republic, or the Resistance, will turn a blind eye to that too?”

               “We have a shield in place,” Poe says firmly. “If you can walk me through whatever you know, I can relay the information back to the Resistance and we can see what we can do. It may not be too late.”

               “No,” you say quickly as you shake your head from side to side. “I came up with the idea, but I don’t have any information beyond what I’ve already told you that would be of any use to you.”

               There’s silence for a moment as the realization of what this could mean hangs in the air, and Kylo looks back towards you, silently indicating that he was heading back to the cockpit to check on Ani. It was more than possible that he knew more about the weapon than he was letting on, and you could only imagine that he would want to make a hasty exit before any questions were turned his way. “If they give you any trouble,” Kylo says, jerking the side of his head towards the cell blocks. “Please notify me at once so I can put an end to it.”

               You know it’s supposed to either comfort you or make you both seem more indifferent to their fates, but for some reason, this comment has a chilling effect on you, and Kylo seems to sense your unease almost immediately. Even still, you don’t have time to respond, as Ladson is already at the bars of his cell. “If you’re planning on killing us, then you should just go ahead and do it already,” Ladson snaps irritably. “Even if you’re not turning us over to the First Order, which I still don’t quite believe-“

               “Stop,” Poe says loudly, and he casts a weary look in your direction in the subsequent silence. Kylo takes a few steps towards him, pacing in front of his cell.

               “It looks like the pilot may be smarter than he looks,” Kylo muses aloud, but Poe just sneers at him, not daring himself to say much of anything. That’s when it occurs to you that Poe was actually truly afraid of Kylo, not in the physical sense, but afraid of what he might do. He had already been tortured by the First Order once before, and he wasn’t quite sure you could protect him from that again. Even still, it went deeper than that. Poe was worried that if he said or did the wrong thing, it might result in his _and_ your possible deaths, not because of his rank within the Resistance, but because of his connection to you. If Kylo viewed him as competition for your affections, then he reasoned it would be smarter to simply eliminate the opponent rather than keep him around and risk you freeing him and running back to D’Qar together.

               Unfortunately, he didn’t know Kylo like you did. You knew Kylo would never be able to take Poe’s life, just like he hadn’t taken Rey’s, because they _meant_ something to you. Poe still believed Kylo to be that angry, rash, emotionally immature child that ran around on the Starkiller Base, powerful and out of control. Kylo had grown up in the last decade, although you could still understand why Poe would be weary, considering he hadn’t been around to see his development. Even still, it hadn’t seemed appropriate to take Rey’s life back on Tatooine, not only because she had been your teacher, but because she could have been the cause or a symptom of whatever was going on with you, and you would get more answers if she was alive. Kylo seemed to know that, implicitly, and you were glad that he was able to temper his actions in order to try to protect you.

               But, also unfortunately, if Poe was smarter than he looked, than Ladson…wasn’t. “Look what you’ve done to her,” he shouts through the bars, and you can tell by the way that Kylo stiffly turns to look at him that trouble is about to go down. “She was _fine_ on the Resistance base, and then you had to take her away and turn her into one of your brainwashed First Order stooges.” Kylo takes a step towards him, warning him to stop, but Ladson continues. “She was my best friend, and now look at her, she’s practically your slave. You’ve brainwashed her into doing anything you say, making friends with Hux, helping you build weapons for them, and she doesn’t question anything you tell her to do, even if that means killing us, and when she finally snaps out of this, if you _ever_ let that happen-“

               “Shut up,” you yell at him, and your voice is raw with vicious emotion, grateful to have something else to focus on, another outlet in which to vent your righteous anger. “That’s not true, that’s never been true and you know it. You’ve let the _Resistance_ brainwash _you_ with all the talk about how evil he is, when Kylo’s been nothing but the best to me. You can’t even understand what-“ Kylo simply puts a hand on your shoulder, and that’s when you blink and realize that you’re standing in the middle of the floor, legs spread wide, the blade of your lightsaber glowing through the space between the bars of Ladson’s cell. Ladson, fortunately, had pushed himself aside to avoid being skewered, but nonetheless, it did nothing to help prove your point. If anything, it only made you seem more out of control than ever.

               Kylo lets his hand drop, and you can tell by the way that your body suddenly sags forward that he hadn’t just put his hand on your shoulder to comfort you, but that he had been physically restraining you with the Force, just in case you decided to sweep your lightsaber out to the side and eliminate Ladson that way. You wouldn’t have done it, or at least, you don’t think you would have done anything to hurt him. you were just trying to intimidate him, right? It had all happened so fast that you couldn’t honestly be sure what exactly you _were_ hoping to accomplish by jumping forward and thrusting the blade of your lightsaber through his cell, but if your only goal was to get Ladson to stop talking, then at least you succeeded in that regard.

               Unwittingly, your eyes shift over to Poe, who looks more surprised than anything else, although you can’t decide how to feel about that. Ladson, however, looks confused, and surprised, and _scared_ , which would have been your emotion of your choice if your former best friend had just pulled a lightsaber on you and tried to ram it through their chest before even they knew what was happening. “Apologize,” Kylo orders, and your mouth opens and closes in bewildered shock as you spin around to face him. You can’t see his expression through the mask, but you can read him all the same. He knows that at least a part of you needs to repair your relationship with Ladson immediately or you were going to be constantly on edge, perhaps even more than you already were.

               “I’m sorry,” you say, but you can’t help but roll your eyes to show your annoyance with the situation. “I didn’t mean to make you think that I was going to kill you. I just wanted to make you shut up, and hey, it worked, so no harm done.”

               Ladson just eyes you suspiciously, and honestly, you can’t blame him. You hadn’t been _brainwashed,_ that was the wrong word, but something had definitely happened that made you impulsive and out of control. You were pretty sure that you were still you underneath everything, but you were never going to convince Ladson, Poe, or even Kylo and Ani of that if you kept acting so recklessly.

               “Come,” Kylo orders as he heads out of the cell block, and you follow him without another glance back, eager to put some space between you and Ladson until you could figure out what you wanted to say to him. Even still, any thoughts of what you had just done get pushed to the back of your mind as Kylo turns around in the corridor and removes his helmet, sweeping back his hair with one large hand. A smile tugs at the corners of your lips as you see his face, and Kylo quickly returns the sentiment before his face drops back to his familiar somber countenance.

               “Are you all right?” he asks as he reaches forward to stroke your cheek with his long, gloved fingers.

               You smile and nod, trying to channel all of the reassurance you can muster through the Force bond. “I’m fine,” you tell him. “I don’t know how to feel about the superweapon being completed quite yet, but I don’t like people thinking that you’re a bad guy, because you’re not. You were misguided, and part of that was Snoke’s doing, but you’ve always put me first and I don’t like them thinking that you’re the one that corrupted me.”

               “He’s not wrong,” Kylo tells you, and you can’t help but frown at this. “You are. The strength of the Force bond between us makes you more susceptible to the dark side of the Force, and it is my fault that I did not do more to try to shield you from it.”

               You just shake your head from side to side. You weren’t going to have this argument again, especially when you knew deep down that this was not Kylo’s fault. Even still, you doubted there was anything you could say to change his mind, and so you decided to try to reassure him instead. “It doesn’t matter,” you say simply. “We need each other to help keep ourselves balanced, right? If we keep each other accountable, then we’ll be okay.”

               “Agreed,” Kylo says, and suddenly he spins you around so quickly that you don’t even realize what’s happening until you feel your back being shoved against the wall of the corridor. Kylo drops his helmet to his side, and his lips are on yours in a second as you run your fingers through his hair, kissing him just as insistently. Kylo pulls away slightly as he fidgets to remove his gloves, and you grab him by the front of his shirt and pull him closer, closing the space between you. The cell block was colder than the rest of the ship, and as Kylo’s hands find their way under your shirt, you can’t help but give in to the way his warm fingers feel against your cool skin. Kylo’s kisses become more impassioned, his hands reaching further and further up your abdomen until one hand grabs your breast, and you moan into Kylo’s mouth as he slowly pulls away to trail a line of kisses down your jawline.

               “Here?” you ask weakly. You don’t want to protest this, you don’t want him to stop, but at the same time you are all too aware that Poe and Ladson are just down the hall, and likely to hear you if you got too loud. Then again, maybe that was the whole point. “Don’t you want to go back to the room?”

               “Don’t you like this?” Kylo asks, one hand dipping into your pants, and it’s all you can do not to throw your head back against the hard wall of the corridor. Instead you simply arch your head to one side, pressing your ear into your shoulder, allowing Kylo better access to your neck as he moves the fabric aside with his free hand to place a rabid burst of suction against your collarbone.

               “Do I really need to answer that?” you ask, and Kylo stops what he’s doing as he emits a dry laugh, running the tip of his nose against your cool skin as he slips two fingers inside of you, using his thumb to tease your sensitive clit. You bite down on the fragile skin just beneath your lower lip to keep from crying out, trying to stay as quiet as possible as you screw your eyes shut tight in concentration. “Why can’t we just go back to the _room_?”

               “Because Ani needs me back in the cockpit,” Kylo replies hastily between frantic kisses against your overheating skin. “So we need to make this quick.”

               You let out a small grunt of acknowledgement as you grab his shoulders and force him to kiss you again, pressing your lips eagerly against his. You wanted him, you wanted this, you wanted to get any sense of release that you could, and you bucked your hips into his hand, silently urging him to go faster. You’re desperate for him, and you can feel yourself begin to tighten around his fingers before he quickly pulls them out of you and thrusts them into your panting mouth. You immediately close your lips around his fingers and begin to suck your own salty juices as Kylo traces your jawline with his tongue, making you shiver with anticipation.

               Suddenly, Kylo does something you do not expect as he pulls his fingers out of your mouth and drops to his knees in front of you. You’re about to ask what he’s doing but all that comes out is a surprised cry of alarm as Kylo grabs your legs and pulls them over his shoulders, knocking you off balance. You begin to slide down the wall quickly, before Kylo grabs your thighs in both hands and holds you in place as he presses his mouth against your entrance. It’s too many sensations at once, it’s too much, it’s too fast, and you can feel a sense of lightheadedness begin to take over as you press your back into the wall and begin to thrust your hips into his open mouth in a frantic, repeated motion. Your hands fist in his hair, and as you feel yourself building you grab on even tighter, your fingers practically shaking as you feel yourself about to find your release.

               And that’s when Kylo stops, and you can feel your heart sink as you start to rapidly descend. “No, Kylo, not fair,” you whimper, eyes shut tight as you try to will him back to that sweet spot so that you can find your release. You’re too delirious with sensation to notice much, and you don’t even notice the rustling of fabric as Kylo frees his erection from his clothes. The next thing you know, Kylo has hoisted you in the air again, hands gripping your shaking thighs with new intensity as he positions his tip at your soaking entrance. He can push into you easily, now, if he wanted to, but Kylo seems to enjoy seeing you squirm against him, desperate for more sensation. Kylo leans forward as he holds his lips above yours, pulling away as you get closer, and you can’t help but let out a growl of frustration as he teases you.

               “Not fair,” you remind him, and Kylo just smirks wickedly as he gently brushes his lower lip against your earlobe.

               “I know you like this,” he whispers in your ear, and you can feel the muscles deep in your core clench and unclench at the sound of his low voice. “So desperate for me. You’d do anything for me.”

               “Probably,” you mutter, although your tongue is thick in your throat and your brain is so fuzzy it makes processing any sort of words difficult. “Let’s not test it, though.”

               “Really?” Kylo asks, and that’s when you feel his lips against yours, and you can’t help but inhale a large breath as Kylo moves his tongue into your mouth, slowly, languidly circling it with your own. His bottom lip is pressed against yours, and you can’t help but pant into his open mouth as you wrap your arms around his neck, burying your fingers in his hair again. One of Kylo’s hands goes up to stroke your cheek, and at the same time his fingers make contact, he thrusts into you, making you cry out in surprise. You’re caught between wanting to lean backwards into the wall for balance and pressing yourself into him, and you find a compromise between the two as you press your back against the wall and press your forehead into his shoulder, sinking your teeth into the fabric of his clothes to give your mouth something to do besides scream, still trying to stay as quiet as possible.

               _I’m yours,_ you remind him. _You know I’m yours. You don’t need to claim me, they can see it._ This only makes Kylo increase his speed, and you moan loudly into his shoulder, trying to at least muffle your sounds in the thick fabric of his scarf. He’s pounding into you more intensely now, and you can feel your lower back striking against the wall in a way that was almost painful as he continues to push into you, harder and faster with every renewed thrust. Your hands clench and unclench in the fabric of the scarf around his neck, and you can feel yourself right on the edge, praying that he doesn’t stop this time to tease you any further.

               As if sensing your thoughts, Kylo starts to slow down his rhythm, and you grab hold of whatever’s beneath your hands and squeeze as hard as you can, desperately trying to hold on. “No, Kylo, don’t, please.” Your words come out in a tangled mess of syllables and Kylo begins to push into you harder again, and you let out a sigh of relief as you again relish his constant rhythm. You’re so close now, and you don’t want him to stop, not again, and so you press your forehead into his collarbone and moan without inhibition, being as loud as feels natural until you find your release. Your body shudders around him from the intensity of your orgasm, and Kylo just holds you there, planting a series of gentle kisses against your neck as he nuzzles you affectionately.

               “Was there a point to that?” you ask after a moment, still trying to catch your breath. “You know I hate to be teased.”

               “The pilot still wants you,” Kylo says after a moment, but his voice is surprisingly casual and matter-of-fact. “I see the way he looks at you when he thinks I’m not watching him.”

               You can’t help but groan loudly with exasperation as Kylo pulls out of you. “I take it back,” you tell him. “I take it all back. You are a child. Taking me out here and making me beg for you so I stink of sex when I go back in there, trying to get me to be as loud as possible to make him jealous-“ Kylo takes you by surprise again as he presses you against the wall and silences you with a forceful kiss that makes your knees weaker than they already were. He has one hand planted on your waist, the other on your face as he holds you steady so he can kiss you the way he wants to kiss you, and you place both of your hands on his upper arms for support.

               “I didn’t do it to make him jealous,” Kylo says as he pulls away, and you bite your lip as you look up at him, almost in disbelief. “I know how much speaking with Hux upset you, if attacking your friend was any indication.”

               “You felt it through the bond though too, right?” you ask, and Kylo quirks an eyebrow up before he nods his head forward in confirmation. “Good,” you reply. “I just, I don’t know, it’s comforting to me, sometimes, that you can understand how I feel about something without having to tell you outright.”

               Kylo leans down and presses his lips against yours again, cupping your face with both hands this time as he brushes his lower lip against yours. “I will do anything for you,” he says softly. “I promise you that.”

               “I know,” you reply as you smile up at him. “But I don’t deserve it.”

               “No more so than I,” Kylo replies with a shrug of his shoulders as he steps away from you. “Keep an eye on the prisoners. I meant what I said. If they say anything that upsets you, let me know.”

               “And you’ll do what?” you ask with a light smirk. “Punish them?”

               “Or you,” Kylo says, and your face turns a new shade of crimson as you bite your bottom lip in a vain attempt to conceal your blush.

               “We need to figure out what we’re going to do with them,” you say after a moment. “I mean, if we aren’t going to deliver them to the First Order, what are we going to do?”

               “We can trade your friends back to the New Republic in exchange for them dropping any charges of treason against you,” Kylo says with a dismissive wave of his hand, but a note of sadness in his voice troubles you.

               “What about you?” you ask, but Kylo just shakes his head from side to side, as if it isn’t important.

               “You know I can never be forgiven for what I’ve done,” Kylo says softly, and you can feel your heart go out to him as you reach forward and take his hand and raise his fingers to your lips.

               “They don’t need to forgive you,” you say simply. “But I have, and not just because you’ve forgiven me for what I’ve done wrong. I’ve already forgiven you for everything a long time ago.”

               Kylo just smiles at you as he pulls his hand out of your grasp to stroke your cheek. In truth, you didn’t want to think about the ways you had hurt him over the years, or the ways that he had hurt you. Despite the conflict that had come between you, you still wanted to be together, and that was how you knew that no matter what happened, you would always find a way to get through whatever insurmountable odds you were facing. It had seemed, at least for a while, that the universe was intent on keeping you apart, but now that you had finally opened up to him again, you trusted that you would always find your way back to him.

               “I’m going to make sure they don’t need anything,” you tell him softly. “But after a while, would you mind if I sat with you in the cockpit?”

               A smile tugs at the corner of Kylo’s lips as he dips his head forward in a small nod. “Sure.”

               “Okay,” you reply. “See you soon.” It seems that neither of you really wants to leave each other, and although he was only going to the other end of the ship, you still couldn’t help the feeling that you wanted to be close to him, like a girl with a bad crush. Nevertheless, you let Kylo walk away first, making his way back towards the front of the ship without another glance back in your direction.

               You turn around and look back at the door leading to the cell block, but you can’t enter, not yet. Instead, you simply sit against the wall and slide down it as you rest your chin on your knees and wrap your arms around your legs, troubled by a sudden thought. Kylo knew that Poe still wanted you by the way he looked at you when you thought Kylo wasn’t looking. But how did you look at Poe when you thought that Kylo wasn’t looking? Was it any different from when you knew that he was?

               You weren’t sure, and you hated that you weren’t sure, but you knew that thinking about your questionable relationship with Poe was only a desperate attempt to try to distract you from the inevitable consequences of your most recent mistakes. “Wait, Kylo?” you ask nervously, and Kylo quickly turns back around as you hesitate, trying to figure out how to phrase the question in your mind. You’re not sure what you really want to ask, and so you let the words leave your lips of their own accord. “The superweapon, the one that Hux just fired, what's it called?”

               Kylo pauses for a moment, as if trying to remember, and when he finally does, he reaches out to you with his mind, letting the words ring out loud and clear through your head.

               “I believe he was calling it the _Flare._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's right. I went there. 
> 
> Pro-tip: Thinking about your repressed feelings for your captured ex (?) after you just found out that the superweapon that you helped give Hux the idea for is not only fully operational but has also already destroyed _two whole planets_ is a fantastic coping mechanism. 
> 
> Even still, the Reader is still clearly unhinged if attacking Ladson was any indication (did Kylo just almost save his life? Good job, Kylo, good job!) and so the Reader clearly isn't out of the woods yet. What will Kylo and Ani decide to do with her? What will they decide to do with Poe and Ladson? Will the Resistance catch up with them first? Or the Republic? Or the First Order? Or will they all crashland on some tiny planet that no one knows existed and have to make the best of it in some awkward Force-filled _Lord of the Flies_ adventure? ( _Noooooo!! Piggyyyyyy!!_ ) 
> 
> Guess you'll just have to wait until Tuesday to see what happens next!! Until then, cheers!!


	40. Chapter 40

               It had been a long week, to say the least, although you yourself seemed to be doing quite well. Kylo had been busy training Ani how to wield his lightsaber while you stayed behind in the cockpit to make sure everything was running smoothly. You hated that you didn’t get to see his training for yourself, but you took solace in the fact that you were at least spending more time with Ani and Kylo together in the cockpit, talking about where you wanted to go and what adventures you wanted to experience next. Although, truth be told, the fact that Ladson and Poe were still locked up in their respective cells was a topic of conversation that was not directly entertained, as none of you really knew what to do about it. The First Order had always been there to provide refuge for you in the past, but considering what had happened to you on the _Propitiate,_ that was not a risk Kylo wanted to take again, especially not when whatever evil you had experienced there could start influencing Ani next. You agreed that protecting Ani and safeguarding his future should be the top priority in whatever you decided to do, but you didn’t exactly know just what it was you wanted to do, and neither did Kylo, nor Ani, and so you more or less decided to hole up in abeyance, waiting for one of you to have a bright idea that would get you out of this mess once and for all.

               But while you waited in relative comfort, Poe and Ladson had been stuck in their cells without much room to move. You made sure to keep bringing them food three times a day and staying with them in case they needed anything, but they both seemed to have become unusually quiet. Maybe they thought that you were going to turn them over to the First Order after all, or keep them in their tiny little cells indefinitely. You had no plan to do either, as you kept reassuring them, but the problem was that you weren’t exactly sure what you _did_ want to do with them, and therein lied the problem. You also weren’t exactly one to be trustworthy, as of late, and so you could see why they would be concerned with their futures being left in your volatile hands.

               Even still, you had decided to spend more time in there with them, almost as a show of solidarity. You weren’t sure why exactly you did it, especially when no one was talking, but a small part of you wanted to show them that they weren’t alone in this, that you appreciated the struggle that they were clearly going through. You yourself had been a prisoner before in far worse circumstances, but at least now you were on the other side of the bars. If you had gone back with them to the Resistance, you honestly weren’t quite sure where you would end up. You didn’t think they would have kept you caged like an animal, but then again, you couldn’t really say for sure.

               You knew something would have to change soon, however. Ladson and Poe were irritable with their circumstances, and while Poe seemed to conceal it with begrudging understanding, Ladson was constantly sending you irate glances and glaring scowls in your direction. You didn’t really have any idea what to do to make their situation any more comfortable, however. You only had one bed, even Ani was just sleeping on a cot, and although you wanted to let them out to stretch their legs, you couldn’t be completely sure that they wouldn’t find some way to get the upper hand and steer the shuttle back to D’Qar. You had broached the idea once to Kylo before, at least letting them out one at a time to stretch their legs, but he had seemed strictly against it and you had subsequently dropped the issue.

               Even still, he had barely stepped inside the cell block to check on them, and while you knew that they were your friends, not his, you still wanted to do something to help improve their situation. If Kylo never saw them, he couldn’t understand what they were going through, and although Kylo himself had been their prisoner before on the Resistance base, you had to admit that his living conditions on D’Qar had been considerably better than the situation they were currently in. And that was why, when Ani came in the cell block that day carrying two trays of food, you had an idea.

               “Hey,” Ani says as he walks inside. Poe looks up at him and nods curtly in his direction, but Ladson doesn’t respond at all as Ani puts the tray on the floor and slides it through the narrow crack that was designed for such a purpose. Neither of them touches their food immediately, and Ani casts a worried look in your direction before he turns to go.

               “Wait, Ani,” you tell him, and Ani turns around to look at you, the surprise clearly evident in his features. “I was wondering if you wanted to help me with something.”

               “Something?” Ani asks, and out of the corner of your eye you notice that Poe and Ladson are paying close attention as you turn to face them.

               “To be fair, we haven’t decided exactly what our plan here is yet,” you admit openly, making Ani fidget uncomfortably in front of them. “And even though I know Kylo won’t like me telling you that-“

               “You two on the outs again?” Ladson asks flatly, and now it’s your turn to glare in his direction.

               “No,” you say pointedly. “No, Kylo and I are _fine_ , thank you very much, but it’s you two I’m worried about. Kylo doesn’t want to let you out-“ you look nervously over at Ani. “-but if he doesn’t know…”

               “Father won’t like it,” Ani says immediately, and you can’t help but let out a sigh.

               “We’re fine here,” Poe offers, but there’s something in his tone that you pick up on immediately. He wanted to get out of the cell just as much as Ladson did, and you wanted to give him at least that much.

               “Then what can I do?” you ask, crossing your arms over your chest before subsequently uncrossing them again. You wanted to make it look like you were as open and receptive to whatever they suggested as you could possibly be as you leaned forward over the bench. “Come on, guys, how can I help? Help me, help you.”

               “I want to sleep in a bed,” Ladson says after a moment. “This bench thing is killing my back. And I want a shower. It smells like shit in here and we haven’t bathed since we arrived on Tatooine.”

               “There’s only one bed here,” you tell him. “Heck, even Ani sleeps on a cot, but there is a shower stall right next to the cell block.” You look over at Ani, who just shakes his head back and forth, as though this is the worst idea that you’ve ever come up with.

               “Father won’t like it,” Ani repeats, and you bite your lip in frustration.

               “Kylo doesn’t have to know,” you say lightly. “He never comes in to check on them, anyway, so he won’t even notice if they smell a little better.” Ani shuffles uncomfortably, and you reach over and take his hand, holding it between both of yours. “Hey, if you don’t want to do this, that’s fine. I’m not asking you to do anything. Just go take a nap. You know Kylo hates leaving the cockpit unmanned, and if you’re not there, he won’t come back here.”

               Ani looks unsure, and Ladson quickly pushes himself against the bars, holding one in either hand as he presses his face as close to you as possible. “Hey, hey, Ani, buddy, don’t you remember me at all? When you were a little kid, I used to change your diaper, heck, I used to give _you_ baths, remember that? I know your dad can be a scary guy, but he’d never take anything out on you, right?”

               Ani just glances at you nervously, like it wasn’t himself that he was worried about. “We’re fine,” you assure him. “Honestly, I’ll tell him after. I don’t think he’ll be _happy_ about it, but if they’re locked up tight back in their cells at the end of the day, no harm done, then I can’t see him caring all that much, can you?”

               Ani just sighs as he shakes his head back and forth. “How can I help?” You can hear Ladson give a silent little cheer from behind you, and that’s when you know that he really must be in terrible shape if he was cheering over the opportunity to take a shower.

               “Just go take a nap,” you tell him. “Or go talk to your dad and make sure he doesn’t come back here. Not that I imagine that he would, but you know it would be just my luck for him to sense something was up and come and investigate.”

               “Okay,” Ani says, taking a nervous glance back towards Ladson and Poe, and you can read his trepidation through the Force.

               “It’s okay, they know you’re sorry,” you tell him as you rub the side of his arm comfortingly. “They know this isn’t your fault.”

               “It’s not,” Poe says firmly, and Ladson quickly nods his head in agreement.

               “Thanks Ani,” he offers, and Ani just casts another nod in your direction as he scampers off to entertain Kylo. “He still seems like a good kid,” Ladson tell you. “Which I almost can’t believe, considering who’s raised him the past few years.”

               “Yeah,” you say with a light laugh. “Believe me, that’s not lost on me either.” You bite your lip as you glance back and forth between them. “I’d be tempted to say let’s let Poe shower first since he won’t take as long, but-“

               “Let Ladson go first,” Poe says quickly, and you nod your head forward in agreement.

               “Because I feel like if Poe takes longer than two minutes, you’re going to start tearing the walls down,” you tell him as you walk over to his cell door.

               “I might,” Ladson says, eyeing you suspiciously. “Do you have the key or something?”

               “Key?” you ask blankly. “What key?”

               “The key to get out of here,” Ladson replies, almost irritably. “If you don’t have a key, how exactly do you expect to…oh.” He pauses as you hold up one hand and unlock the door with the Force, turning the mechanism and listening to the telltale sound of the lock clicking and releasing as the cell door swings slightly ajar.

               “ _I_ am the key,” you reply smugly, waving one hand in the air as if you had just performed a magic trick, and Ladson just grunts as he rolls his head to one side.

               “Is it safe for me to head out there?” he asks you. “For some reason I feel like the second I leave this cell, you’re going to snap my neck and tell Ren that you caught me trying to escape.”

               “I’m hurt,” you tell him evenly. “But if you’d rather not take advantage of your circumstances-“

               “No, no, I’m going,” Ladson says as he steps outside, and you cast a nervous look back at Poe. You wanted to unlock his cell door too, but you didn’t exactly want to risk him running off, either.

               “If you promise-“ you start, but Poe just shakes his head.

               “I’m fine,” Poe replies. “Just take care of Ladson.”

               “I’ll try not to take too long and use all the hot water,” he calls back as he starts to head out the door, and you quickly follow behind him.

               “Just off to your left,” you tell him, and Ladson turns and opens the door to reveal a small shower stall. There’s a bit of tiled floor between the door and the actual area of the shower, where a small curtain had been drawn across to give the person some privacy, as if the showers were truly used for the purpose of showering prisoners while the guard waited directly outside the curtain.

               “Nifty,” Ladson replies, and you’re almost surprised to hear so much of his old good humor back in his voice. It immediately puts you on edge, and you can’t help but be suspicious when only an hour ago he was silently glaring in your direction.

               “You know, you’re making it really hard to tell if you hate me or not,” you say cautiously, waiting to gauge his reaction. To his credit, Ladson doesn’t even make an attempt to try to look surprised.

               “More the situation than you,” Ladson says before he pauses. “Look, I know we probably don’t have a lot of time here, but this is the first time I’ve gotten to talk to you alone in years, and there’s some things I need to say.”

               You just shake your head from side to side as quickly as you can. You weren’t in the mood for a guilt trip, not now, not when you had started to feel at least a little bit more like your old self again. “If this is because I never came back-“

               “For the record, I never thought you would come back,” Ladson tells you, and you raise your eyebrows in surprise. “Oh come on, don’t give me that look, we both know you. Once Kylo told you that he wanted you back and got into your pants again, you never stood a chance of coming back to D’Qar. How long did it take for him to convince you? A month?”

               “More like a week,” you admit weakly, and Ladson just slaps his hands against the outsides of his thighs, as if you had just proved his point.

                “Like I said,” he repeats. “I never thought you would come back. Rey didn’t either. She told Poe once Kylo got into your head, you weren’t coming back, but he still held out hope. Finn, for the record, wasn’t really sure either way.”

               “And Leia?” you ask.

               “Not sure,” Ladson says with a shrug. “The Republic kind of tied our hands trying to look for you, and she just sort of went along with it. I mean, I think she wanted you and Ani back of course, that’s the only grandchild she’s got, but at the same time I think she might have been happy that she knew Kylo was off, you know, with you and Ani, so she could at least pretend that he had some normal sort of family.”

               “Well, we did,” you reply with a light shrug. “I mean, I doubt that Ani would have grown up to be as functional as he was if-“

               “I’m not finished,” Ladson says quickly, and there’s something in his tone that causes you to shut your mouth immediately. “I never thought you’d come back, but I thought you’d at least try to get word to us that you were safe, that you were okay, but years went by and we didn’t hear anything from you, not one word.” You look away, unable to meet his eyes. “You and Ani could have been dead for all we knew. You could have done something to piss Ren off and he could have killed you. You could have been killed by one of the Republic’s hired bounty hunters, which, yes, they went there as far as to hire _bounty_ _hunters_ to come after you and Ren, and we honestly didn’t know if the Republic would tell us if they had captured or killed you, we really didn’t. You could have been dead, and Ani could have been, I don’t even know-“

               “What was I supposed to do?” you demand angrily. “Any transmission I sent could have been traced back to me, and how exactly would that have looked for me or Kylo if the First Order found out about it? Or if the bounty hunters traced the transmission back to us? I wanted to reach out to you, I did, but I couldn’t, you _know_ I couldn’t, so don’t hold that against me.”

               “Don’t hold that against you?” Ladson repeats incredulously. “You could have reached out to us. You didn’t. That was your decision. Your choice.”

               “To protect me and my family,” you exclaim, as if you couldn’t believe how utterly thick he was. Honestly, if you had sent any sort of message to the Resistance and the First Order had found out about it, Hux could have potentially made life very difficult for you, or Kylo, or both of you, and that wasn’t something you wanted to risk when you were, in fact, okay. You thought your silence would have been implicit proof of this, but apparently not.

               “Don’t use that excuse,” Ladson snaps. “You’re resourceful, you would have found a way.” You just shake your head, unwilling to argue him on this point any further. It was obvious he wasn’t going to listen to you, so it wasn’t worth expending any more air from your lungs than you already had.

               “Well, obviously you know I’m okay now,” you say, trying to put an end to the conversation, but Ladson wasn’t having it.

               “Yeah,” he says quickly. “Yeah, you know how we found that out? One of our Resistance spies in the First Order, and believe me, we have them, told us that you were getting pretty chummy with Hux, and there were rumors going around that you had replaced Ren as Hux’s second in command. That you killed someone because you had a temper that could match his. That you were working with them, helping them destroy entire villages on neutral planets just to give the First Order more ground.” You let your eyes slip shut, and you can feel your muscles contract as you physically brace yourself. “Yeah, do you know how disappointed Poe was when he found out? How disappointed we _all_ were?”

               “Pretty disappointed,” you mutter under your breath, forcing yourself to answer him only out of a pitiful sense of obligation.

               “Yeah,” Ladson scoffs. “Yeah, I’d say that, but you don’t even want to know what people at the Resistance were saying about _you._ People were making up all sorts of shit about you, telling all types of stories, and finally I think it was Finn who started telling them that you were probably brainwashed by Ren and the First Order, but I think he only did it for Poe’s sake. He was _involved_ with you, and people started saying that you had been a First Order spy the whole time you were on D’Qar, secretly feeding information back to Hux the entire time, and the only reason you were able to capture Ren was because he knew you would bust him out.”  

               “That’s a lie,” you snap irritably, eager to finally have something that you _could_ defend yourself against. “That’s a lie and you know it. I only joined in with the First Order because I thought it would help protect Ani and I from the Republic’s vendetta against me. I never would have worried about that if Kylo hadn’t captured _me_. Did everyone seriously forget how he took me away from D’Qar? That was never my choice, so stop fucking acting like I had a choice in this, because I didn’t. I had no choice, I was just the victim. The Resistance wanted me to capture Kylo, I captured him, and then Phasma broke him out and he captured me, and then the Republic labelled _me_ as the traitor so I had to do whatever I could to protect myself, and if that meant joining in with Hux and the First Order-“

               “You can’t keep using that line forever,” Ladson tells you, but this time, his voice is cold, and there’s a measured edge to his words. “You’re not a victim, and you never have been. Okay, maybe Ren took you away from D’Qar and that was less than ideal, but you had options. You could have come back. You could have got word to us, not even just to tell us that you were okay, but to explain the situation-“

               “You knew the situation-“ you insist, but Ladson ignores you.

               “-but you didn’t. You didn’t try to reach out to us for help because you didn’t _want_ to. You were more than happy running around the galaxy with Ren, weren’t you? You were happy to be with him again, and I think deep down everyone knew it.” Ladson pauses, and his face softens for a moment, but it’s enough. “You know, some people even said Ren abandoning you on our home planet for years was a set-up, that he only knocked you up and left you there to draw Leia’s attention.” He shakes his head, and you pause, holding your breath. “At least that one I knew was bullshit.”

               “Thanks for that,” you mutter dryly, but honestly a part of you really was glad that Ladson hadn’t been suckered into believing at least _all_ of the rumors that were swirling around about you. You hated that they were, you truly and honestly did, but a part of you had assumed that something like that would have happened sooner or later. Military installations were notorious places for gossip: it spread like a virus and you knew implicitly that if First Order Stormtroopers had been infected by it, then the Resistance troops were not immune to it either.

               “Just tell me the fucking truth,” Ladson continues. “Tell me that Ren took you away from D’Qar and you were, I don’t know, conflicted for a month, a week, whatever, but then you _decided_ to stay with him, because that’s what you _wanted_. If he forced you to, locked you up, chained you to a bed like Hux did to Sadie, that’d be different, but you wanted to stay. Admit it to me. If you ever want me to forgive you for not letting me know that you were okay, forgive you for _anything_ you’ve done, you’ll tell me the truth.”

               “When Kylo first took me off the base, I woke up in bed on Naboo and he was standing over me,” you begin quietly. “And he told me he wanted to be a family, and I ran away from him, and I cried, and Kylo tried to comfort me, but he couldn’t, so Phasma did, well, kind of. She treated me like a friend again, and I think I needed that. I told Kylo I’d give him a month, just thirty days, and then I would take Ani back to D’Qar, but Ani wanted to stay, and somewhere along the line I guess I did too.” You bite your bottom lip as you think back, really think back to all those years ago. “But one day, Kylo left. He and Phasma went somewhere to help the First Order with something, and he left Ani and me behind. He left me a shuttle, in case anyone came to find us, but I didn’t use it. I didn’t come back.” You sink your teeth into your bottom lip as you force yourself, literally force yourself, to look back up, into his eyes. “I didn’t know the Republic had a bounty on me yet. I had a feeling something was up because Kylo and Phasma were acting really strangely around me, but I didn’t know that the Republic accused me of treason yet.” You spread your hands by your sides, palms facing him. “And I stayed. I wanted to be with Kylo, Ani wanted to stay with his father, and so I stayed. I don’t know how I would have gotten a message out to you, but you’re right, it never really occurred to me to try to reach out to you and tell you I was okay, and I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry that you went years wondering what happened to me when I could have probably found some way to let you know I was okay, and I’m sorry that I’m keeping you prisoner here and you haven’t showered in a week, because you deserve better, but I’ve made a lot of bad choices lately and I feel like I’m just trying to hold my head above water. I am a shitty, shitty person, and I know that, believe me, I know that, and I want to try to do what I can to make things right between us. I’m not turning you over to the First Order, and I’m not going to maim you or kill you, I don’t know _what_ we’re going to do, but I want to try to make things right between us if you’re willing to let me.”

               “Thank you,” Ladson says as he holds out his arms to hug you, but you back away instead.

               “Hell no,” you tell him. “Seriously, you haven’t showered in a week and you smell awful. I don’t want to get any of your stench on me. Shower first, hug later.”

               “Fair,” Ladson says, and he takes a step back as he pulls off his shirt. You can feel heat rise to your cheeks and you quickly shield your eyes with one hand as you look down and away. “Some guard you’re supposed to be. You’re not even watching me. I could make a break for it.”

               “You’re going to run naked through the ship?” you ask, and you can only imagine Kylo’s face if he happened to catch Ladson streaking naked through the shuttle.

               “I could have a weapon,” Ladson offers. “Take you out before you even realize what’s happening.”

               This makes you sober up immediately, and you sit up a little straighter. “Yeah, no, thanks for that, that makes me feel much better.” Ladson throws his pants at your face and you audibly gag as you stumble backwards, yanking the reeking fabric off your shoulders. “Seriously?”

               Ladson just laughs as you watch his bare ass disappear behind the curtain, and you can’t help but huff as you shake your head from side to side. In a minute, though, his laughter turns to a yelp of surprise as he starts the water, and you can only imagine how cold it was coming out of the tap, especially considering that shower hadn’t been used in a while. You knew in your own bathroom that the hot water took a minute or two to come on, but that was not a warning that you had provided to Ladson. “Is this going to get any hotter?” he shouts, and you visibly cringe, your fingers cracking at the joints.

               “Shut _up_ ,” you hiss loudly, making sure that he heard you over the rattling pipes. “Seriously, do you _want_ Kylo to hear you? I’m just behind the curtain, you don’t have to shout.”

               “Okay, okay,” Ladson says quickly, and there’s a brief period of silence as you assume he’s washing off under the showerhead. “So what’s going on with you and Poe?” You open your mouth and then shut it again, feeling a heat creep into your cheeks as you grit your teeth. You didn’t even know what was going on between you and Poe, and if you didn’t even know, then there was no way you were going to be able to explain it to Ladson. “Okay,” Ladson says, as if your silence was just the kind of answer he expected. “Then why’d you fuck him?”

               “Because reasons,” you snap at the curtain, crossing your arms over your chest in a huff.

               “Oh, is that what you told _Kylo_?” Ladson asks, and you can’t help but roll your eyes in frustration.

               “Not that it’s any of your business, but Kylo and I are fine,” you tell him. “I was out looking for Kylo when Poe got the jump on me, and I told him that I had left Kylo in order to protect him. Poe kissed me, and I realized it was a good opportunity to make it seem convincing. That’s all it was.”

               “Oh okay,” Ladson replies nonchalantly, and you can’t help but flush at his wayward tone. “I mean, if that’s all it was, I’ll let Poe know. He seemed to think you really felt something for him back there, and he was glad he never gave up on his thoughts of getting back together with you, but if it was just a play to make it seem like you had moved on to protect Ren, someone should put the poor guy out of his misery.”

               “He really said that?” you ask incredulously, and in the silence that follows you realize that you had just been played. “Oh you’re _such_ an _asshole_.”

               “Only a very small part of me is an asshole,” Ladson replies calmly, and you’re so thrown off by his behavior and your own guilt as of late that you can’t even pretend to be mad at him.

               “I missed you,” you tell him, because truthfully, you had. Even if you hadn’t thought about him all that much over the years, being with him again felt nostalgic, like stepping back on your home world after a lengthy sojourn. You had no idea what it would feel like to step back on your old academia, but-

               “If we dropped you off with Sadie, would you guys be able to make it back to D’Qar okay?” you ask suddenly, and you can practically hear Ladson’s confusion in the silence.

               “Probably,” Ladson repeats. “You know each of those teachers there has their own affiliations though, and there’s a chance someone sympathetic to the First Order can spot us...” His voice trails off as he peeks around the curtain to get a good look at you, and for the first time you can see a large scar across his left shoulder that expands down his chest until it disappears from view. “Why? You really planning on letting us go or are you just thinking out loud?”

               “A bit of both,” you tell him, and as Ladson disappears back behind the curtain, you take a deep breath. “Look, if I’m honest with you about something, do you promise not to tell, well, anyone?” Ladson had always been your friend and confidant before, and he had always given you good advice when you needed it, but times had changed, and you weren’t exactly sure you could trust his counsel to remain confidential.

               “No promises,” Ladson says, confirming your worst fears, but you decide to go ahead and risk it anyway.

               “I care about Poe,” you say after a moment. “There are times when I really do wish that I could have just stayed with him on D’Qar, that the Resistance never sent me out to capture Kylo and I could have just, I don’t know, stayed with him and raised Ani there with you and him and everyone else.” It feels like a confession to you, but Ladson is less impressed.

               “Okay,” he says slowly. “So, when are you going to tell me something that isn’t already obvious?”

               The flash of anger loosens your lips just a bit too much. “I still have feelings for him,” you snap. “And I can’t, you know I can’t, especially not after what’s happened, especially not after what you told me about the Resistance. There is no life back there for me anymore, and so I have to put it behind me. Things were hard with Kylo after what happened on the _Propitiate_ , but things are actually really good between us again and I love him, I really love him, and I want to be with him.” You bite your lip and shake your head from side to side, making a sudden decision. “I just want to be done with this. I want to be done with the fighting and the war and so does Kylo. We just want to find somewhere quiet and lie low for a while, for forever, and having you and Poe in our custody jeopardizes all of that, so if we let you go, hopefully we can put this unpleasantness behind us and move on with no hard feelings, okay?”

               “You’re not alone in that,” Ladson tells you. “No one likes this. No one is happy that this has gone on as long as it has, but you helped play a role in perpetuating it.”

               “So did you,” you counter. “I helped the First Order, but you helped the Resistance and by extension the Republic. If the First Order won every battle and defeated every last Resistance soldier than the First Order would rule the galaxy and there would be no more war.”

               “Or freedom,” Ladson replies, but you just roll your eyes. The ideologies of the First Order weren’t really a conversation that you wanted to get involved in, and apparently neither did Ladson, as he asks a question of an entirely different nature. “What if you could go back?” Ladson asks you. “What if everyone missed you and wanted you to come home and I could assure you that every last person on D’Qar would welcome you back with open arms, would you go back?”

               “It’d mean I’d have to leave Kylo behind,” you say quietly after a long pause. “And I can’t do that. Whatever I felt or still feel for Poe, I couldn’t leave Kylo behind. We’ve been through too much together, we’re bonded, and I’d be lying if I said that the bond was all that was keeping us together. Being with Kylo is a, well, I don’t even know how to describe it, it’s like an experience in itself, and I love him. He cares about me, he looks after me, and I know, I mean, I know Poe would too, but Poe cares about everyone, and Kylo-“

               “Cares about only you and Ani,” Ladson says as he turns the shower water off. “It makes you feel special, believe me, we get it. That’s one thing I don’t hold against you, and I don’t think Poe does either.”

               “He should,” you admit softly. “I mean, despite how I feel about Kylo, I still slept with him, I still led him on-“

               “I don’t think you’re giving Poe nearly enough credit,” Ladson tells you. “He knew what he was getting into when he was seeing you again, and he didn’t think for a second that you left Kylo behind. I mean, complicated history aside, Poe’s mission was to get you back to D’Qar, and you know Poe would do anything to complete a mission.”

               “So that’s all that was?” you ask, unable to hide the hurt in your voice. “He only did it to, what, distract me? To get me to lower my guard? Was he hoping that if he, I don’t know, appealed to me, somehow, that I’d lower my defenses and just head back to D’Qar with him?”

               “Something like that?” Ladson offers, and you can’t help but feel your heart plummet in your chest. In a way, it almost made sense. In fact, the more you thought about it, the more sense it made, as it explained so, so much. Kylo had probably read Poe’s mind when you had your back turned and knew that Poe was prepared to do whatever he had to do to get you back to D’Qar. You had been tricked, and what’s worse, is you hadn’t even seen it coming. You had always thought of Poe as the highest good, when in reality he would stoop to the same lows you had stooped to in order to get to Kylo back on the _Resolute._

You wanted to say that this was a good thing, because now that you knew what Poe’s intentions had been all along, you didn’t have to worry about his security and you could dump him on whatever back alley planet that was closest to you and wash your hands of him, but you couldn’t do that, you just couldn’t. Poe may have revealed his true colors, but you had made the decision that you were no longer going to be dark. You were going to be the bigger person and you were going to simply let him go and move on with your life, putting Poe Dameron and the rest of the Resistance firmly in your past so that you could go on to live a happy future with Kylo and Ani. But you had also thought of Poe as the highest good, and evidently, this was not as true as you had once believed it to be.

               You wish you had some clean clothes to offer Ladson, but he doesn’t complain as he makes his way back into his sweat-stained clothes, and you purposely turn around to give him as much privacy as possible. If he wanted to choke you from behind, that was a risk you would take, because you were sure now that he wasn’t going to even try. Despite the brief interaction that you had with him, you had known him for years, had lived with him, had spent virtually almost every hour by his side, and as much as your respective circumstances seemed to drive you apart, he was your best friend, and there would be nothing in the galaxy that would change that.

               Once Ladson finished dressing, he puts a hand on your shoulder to signify that he’s done and you whirl around to face him, wrapping your arms around him in a tight embrace. “You’re doing okay, right?” you ask him. “You’re doing good?”

               “More or less,” Ladson tells you. “I mean, you know everyone at the Resistance, they’re all nice, but I miss you. I want my best friend back.”

               “I know,” you tell him softly, pulling away sooner than you really would have liked. “I know, and I’m sorry, Lad. I wish there was a way that we could all just, I don’t know, live normally and see each other and hang out like we used to but I don’t think that’s really in the cards anymore.”

               Ladson just shrugs his shoulders carelessly as he allows you to pull away from him. “You remember what I’ve always said,” he reminds you. “You don’t know where you’re going to wind up in a year from now, or even a week from now, so there’s no point in dwelling on things you can’t control.”

               You can’t help but let your shoulders slump, the dejection flitting through your features. “I tried to control everything,” you tell him. “But that didn’t work out for me so well. I went overboard, and, well, I made bad choices.”

               “Dark times,” Ladson reminds you with a dismissive wave of his hand, and you force a smile as you head back with him into the cell block. You almost expect him to turn around and impart one final piece of wisdom onto you before he goes, but no, instead he just heads back inside without another word to you. “It’s not too bad,” he says to Poe as he walks back inside his cell block, scooting far enough from the door so that you could close it and lock it without any fuss. “And I think I even left some hot water for you.”

               “I expected you to be gone longer,” Poe exhales as he puts his hands on his knees and pushes himself to his feet. He grins his gentle, lopsided smile in your direction as he waits for you to unlock his own door, and you do, holding up your hand to allow better concentration, but you can’t hide your uneasy expression. Poe catches the look and his eyebrows furrow, but he doesn’t ask what’s wrong, at least, not yet.

               “Take your time,” Ladson tells him as Poe passes his cell, and Poe just casts a nod in his direction as you follow him out the door to the cell block.

               “On your left,” you tell him quietly, and Poe just bobs his head up and down as he walks into the area just outside the shower, and you close the door behind you as Poe peeks behind the curtain, looking into the actual area of the shower.

               Even still, as you turn around, Poe is no more than a foot in front of you, his hand reaching out and brushing your hair out of your face as his palm caresses your temple. “Are you okay?” he asks, as if that was his primary concern, and you can’t help but shake your head slightly, taken aback by the gesture.

               “I’m fine,” you tell him, but Poe looks unconvinced as he stares you down, as if he’s trying to decide that for himself.

               “Are you sure?” he asks, and you nod your head stiffly. “What about things between you and Ren? How is-?”

               “We’re fine,” you say, quickly, forcibly, grabbing his wrist with one hand as you pull it away from your face. “Seriously, we’re fine. We have been, and always will be, fine.” Poe raises his eyebrows as if he doesn’t believe you, and you screw your face up in a grimace as your hands clench into fists at your side. “Look, the only reason I slept with you was to convince you that Kylo was out of the picture to protect him, and the only reason you slept with me was because you were doing everything possible to try to get me to lower my guard and take me back to the Resistance, so let’s not pretend it was anything more than that.”

               “I think we both know it was more than that,” Poe says, and his voice is so overwhelmingly confident and his expression so smug that you had to literally stop and take stock of yourself and what you were accusing him of. Had it been more than that? You suddenly couldn’t be sure. “What did Ladson tell you?”

               “Nothing I didn’t already know,” you tell him, trying to keep the upper hand in this conversation. “You had your mission, to bring me back with you to D’Qar, and you would do anything to complete it.”

               “Anything within reason,” Poe tells you, sobering his expression to show he was taking your concern seriously. “I didn’t plan on kissing you, it just… _happened_.” Poe has the decency to look embarrassed as he looks down at his feet, and you return it, looking away sheepishly as well. Poe glances up at you and a grin pulls at a corner of his lips to see his own expression reflected on your face. “I’m sorry, I really am, if this made things any more difficult with-“

               “Don’t,” you tell him, mostly because you can’t stand to hear it, can’t bear to go through the pain of thinking about it again. “Kylo and I are fine, okay?” You steady yourself as you look at him. “I’m going to talk Kylo into letting you both go, okay? If you can promise that you won’t come looking for us, that you’ll at least try to keep the Resistance, and maybe the Republic, off our backs-“

               “I don’t know if I can do that,” Poe tells you.

               “Whatever,” you say as you shake your head from side to side. “But I’m not going back to D’Qar with you. Ladson already told me all the stories that the rumor mill has apparently cranked out about me. I can’t go back now.”

               “They’re not true,” Poe says softly. “None of them are true.” You can see he’s disappointed, it’s written all over his face, but you can’t really be sure as to why. Was it because he had to deal with his own share of rumors regarding your disappearance? Was it because it hurt him to hear what was being said about you when they thought he wasn’t listening? Was he upset that you weren’t returning to D’Qar with him, or was it something else entirely?

               “I mean,” you say after a moment, rolling your shoulders to show your discomfort with what you were admitting to. “I mean, if there was a way to go back, I would go. If the Republic dropped their charges against me and Kylo, and let’s face it, that will never happen, but if in some reality, some universe, it did, I’d go back to D’Qar with you.”

               “I could try-“ Poe starts, but you just shake your head and hold up a hand to stop him.

               “Maybe for me,” you say, forcing a smile to the corners of your lips to show your appreciation for the gesture. “But not for Kylo, and I can’t leave him. You know that. After everything we’ve been through together, I can’t go anywhere without him. I just can’t.”

               You want to say more, but the words won’t come, and before you even realize what’s happening, Poe has his hand on your cheek again. “I know,” he says softly, and before you can even register that his lips are moving closer and closer to your face, he kisses you firmly, and you let your eyes slip shut as you return it. It’s not a long kiss, but when he finally pulls away, you can feel your heart literally stop beating in your chest for a moment as you realize what had just transpired between you.

               “You shouldn’t have done that,” you tell him with concern in your voice, but the concern quickly gives way to curiosity. “Why did you do that?”

               “To see if you’d stop me,” Poe says as he leans back, looking quite surprised himself. “You didn’t.” He’s staring at you like he’s not quite sure about something, and in all fairness, you weren’t sure what it was either. You loved Kylo, implicitly, wholeheartedly, and Poe knew it, but at the same time, you couldn’t help but feel _something_ for Poe, some tug, some shred of longing-

               Before you realize what you’re doing, you give into it and lean forward, planting both hands against his face as you kiss him with more force than you had intended, pushing him back into the tiled wall. You pull away just as quickly, shaking your head as you brush your hair out of your face. “Okay, maybe you should go shower before this gets one or both of us killed,” you tell him, although your voice is a bit gentler than you would have preferred it to be.

               “Agreed,” Poe says with a good-natured chuckle, and you bite your lip as you look away, not quite sure how to feel, but the longer you were in there with Poe, the more tense things were going to get, and that was not a feeling that you wanted to perpetuate when you were sure Kylo could sense your feelings stirring. Poe seems to catch the guilty expression on your face as he leans over and takes your hand and squeezes it, forcing you to meet his eyes

               “Just hurry up and take your clothes off,” you tell him as you gesture towards the shower, and Poe laughs loudly as you blink once, letting your words come back to you as you flush in embarrassment. Regardless, Poe drops his hand as he begins to strip in front of you, and this time you don’t look away, but keep your eyes firmly trained on Poe’s face. He looks almost amused, and while you idly wondering if he was mentally daring you to drop your gaze, you weren’t going to.

               As he heads into the shower stall, you take advantage of your solitude to slump back against the wall and massage your temple. You weren’t quite sure what kind of game Poe was playing with you, if any. Maybe he thought you were the one playing games and he was just trying to stay one step ahead of you. Honestly, if that was the case, you couldn’t really hold it against him considering how volatile you had been acting lately, but you had at least thought you were finally beginning to settle back into your old self again.

               Right now, more than ever, you had to be honest with yourself, and as hard as it was for you to admit to, part of you wanted an easy life where your security wasn’t constantly being threatened, and you knew you could get that with Poe if you went back to the Resistance with him. It would be safer for you and for Ani, and while you knew no one could fault you for considering your son’s safety of paramount importance, you couldn’t do it. You couldn’t leave Kylo behind. He was your future, you knew it, you were sure of it. You were bonded, and what’s more, you wanted to be. You loved him more than you ever thought you could love a person, and while you felt attracted to Poe, tantalized by his newness or something you couldn’t quite put your finger on, you felt something real and intimate with Kylo, something deep and secure and unbreakable, and it comforted you just to know he was there, caring for you, even if you weren’t in the same room together. it was a love built on a steady foundation of trust and mutual reliance, and although you hadn’t had the greatest start to your relationship, somehow you had been able to cultivate a truly functional relationship all the same, one that seemed to transcend the boundaries of what you had ever expected to feel for him.

               Kylo loved you fully, absolutely, with his whole being, and you had no choice but to return it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not going to lie, I miss the friendship between Reader and Ladson. Not to say they're suddenly BFFs, but it's a start, and considering how charged the Reader's emotions are as of late between Kylo and Poe, he may be just the person who can help balance her out. And speaking of Poe, is there a reason he's suddenly become the itch she can't scratch? Where is this going? Should you be nervous? 
> 
> You should always be nervous. Bad things are in store for our trio, and when I say bad, I mean that they may be no escaping the consequences of what they've gotten themselves into this time...... Until Thursday, cheers!!


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW content ahead

               Your hands fist in his thick hair as you press your lips against his, pushing your entire weight against his chest. He reaches down and runs his finger up the space between your breasts, up your collarbone to your neck where he tilts your chin up so that he can kiss you better, and you can’t help but whimper against his lips as you feel his erection growing against your bare thigh. You were still riding the delicate balance between sleeping and waking, and your head was deliciously fuzzy as you felt his warm hands cup your breasts, and you arched your back into his touch as the tip of his cock brushed against your inner thigh.

               “Don’t stop,” you murmur, and Kylo continues to knead your breasts as he begins to plant a vertical column of kisses against your neck. You lean into him and sigh contentedly as you can feel your entire body unwind around him, the stiff muscles in your upper arms relaxing as Kylo juts his tongue in the sensitive hollow where your jawline met your neck. You languidly trail your fingertips over the muscles in his upper arms and down across his back, relishing the feeling of his smooth, warm skin underneath your hands.

               The night before, you had confronted Kylo in the bathroom that you had let both Ladson and Poe out to take a shower and, as you expected, he hadn’t really cared once he was assured that they were both locked up back in their cells. You had kissed him, then, wrapping both arms around his neck as you pulled him closer to you, pushing all of your longing for him into that one point of contact between your lips. You couldn’t deny that you were still partially confused from kissing Poe, and so you fueled all of your sexual frustration into Kylo, being considerably rougher with him than you had been before as you fucked him into the bed, sweat dripping down your face as you worked yourself to the point of exhaustion.

               Now, though, you just wanted gentle. You wanted to feel his warm skin against yours as you struggled to keep your legs warm underneath the covers, to feel his lips melt against yours as he whispered your name against your shoulder. You arched your back ever so slightly, and Kylo responded by moving his hand beneath you, supporting himself on his forearm as he pressed his lips against yours, slowly, just getting lost in the comfort and sensation of the early morning.

               _Do you want me?_ Kylo asks, and you nod your head sleepily as you stretch your neck out to one side and swallow back a yawn. Kylo sees it and smiles his lopsided smile, letting a chuckle slip through his parted teeth. You blink a few times before you finally look up at him, running both fingers through his dark hair while your eyes met his, looking over his face but not looking for anything in particular. His scar was gone now, and while his skin was blemished with the same marks and spots that had always been there, to you, they weren’t blemishes at all, but something that was distinctively his. His eyebrows dip forward in the center, as if he’s confused as to just what exactly you’re looking for, and you can’t help but grin as you reach up and plant a quick kiss against his lips.

               “ _I love you_ ,” you tell him, projecting the thought both with your voice and with your mind, and Kylo smiles gently down at you as he kisses you again, adjusting himself to get in a better position by your entrance. He pushes into you slowly, never breaking the kiss, and you can’t help but let out a noisy exhale as you feel him filling you, crossing your ankles over the backs of his legs as he does so.

               He doesn’t start to move in you immediately. Instead he just moves his large hand down the side of your face and lets it travel down your neck and your body as you continue to kiss him, slowly, gently, enjoying every inch of him. Kylo’s lips eventually trail down to your neck where he applies a rapid burst of suction, and as you thrust your hips up into his, Kylo starts to quickly accelerate his pace, moving in and out of you in a constant rhythm. Your legs wrap around his waist now, holding him closer to you, and as his rhythm begins to increase, so does the intensity of the kisses against your neck and collarbone. You bite your lower lip as you arch your back into him, squeezing your eyes shut as you embrace the familiar build of sensation, the pleasant swell in your core as you feel yourself start to give around him.

               You can tell that Kylo didn’t expect you to release so soon or so suddenly by the way he pauses before he continues with a few more quick jerks, finding his own release inside you. You grin at him sheepishly as he pulls out of you and collapses back down beside him, curling back into his chest as you press a series of kisses into his overheated skin. “You’re quiet today,” Kylo muses as he smooths down the top of your hair, and you try to shrug your shoulders, but find that you can’t comfortably in this position.

               “’Cause I just woke up,” you reply sleepily, as another yawn comes unbidden from the depths of your throat. You run your nose back and forth against his chest as you drape one arm lazily over his side, pressing your cheek into his warm skin. “Night night.”

               Kylo laughs gently as he reaches down and kisses your temple, pulling your arm off his side as he takes your hand in his. He raises the backs of your fingers to his lips as he kisses them gently, and you just murmur something under your breath as Kylo stays for a few moments, stroking the back of your hand with his thumb. “Okay,” he says gently. “But I do have to get up now.”

               “Stay,” you mumble, your words tempered by his chest, but Kylo just chuckles as he kisses your temple again.

               “Ani needs to sleep too,” Kylo tells you, and you relent immediately. Even still, Kylo stays with you for a few more minutes, just running his hand up and down your side, before he rolls you over so that he can give you a proper kiss before he sits up and swings his long legs out of bed. It creaks as he stands up, and you immediately roll over onto your stomach and scoot over slightly, wrapping your arms around his pillow as you press yourself into the warm impression that he had left in the bed. You’re too tired to notice, but Kylo is apparently still watching you, as you can hear his soft chuckle before he reaches out a hand and smooths your hair back.

               “I love you,” Kylo tells you, and you think you say it back to him as you slip into a dreamless sleep, but you take solace in the fact that he knows you do all the same.

               When you next open your eyes, you’re in a surprisingly chipper mood, considering the circumstances. Regardless, you slip out of bed and try to scoop your hair over your left shoulder like you used to, almost surprised to find it shorter than you had previously remembered. You had never worn your hair quite that short before, and while you knew that it could inevitably be shorter, it still made showering a strange sensation when you tried to rinse out the hair that wasn’t there. You weren’t quite sure why you had done it, thinking back you still couldn’t quite explain the impulse that made you cut off your hair, but that didn’t matter now. It would grow back, and hopefully by the time it did, you could be sure that your recent turbulent mood would have returned to normal.

               These are the thoughts that keep you company as you head down to the kitchen and get some food before joining Poe and Ladson in their cell block. By the time you get there, they are almost done eating, and you’re glad to see that Ani had already brought them some food before he went off to bed.

               “Hey there,” you say pleasantly as you sit down on the bench opposite them. Since you had let them shower, the overall mood between you seemed to have improved, but you had no way of knowing if it was from the simple gesture of human civility that you showed them, or from your heart to heart with Ladson. Either way, tensions seemed low between you, if not nonexistent, and that was always a good thing.

               “Hey,” Ladson says through his last big mouthful of food, and he stops for a moment as he looks at you, shaking his head back and forth.

               “What?” you ask, tilting your head to the side in confusion. “What? What is it?”

               “Nothing,” Ladson says, shaking his head dismissively, but you’re not about to let him off so easily.

               “No, tell me,” you insist. “Do I have something on my face?”

               “Not your face,” Ladson mutters under his breath, and your hand immediately goes to cover your neck as your mouth drops open slightly in surprise.

               “It’s that bad?” you ask nervously, your face flushing, and you purposely avoid Poe’s eyes as you focus your attention on Ladson.

               “I remember when you started wearing scarves all the time on the Starkiller Base,” Ladson muses in a nostalgic tone, and you just groan as you slump your face into both hands. “That whole big fuss you two made over it, that conversation was something you played up with Sadie, wasn’t it?”

               “Honestly I’m surprised you even remember that,” you tell him. While you hadn’t exactly forgotten what had transpired on the Starkiller Base, you hadn’t really expected Ladson to remember such a trivial detail of your time there when it was clearly overshadowed by much larger, graver, events. “And I think it was Sadie’s idea,” you tell him, thinking it over. “Although at first I just used them to hide the bruises. The hickeys came later.”

               Ladson just shakes his head again, and you blush as you finally will yourself to look over at Poe. He fixes you with a tight-lipped reassuring smile, and you can feel the heat in your cheeks as you dip your head and look away.

               “Oh my Force,” Ladson says as he rolls his eyes, and you can’t help but let a jolt of alarm go through you as you sit up straight. Even still, it’s already too late. Ladson had seen the look that you had just shared with Poe, and there was nothing you could do to take it back now. “You fucked him in the shower, didn’t you?”

               “No,” you blurt out, your voice ripe with indignation. “No, I, seriously, why would I do that? I already risked enough just to let you _take_ a shower, why would I make things worse on myself?”

               “You’re okay though, right?” Poe asks, his expression turning serious, and you bob your head forward in a quick series of nods.

               “Yeah,” you say quickly, but your voice comes out a bit hoarse. “Yeah, I’m fine. Told you he wouldn’t really care.”

               “And he’s okay with you spending so much time down here with us?” Ladson asks, but fortunately you don’t have to answer that as Ani barges in through the door, his eyes wide and his breathing shallow. Besides the telltale physical signs of anxiety, you can tell through the Force that something is wrong, and you’re a bit disappointed with yourself that you didn’t sense his distress sooner.

               “Father needs you up front,” Ani says, and you nod your head as you get to your feet. “We have trouble.”

               “What kind of trouble?” you ask hesitantly. If something was going on, you preferred to be briefed about it beforehand so that you could formulate a plan before you reached the cockpit.

               “Hux sent out that squadron,” Ani tells you. “We’re completely surrounded. We’re being escorted back to the _Propitiate_ , and we’re not far off.”

               “Are you kidding me?” you demand as you shake your head from side to side before you look back at Poe and Ladson. Poe looks concerned, gnawing on his lower lip as he meets your gaze, while Ladson just rubs at his temple and shakes his head from side to side. “Did Kylo talk to Hux yet?”

               “They may have…traded words,” Ani tells you hesitantly, and you roll your eyes. You knew what that meant, and you could assume Poe and Ladson did as well without having to be explicitly told. Even still, Ani reaches out one hand and undoes the lock mechanism on each door, allowing each one to swing open simultaneously.

               “Ani,” you scold without much malice in your voice as you turn back to him. “What are you doing? If Kylo finds out-“

               “We need to figure this out together,” Ani insists. “They have just as much to lose, if not more, than we do.”

               You didn’t like it, but you couldn’t deny that Ani at least had a point. “Okay,” you relent. “But Kylo is not going to be happy about it.”

               “We’ll find a way out of this,” Poe tells you reassuringly, but you just shake your head from side to side. They didn’t know the First Order like you did, but you could only imagine that they weren’t very fond of those they expected to be traitors. You hadn’t returned to the _Propitiate,_ and you doubted you could come up with a good enough excuse as to why.

               “We’ll think of something,” Ani says, as if sensing your thoughts, and you cast a nod in his direction as you begin to head towards the front of the ship with the three of them following along behind you. You knew implicitly that Kylo would not be happy to see them there, but you didn’t have much choice. If Hux was going to make sure you were headed back to the _Propitiate_ one way or another, then you needed to make sure that you were all in on this plan together.

               As you reach the cockpit, you can hear Kylo cursing under his breath before there’s a loud crash, as if he’s knocked something over, although considering just how little space there was in the cockpit, you couldn’t imagine what he could have broken that wouldn’t have disastrous consequences for you and the ship itself. “Some things never change,” Ladson mutters under his breath, and you can’t help but roll your eyes.

               “He knows better than to destroy the cockpit,” you tell him hastily, but you can’t deny that you started walking at least a little bit faster than you were before as you head towards the sound of the noise. As you approach, it doesn’t appear that anything is broken, but Kylo is pacing back and forth in the narrow area, running one hand back through his thick hair.

               “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” you tell him quickly as you approach. “We’ll figure this out, okay?”

               “What are they doing here?” Kylo snaps, glaring daggers in your direction, and you can feel your own flash of anger as you quickly return it.

               “ _They_ are here because _we_ dragged them into this situation in the first place,” you snap, completely forgetting about the imminent danger that was floating right outside your ship.

               “They wouldn’t be in this situation if they didn’t kidnap you,” Kylo reminds you, but you’re in no mood to hold your composure now, letting your anger bubble back to the surface as you let your unease of the current situation take over. If Hux was really taking you back to the _Propitiate_ , you had no idea what was going to happen to Poe, or Ladson, or yourself, or Ani, and you could never forgive yourself if something happened to Ani because you had been making all the wrong decisions.

               “And Ani and I wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with if _you_ didn’t kidnap us from D’Qar.” It’s a low blow, and Kylo grits his teeth but says nothing as you let out a sigh of frustration. You didn’t want to fight in front of Ani, and you certainly didn’t want to give Poe or Ladson the impression that this was what your relationship was like all the time, not when you had just had such a comfortable morning together. “Okay, I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to do.”

               “You’ll turn us over,” Poe says, stepping forward, and it’s such a radical idea that even Kylo stops to consider him. “How many TIE fighters are out there?”

               “Not fighters, interceptors,” Kylo tells him, although his voice is quiet. “Hux sent the entire squadron, all four dozen.” You can tell he doesn’t like the idea of working with Poe in the slightest, but it’s clear he doesn’t have much of a choice. If you wanted to survive this, you were going to have to work together.

               “I’d ask about this shuttle’s flight capabilities, but if there’s that many then I guess we don’t really have a shot, huh?” Poe asks, trying to keep up his signature humor, but the atmosphere is much too tense. “Okay, then, here’s what we do. We go back to the _Propitiate_ and tell them what they want to hear. Then, when the coast is clear, we escape together, all five of us. You rig us a TIE Fighter so Ladson and I can get back to D’Qar, and we’ll draw their attention away from you so that you three can escape as well.”

               “You got lucky trying to escape once,” Kylo reminds him, his voice cold. “And if I remember correctly, you crashed back on Jakku and almost lost your life.”

               “But I didn’t,” Poe replies coolly. “If _I_ recall, I managed to make it all the way from Jakku to D’Qar myself, and then made it to Takodana just in time to retrieve my droid and wipe out several of your best fighters, _and_ take out plenty of your ground troops as well.” He doesn’t gloat when he says it, his voice is calm and matter-of-fact, and you can’t help but roll your eyes as you can hear Ladson snicker into the elbow of his sleeve from somewhere behind him.

               Kylo lets out an indignant snort, while you just shake your head and try to get back to the matter at hand. “You haven’t seen this thing, but let me tell you that it’s a stupid plan,” you tell him. “The entire thing is _surrounded_ by TIE Fighters on constant rotation, two entire wings on station at a time, not to mention the problem of the whole Guardian point-defense network. None of us would stand a chance and they’d blow us straight out of the sky. It’s good thinking, but it’s a stupid plan.”

               “As stupid as calling the Resistance and asking for their help?” Poe asks, and all at once you can feel your hands grow cold. Kylo turns to look at Poe now, really look, staring him down. It was more than obvious that this had been Poe’s real idea all along, but he knew Kylo would have dismissed it instantly, so instead he had suggested a far stupider idea in the hopes that you would shoot it down, therefore making reaching out to the Resistance seem like a far better idea by comparison.

               To his credit, Kylo doesn’t immediately discredit his idea, but instead turns to you and waits for you to give your reaction. “No,” you say softly, and the silence that fills the air is thick while everyone waits for you to continue talking, but you have nothing more to say.

               “No?” Ladson echoes, leaning forward.

               “No,” you repeat, shaking your head. “No, I’m not getting the Resistance involved. There probably wouldn’t be time for them to come rescue us, and I’m not risking getting Kylo captured if things should go awry.”

               “What?” Ladson splutters, but Poe just holds up a hand to stop him.

               “If you don’t want to get the Resistance involved, fine,” Poe says quickly. “We’ll figure out some other way.”

               Considering that the Resistance would probably do anything to rescue him, his willingness to back down from the idea so quickly raises your alarms immediately, and you’re not the only one. “Seriously?” Ladson demands. “What other way is there?”

               “We’re captives here,” Poe reminds him as he locks eyes with you. “It’s your call.”

               A look passes between you and Poe that seems to last for quite a while, until Kylo is visibly distressed by it. “What’s your game?” he demands, but Poe doesn’t glance at him for more than a minute as he turns his attention back to you instead.

               “You clearly have some kind of leverage with Hux,” Poe explains. “But I can understand why you don’t want to get the Resistance involved. I think they’re our best chance, but if you don’t want to risk it then we can’t waste time arguing about it. It won’t be long until we reach the _Propitiate_ , and we need other ideas.”

               You just shake your head from side to side as you sink your elbow into one hand and rub your temple with your fingertips. The truth was that you didn’t have any other ideas. You had been putting off what to do longer and longer for just that reason, but now was the time for you to make a decision, and your options were clearly few and far between. You glance over at Kylo, but his expression is unreadable. He’s clearly not happy about the situation, you can tell that much, but beyond that he couldn’t really be sure of what to do either.

               “What do you think, Ani?” you ask as you turn to him. Ani, who had been quietly standing quietly beside Ladson, looks taken aback, as if he didn’t really expect you to be calling him out in such a manner. Regardless of what you thought about what to do, Ani was your family, and you wanted him to know that you wanted his opinion heard. If he had any solid ideas as to how to escape from this mess, no matter how crazy they sounded, now was the time to hear them.

               “I think we should notify the Resistance,” Ani says nervously, glancing at Kylo, but he keeps his expression impassive for Ani’s sake. When he gets no reprisal, Ani continues his thought in a stronger voice. “They may be too far away to get us out of this situation now, but they should at least know where we are in case anything happens.”

               “In case anything happens,” Ladson says bitterly as he turns to you, and you shake your head.

               “Hux won’t kill you,” you say firmly. “I won’t allow it.”

               “Oh really?” Ladson asks, his eyebrows raised in a mocking gesture. “And how exactly-“

               “I won’t allow it,” you say through gritted teeth, and the venom in your voice is enough to make an uneasy silence descend upon the room as you glance back at Poe. “Make the call.” You falter, only for a second, as you turn to Kylo and realize that he hadn’t yet stated his opinion on the matter. “Are you on board with this?”

               Kylo just shakes his head in dismay as he turns and walks out of the cockpit, and your heart sinks in your chest to see him think that you were choosing Poe over him. Still, you do your best to keep your expression as impassive as his. “Make the call,” you repeat as you turn back to Poe. “Let them know our position and where we’re headed. I don’t think the Resistance has anyone nearby, but if they do and they want to help try to get these interceptors off our backs, then I won’t complain.” Poe gives a quick nod of his head as he slips into the pilot’s seat, and you turn back to Ani. “Stay here, watch them.”

               “What do I tell them?” Poe asks, turning around to face you. “About your status?”

               You know what he’s asking, and you pause for a moment as you think it over. The Resistance, the First Order, you didn’t care about any of your previous political affiliations. You didn’t want to have power, you didn’t want to have control, you didn’t want to be a part of this war anymore. Right now you just wanted your family to be safe, and that was quickly spiraling away from your grasp. Whatever the Resistance wanted to do to you didn’t matter; if they wanted to label you a traitor, so be it. As long as Ani and Kylo got out of this situation alive, that was your priority, and you determined to see it through. “Tell them whatever you want,” you say dismissively as you head out the door after Kylo. To your surprise, he’s right outside in the hallway, as if he was waiting for you to come out and chase after him.

               “If you’re not on board with this, then say something,” you tell him. “I don’t really want to call out to the Resistance for help either, but-“

               “You should go back,” Kylo says quietly, turning his head to the side so he doesn’t have to look at you, and you can’t help but let your jaw drop open.

               “Why?” you ask quietly, the hurt in your voice palpable.

               “Ani wants to go back,” Kylo says firmly as he glances down at you. “It would be safer for you both there.”

               “Is this about Poe?” you demand incredulously. “I already told you-“

               “You feel something for him,” Kylo says quietly, and you just shake your head from side to side.

               “No,” you say firmly. “No, I’m not even going to argue this with you because we don’t have time right now. Anything I feel for him is negligible to what I feel for you, and you know that.”

               Kylo still looks uncomfortable, but nods his head forward. “Ani wants to go back.”

               “He just wants to be safe,” you insist, shaking your head again. “Like I said, we don’t have time for this. We need to figure out a plan. How did Hux sound when you talked to him? I take it he’s not happy?”

               “Irritable,” Kylo confirms. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to talk our way out of this.”

               “And the Resistance isn’t going to be close enough to bail us out of this,” you add. “And if we’re flanked on all sides by Hux’s squadrons, there’s no way we can escape. So what do we do?” Kylo hesitates for a moment, as if he has a plan that he knows you’re not going to like.

               “If Hux is going to truly want to take his anger out on one of us for leaving the First Order, it should be me,” Kylo says quietly, and you can feel the fine hairs on the backs of your arms stand up as a cold sweep of panic floods your chest.

               “No,” you say firmly. “No, Kylo, now’s not the time to play the martyr. If one of us goes down, we both go down.”

               “Think about Ani,” Kylo snaps. “He-“

               “I am,” you counter. “He needs _both_ of us, Kylo. We need to be in this together. I’m not complete without you, and you’re not complete without me. We’re a team, we do everything together, that’s how this works.”

               Kylo pauses for a moment, standing up a little straighter, and when he speaks next, his voice is stiff. “Then we turn over your friends,” he says at length. “Make it seem like it was the plan all along.”

               “Hux would probably forgive anything we did if we turn over Poe,” you agree quietly. “But then how will we help them escape?” Kylo raises an eyebrow to show just how little that thought concerns him, and you can feel your cheeks flush in anger.

               “No,” you argue. “No, we’re not letting them take the fall for this. If anything, we should have just left them on Tatooine, and then-“

               “They would have been picked up by the First Order regardless,” Kylo says coolly, but you just shake your head.

               “We don’t know that,” you insist. “And even if they did, that would be their struggle, and we wouldn’t be caught up in this mess… _again_.”

               You let your shoulders slump as your face falls to the floor, and Kylo reaches forward as he picks up your chin with one gloved hand, forcing you to meet his eyes. “No matter what happens, I will protect you,” he says softly, and you can’t help but smile up at him.

               “Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way,” you say a bit more confidently than you expect your voice to sound. “I mean, you told me once that we were more powerful than Hux and we had nothing to fear from him. Maybe if we take him out, we can rule over the First Order together in the Unknown Regions and end this war once and for all.”

               Kylo seems to consider this for a moment before he shakes his head. “They’re too loyal to Hux,” he tells you. “I don’t think we could convince them to unite behind either of us, and Ani is still just a boy.”

               “But you’re scary-“ you start, before you drop that train of thought immediately. Kylo was intimidating, yes, but loyalty required far more than intimidation, and Kylo simply didn’t have the vision to take up Hux’s position. As soon as he turned his back, people would be scattering left and right. You wanted to say that you would be able to do better, but you knew implicitly that you wouldn’t. You weren’t cut from the Empire’s cloth, and beyond that, in your very first meeting you had snapped a man’s neck in front of everyone. If they wouldn’t serve Kylo, who they had at least known for years and years, you didn’t have a chance of holding authority over them. “Then we escape,” you tell him. “It’s our only option.”

               “So we’re going to follow through with the pilot’s first plan?” Kylo asks, and you shrug your shoulders.

               “Best case scenario, the Resistance attacks the _Propitiate_ and we escape in the confusion,” you tell him. “The Resistance will inevitably send a rescue team out for him, and they can keep the First Order distracted long enough for us to get to safety.”

               “It’ll be a massacre,” Kylo tells you flatly. “How sure are you that we’d be able to escape safely in the chaos with minimal risk to Ani?”

               “Decently so,” you reply as you tilt your head to the side in consideration. “You’re an amazing pilot who’s gotten us out of worse, well, at least, just as bad, and besides, Force sensitive people are supposed to be lucky, right? With the three of us on board, we probably stand a good shot of making it through this.”

               “And would you say our fortunes have been auspicious as of late?” Kylo asks as he narrows his eyes, but you just shrug your shoulders.

               “No,” you admit. “But we’ll figure out something, right? I mean, we always do.” You let out a breath you didn’t realize you had been holding in as you take one of his gloved hands in both of yours. “Either that, or we just trust the Force to work itself out to the highest good.” Kylo looks hesitant, like he isn’t quite sure what that means, and to be honest, neither are you. You thought that the Force had been on your side, but as of late, it was starting to almost seem as though the Force was actively working against whatever it was that you were trying to accomplish. You just wanted to leave the mistakes of your past behind you and start anew, but it was starting to seem that the Force was going to make you take responsibility for all of your misdeeds in what could possibly be the worst way possible.

               “I love you,” you remind him, trying to reassure him. “No matter what happens, we’ll get through this just like we’ve gotten through everything else, okay?” Kylo nods slowly before he bends down to kiss you, and you can’t help but smile as you press your lips back up into his, lacing your fingers around the back of his neck. Kylo pushes you into the wall suddenly, and you press yourself into his chest as you kiss him, trying desperately to reassure him that you were going to make it out of this. You’re so distracted by the taste of Kylo’s lips against yours that you don’t even realize that three other figures have joined you in the hall.

               As Ladson coughs loudly, you can’t help but feel a flush coming over your cheeks as you try to pull away, but Kylo releases your lower lip slowly, pulling it away from your lip as he eventually steps away from you. Even still, he doesn’t turn to face them, and you could bet that he wished he had his helmet on right now to conceal the small bit of color that was lining the tops of his cheeks. You, nevertheless, tried to look completely unaffected as you focus on Ani in particular, trying to pretend that Poe wasn’t even there. “What’s the status?”

               “The Resistance has no ships nearby,” Ani tells you, confirming exactly what you had known all along. “It looks like we’re on our own for now, but they’ll look into launching a joint offensive on the _Propitiate_ with the help of the Republic when they can coordinate a strike that large. Until then, they want us to sit tight and try to stall for as long as we can.”

               “As I said,” you say, glancing at Kylo. “The Resistance isn’t going to be able to help us out of this. It looks like we’re going to have to go with your first plan and hope things work out for us, Poe.” Poe just tilts his head forward, but you can see he’s not too happy about it. You wouldn’t be either, if you stood where he was standing, although you couldn’t really say that you were in much of a better position yourself.

               “I have a bad feeling about this,” Ani says softly, glancing at Kylo, who just inclines his head forward in agreement.

               “As do I,” he echoes, and a look seems to pass between them as you stand there uncomfortably, realizing that they were probably worried about you and the effect that being on the _Propitiate_ again might have on you. You could try to promise them that you would focus on the light side of the Force and try to keep yourself in control, but you had no idea if that was a promise that you would be able to keep and so you force your thoughts in a different direction.

               “Don’t worry,” you say as optimistically as you can manage. “We’ll figure this out.” They both turn to you incredulously, and that’s when you realize that they didn’t just have a bad feeling, but they felt some sort of oppressive nature through the Force weighing down on them like a sinister shadow. You weren’t quite sure if you felt it or not, but you couldn’t deny that there was a certain sense of dread that seemed to be ripping away at your insides that made you feel sick to your core, as if your instincts were trying to physically force your body as far away from the _Propitiate_ as it could possibly go. “Okay, for the record I also have a bad feeling,” you admit. “But I’m trying to stay confident.”

               “She’s right,” Poe adds as he turns towards Kylo, although you are pretty sure he can’t sense the darkness in the same way that Kylo and Ani can. “You need to put on a solid front. If you seem nervous, they’re going to pick up on it, and it’s going to make them wonder why. If your whole plan was to take us back to the _Propitiate_ anyway, then you shouldn’t really care for Hux’s escort one way or the other.”

               “I would,” you snort indignantly. “I told Hux that I didn’t want an escort, so why would he send one?”

               “Exactly,” Poe agrees, gesturing vaguely in your direction. “If you’re anything less than frustrated, he’s going to pick up on it. You have to make it look like you really don’t care about turning us over to them.”

               “That shouldn’t be a problem,” Kylo replies in a low voice, and you can’t help but roll your eyes as the ship gives a sudden lurch, and you look over to Poe to see if you were really as close as you were afraid you were.

               “The tractor beam,” Poe confirms. “They’re pulling us in.”

               “Great,” you murmur under your breath. “Then I guess this is what we’re going to do.” Kylo moves past you to get his helmet from the cockpit, but not before giving your hand a quick squeeze of reassurance.

               “Are you going to cuff us?” Poe asks, holding up his hands with his wrists pressed together. “To make it look more authentic?”

               “No need,” you reply. “We have the Force. You try to run and we’ll just snap your neck or break your legs or something. They know how it works.” Poe just nods his head forward again, but you can tell that he’s just as nervous with this plan as you are.

               “What do you think?” Ladson asks as he turns from Poe to you. “Do you honestly think that we can pull this off?”

               “Honestly?” you ask, and you let your words float in the air as you wished Kylo was still standing beside you right now, to provide you with that constant sense of reassurance that only he could provide. “I think there’s about a ninety-nine percent chance that there’s a ten percent chance that we’ll be okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Jaws theme music plays ominously in the distance*
> 
> Would it be a spoiler if I told you that shit's going to go down on Saturday? Yes? No? Maybe? Slightly? >.>
> 
> Until then, cheers!!


	42. Chapter 42

               You descend off the boarding ramp two by two, you and Kylo leading the charge, Poe and Ladson following behind you, and Ani bringing up the rear. There were two neat rows of Storm Troopers lined up on either side of the bordering ramp, and you were at least slightly comforted to see that they all had their weapons shouldered in a formal salute. That, at least, was your first clue that you weren’t being seen as traitors, although you couldn’t be sure until you confronted Hux himself.

               You had expected to meet Hux in the command center, but you’re surprised as you exit the hangar to see Hux walking towards you, and you stop at the intersection of the hallways only a few feet away that crossed to make a giant _T._ Ani makes at least some small attempt to look like you’re in control of the _prisoners_ as he pushes Poe and Ladson into place so that they are standing with their backs against the wall as you all watch Hux’s approaching form, trying to figure out what exactly he was doing. Had he come to greet you? That didn’t really seem like Hux at all, and yet, you couldn’t be sure why he had decided to come see you just outside the hangar, in the middle of a hallway no less.  

               “General Hux,” you call in greeting as he gets closer, not waiting to give him the upper hand. “You’re looking well.”

               “Polite as ever,” Hux muses, and you make a face to show that your greeting had been sarcastic in nature. Even still, you pause briefly as you survey the area behind him, noticing that someone was strikingly absent.

               “Where’s Phasma?” you ask, arching an eyebrow. “I would have thought she of all people would want to be here to celebrate our capture of one of the highest ranking members of the Resistance. He’s slaughtered enough of her troops, after all.”

               “She has more pressing matters to deal with off the ship,” Hux says in a silky voice while you narrow your eyes at him, trying to figure out what his game was. Phasma would want to be here for this, you knew she would be, which meant that either Hux didn’t want her to know, or there really were significant matters elsewhere that she couldn’t be called away from. Even still, Hux doesn’t give you time to respond as he looks over Poe and Ladson, still standing with their backs to the wall behind you. “Good to see your sympathies for the captain didn’t distract you from fulfilling your duties to the Order.”

               You had expected a barb of this nature, and you’ve already come prepared to counter it. You know he’s only throwing your relationship with Poe back in your face to insult you, and you know what he’s really questioning. “We had to go deep undercover,” you say with an idle shrug of your shoulders. “We left without saying anything to anyone besides Phasma because we weren’t quite sure who we could trust. We didn’t want to risk the information we gathered falling into the hands of a potential spy and winding up in the hands of the Resistance, now did we?”

               The corner of Hux’s lip quirks upwards into a sneer. “Some might have thought your sudden disappearance to be a, well, _betrayal_ , of sorts.”

               “No betrayal,” you say lightly with a quick shake of your head. “This was the best way that we could prove our fidelity to the Order.”

               “Oh, I’ve never once doubted your loyalty,” Hux tells you, but there’s a malicious gleam in his eyes. “You want to protect your family and keep them safe, and you would do anything you could in order to safeguard your future with them. You told me as much yourself, don’t you remember? You said that your loyalties would always be to Ren, first and foremost.”

               “Right,” you say quietly, glancing at Kylo for support, but his expression is still unreadable underneath his helmet. “But I’ve since sworn my loyalties to the First Order.” You pause, just a moment, and decide to play it up a bit. “And to you.”

               Hux’s teeth part in a vicious smirk and he stands up a little straighter, looking pleased with himself. “If this is true,” he says, his voice dropping dangerously low. “Then bow to me, my young apprentice.”

               Before you even realize what’s happening, you’ve suddenly dropped to one knee, almost as though a magnet had been planted in your leg and sucked you down to the floor. One moment you were staring at Hux and the next you were staring at the toe of your boot over the polished tile floor of the _Propitiate_ hallway, wondering what exactly had happened. You can feel the confused energy emanating from Kylo, from everyone around you, but that motion had not come from you.

               “How did you do that?” you ask, and your voice is soft in the tense silence that surrounds you. You were not sure how exactly you knew that Hux had done that, he shouldn’t have been able to do that, but yet you knew implicitly that he had caused you to bow to him all the same. “You don’t have the Force, how were you able to do that?”

               Hux smiles as his eyes travel from you to Kylo, and the weight of his stare sends an icy chill down your back. Something was wrong here, something was very, distinctly wrong, although you had no idea what. Even still, you could feel Kylo’s nervous energy flowing through your veins, and you knew at once that whatever evil had presented itself to you when you had first arrived on the _Propitiate_ was about to reveal itself once again.

               “How long?” Kylo asks, and the question takes you by surprise as you glance back at Hux to see his reaction.

               Hux, to his credit, doesn’t seem the least bit fazed. “Why, Ren,” he begins. “I know clarity was never one of your strong suits, but you’re going to need to be more specific.”

               Kylo, however, isn’t the least bit unsettled by his taunt. “How long has Hux been dead for?”

               “Quite some time,” Hux replies with a smile, and your eyes widen as you glance in the space between them, your eyes darting rapidly back and forth. It didn’t seem possible for Hux to be dead when he was standing right there, right in front of you. Hux, or at least, the person who claimed to be Hux, started to sneer. “You always were a failure, Ren,” he goads. “You destroyed everything you touched. It was no wonder your parents didn’t want you around, why they sent you away. They knew you would ruin the lives of everyone around you, and, well, we can hardly say that they were wrong, now can we?” You can feel goosebumps surfacing on your shivering flesh, but you’re in too much shock and you can’t even bring yourself to say anything in his defense.

               “You weren’t even able to sense your old master when he was standing directly in front of you,” Hux continues, and that’s when you know, despite all your misgivings about the place, that you should have just returned to D’Qar when you had the chance. “Although,” Hux laments. “I suppose that’s not entirely a weakness on your behalf. I had to cloak my form somewhat after the scavenger perished my mortal body, but fortunately I was able to move my collective consciousness into another shell. The Force can be quite amenable that way, if you have the skills to harness its full potential.”

               “Was-was he dead?” you ask softly, trying to find your voice. You had never liked Hux, not really, but you didn’t know how to feel about it if all of this time, Hux was suffering inside the depths of his own mind, trapped like a prisoner, while something else walked around in his flesh.

               “If he wasn’t, then he certainly is now,” is the only reply that you receive, and you aren’t even sure you really want to know what that means.

               “Snoke,” Kylo says through the voice distortion of his helmet, finally finding his voice, and Hux’s lips part in a snarl as Kylo says his name.

               “Take off that helmet,” Snoke orders with Hux’s voice. “Let me take a look at you. I want to see your face.” Out of the corner of your eye, you can see Kylo comply, unlocking the mechanism at the base of his helmet before he slips it up and over his head, tossing it carelessly onto the floor beside him. His lips are pursed tightly shut, but there’s a pain in his eyes that you’ve only seen a handful of times before. Kylo knew the outcome of this ordeal, just as you did. It didn’t matter what specific events happened to transpire between then and now. Whatever the outcome, it was not going to be favorable.

               “You are so weak,” Snoke continues, shaking Hux’s head from side to side. “This girl had such potential, and yet you sent her away. I wanted to have her trained, but you thought you could protect her, thought you could shield her from it. How does it feel to know that she is only here now because of you? How does it feel to know that you took her hand and led her down the path to the dark side?”

               “Don’t-“ Kylo starts, but his voice is strained and he seems to be at a loss for what to say. Considering he had thought Snoke was truly dead and gone all these years, you couldn’t blame him, especially when Snoke had been directly in front of him this entire time and he hadn’t been able to sense it.

               “And yet after all these years, her commitment is strangely more absolute than yours,” Snoke murmurs. “You would do anything for her, but I almost wonder if she would return the favor.” He raises his hand out in front of him in a casual gesture, flicking his folded fingers upwards. “Rise.” You get to your feet shakily, although you’re not sure if he’s using the Force to help you get to your feet or if you somehow managed to stand up on your own.

               Vaguely, you remember what Hux had told you before back on Naboo, that everyone had a price. All along, he had been trying to figure out your weak points, trying to figure out what made you tick, to test you, to see if you could truly be something that he could fashion into the semblance of an obedient weapon, more powerful and more controlled than Kylo ever was. “I don’t know what you want from me,” you begin softly, your tongue involuntarily jutting out to wet your bottom lip. “But you’re not going to get it if you hurt him.”

               “Perhaps,” Snoke says, but this doesn’t really seem to bother him all that much. “In all the time I have known you, you liked having him there, but you liked something else more. Power. Control. You enjoy the rush of exhilaration when someone obeys one of your orders, when people answer directly to you, when you are in control of the lives of everyone around you, when you can dictate your own fate and make sure that you know the outcome of every situation.”

               “What do you want from me?” you repeat quietly, staring straight past Hux’s head, not letting your eyes focus on any one thing in particular. That was not Hux, and you didn’t want to treat him as such.

               “I can mold you into something great,” Snoke continues. “You are destined for greatness, surely, you have always known it. Someone who had lived their life so long without any knowledge of the Force, and yet you were able to harness it in such a short amount of time. That takes an exceptional gift. You aren’t conflicted. You have a natural thirst for power and I can make sure that you are justly rewarded for the trials that you’ve had to endure simply playing the role of Ren’s house pet.”

               “It wasn’t like that,” you say, but it almost feels like your voice is being drowned out by the tense silence that surrounds you. “Kylo taught me how to use the Force. Everything I know came from him.”

               “And everything he knew came from me,” Snoke says, as if that doesn’t really matter to him. “But haven’t you ever wondered about your own skills? About where they came from? They say that the Force does run strong in families, after all.” Your blood runs cold as you look up at him, trying to piece together what he was saying.

               “Do you mean-?” You know what you want to ask, but the words just won’t come.

               “Did you really think your true father would have just sold you off so easily?” Snoke asks. “Do you think your mother really died in childbirth? These were lies you were told to keep you obedient, to keep you complacent, to keep you from ever realizing your true identity…or your true potential.” Your mouth slips open, but you are literally struck speechless, unable to even form a coherent thought if you wanted to. “If you follow me, I will bestow upon you the truth of what _really_ happened to your family.”

               You don’t know what to do. You can’t move, you can’t speak, and you can hardly think. Everything you thought you had known about your past could have possibly been a lie, and you had no way of finding out the answers. Had your mother really died in childbirth? You had never known her, but perhaps you had received the Force from her, or your father. Perhaps they were both Jedi, or worse, perhaps they both fell victim to the dark side of the Force, and this was a path that you were always meant to go down. You wanted to know the truth. You wanted to know about your real parents, especially your mother, just like Poe had wanted to learn about his, only you didn’t have any records that you could look back on to extol her praises. There was only one person who even pretended to ever know anything about her, and that was Snoke, someone who you knew manipulated and used Kylo to his own ends. You couldn’t be sure if he was telling you the truth or just using your unfortunate family situation to manipulate you as well, but whatever the case, it didn’t matter to you.

               In the end, you had become a mother and you had your own family to protect now. You had told Kylo time and time again that his past didn’t matter, and now you were coming to find that yours didn’t either. As much as you were curious about possibly finding out the truth of your family origins, the price was too great. The identities of your deceased parents couldn’t compare to the consequences that you and your family would have to face in the present.

               “Whatever you want from me, Kylo comes too,” you tell him as firmly as you can manage. “Whatever happens, we’re in this together and I’m not leaving him behind.”

               “I have no more use for Ren,” Snoke says with a shake of his head. “He was always expendable to me, always malleable and out of control, but you’re different. You and your son-“

               “No,” Kylo says firmly, and you can suddenly feel his anger bubbling just beneath the surface. “This is between us. You will leave both her and my son out of this.”

               “I think it’s far too late for that,” Snoke replies. “She’s already become too far involved. And this one-“ He stretches forward one hand and you hear a muffled cry from behind you as Ani is lifted off of his feet, his toes swinging in the air. Past him, you can see that Poe and Ladson are almost pale with terror, and considering their complexion, that was saying something. Even still, you can’t worry about them now when your son was dangling in the air in front of you.

               “Let him go,” you snarl, and you turn back around quickly as you thrust your hand forward, trying to knock Snoke off his feet.

               “Such anger,” Snoke muses. “Yes, I can do something with that.”

               “No,” you say as you shake your head back and forth. “No, you’ve used me enough. You got inside my head, made me doubt myself, made me out of control, and you somehow were able to get to Rey through me-“

               “Ah, yes,” Snoke says, nodding his head forward. “The one that destroyed my mortal form. I must say, your connection to her was latent but not altogether suppressed, and it only took a little coaxing in order to start terrorizing her as well. Nightmares, visions, that you were going to destroy everything that she grew to covet at the Resistance while you forced her to watch it burn.” You shake your head from side to side, unable to believe what you were hearing. Snoke had been using you to terrorize Rey, and as much as you didn’t want it to be true, you had seen the anger in her eyes. He had gotten to her, although it pained you to admit it, he had. Rey was strong, but apparently Snoke was stronger, and if that was the case, what hope could you possibly have to defeat him on your own?

               You look beside you to see Kylo’s eyes drift over in your direction, and that’s when you realize that he’s reading your thoughts. Snoke may have had the Force but you and Kylo were bonded. Together, you were a team. Together, you were indestructible, and this was quite different from the time when you had confronted Snoke last, back when he pitted you against each other. Before, you were divided and the trust between you frail, but now you were stronger, and with your united strength, it was possible that you could take out Snoke once and for all.

               “Ah, I remember that,” Snoke says, and your jaw drops as you realize that Snoke had been able to read your thoughts as well. You thought you had been doing a decent job at hiding them, but apparently not.

               _You can’t hide anything,_ Kylo tells you. _Not from him._

               You roll your eyes in his direction. _Great. Now you tell me._

You want to say more, but you’re concerned Snoke can pick up on that communication as well, and so you just stay silent as he continues speaking. “You’re thinking about things back on the _Resolute_ , when I ordered you to kill her. How did that scene play out again? Help me remember.”

               Without warning, Kylo’s lightsaber is suddenly in his hands as he turns to face you, and an invisible force shoves you forward. As you stagger forward and try to reclaim your balance, you can feel the hilt of his lightsaber pressing uncomfortably into your abdomen, and you force yourself to look up slowly, your eyes wide, only to see your own terror reflected back in his dark eyes.

               “Kylo,” you manage, your voice is loud and panicked, even to your own ears. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see Ani start to move forward, but Poe grabs him by the shoulder, keeping him in place, and you’re silently grateful for his intervention. If Kylo’s lightsaber happened to ignite, you might be able to thrust yourself away in time to avoid it. It was a long shot, especially if Snoke was going to keep you there, but you had to think of something. Kylo lets out a strained grunt across from you, and you can tell that he’s struggling to move the lightsaber away from you as well, but it’s not budging.

               “I thought that killing you would have been the ultimate way to prove Ren’s loyalty,” Snoke says as he takes a few steps closer. The dozen or so Storm Troopers that are around you don’t move, don’t do anything, and you wonder if they’ve been somehow transfixed by Snoke in some way. “But now I am beginning to doubt that was ever the case. I thought that you were his hold to the light side of the Force, but now I see that it was his grandfather constantly calling him towards the light, and although I thought I could erase that fool’s hold on him, I have been proven otherwise. Fortunately, you have no such reserve, no such hindrance to truly embracing the power of the dark side.”

               “Then why would you have me kill her?” You had never heard the fear in Kylo’s voice quite as strongly as you did right now, and it chills you to the core, settling on your bones like a thin film that numbs you from the inside out.

               “Kill her?” Snoke asks, and as he holds the side of his hand to his mouth as he chuckles, you notice that he has Hux’s mannerisms down perfectly. Considering how much time you had spent around him, you almost still couldn’t believe that it was Snoke in that shell instead of Hux. He looked like Hux, spoke like Hux, moved like Hux, and yet he was nothing more than a sinister silhouette of all that he once embodied. “Oh, right. My mistake.”

               You suck in a gasp of air as the lightsaber shifts painfully against your ribcage, and suddenly the hilt of the lightsaber is facing the other way. Both of your hands reach forward and grasp it reflexively, and that’s when you realize that the lightsaber is poised to go through Kylo’s chest. You shake your head back and forth quickly, feeling tears start to spring in your eyes. You had been so vocal about your loyalty to Kylo, about your complete and utter devotion to him, and Snoke knew it. The only way you were ever going to be free to pursue other things was if you severed the Force bond between you once and for all, and that was something you could not, would not, do.

               Ani rushes forward and tries to budge the lightsaber with his mind, but it doesn’t move. You’ve been trying to pull it away, both with the Force and with your hands since you found yourself in this position, but found that you were barely able to move a fraction of an inch. You thought you were powerful, but Snoke’s mastery of the Force was on a completely different level, and there was nothing you could do to overpower him.

               “If you make me kill Kylo, I’ll never do anything for you,” you tell him. Right now, that was your one and only bargaining chip, and you had to use it. “I’ll do anything, okay? I’ll do literally whatever you ask, but don’t make me hurt him.”

               “Interesting,” Snoke murmurs as he appraises you. “He seems to mean a great deal to you.” He tilts his head to the side in consideration. “What if I agreed to spare his life in exchange for someone else’s?”

               “Yours?” you ask weakly as your eyelids flutter closed, and the sound of Hux’s laughter fills the corridor. You don’t even have to ask whose life he’s going to name, not with Poe standing right behind you.

               “I do have the capacity to be kind,” Snoke tells you. “If you want to spare Ren’s life, then take the life of one of your friends. The other, I will send back to the Resistance so that he can spread the word of my second coming.”

               Your lower lip trembles as you search for any way to stall. “And Ani goes with them,” you tell him hastily, refusing to look back at them. “Whoever I spare, my son goes back to D’Qar with them.”

               Snoke, for the first time, frowns visibly. “No,” he replies. “No, he has much training ahead of him. I would have preferred to have started training him years ago, but Ren, as always, seemed determined to keep you both out of my reach.” You look back towards Kylo, who just grits his teeth as he looks back at you, not any more sure of what to do than you are. You want to find some way to stall, some way to figure out how to beat him, or escape, but you weren’t quite sure of what you could do to defeat someone that Rey, Luke, and Finn had failed to eliminate.

               “But if I kill one of them, you’ll let Kylo live?” you ask hesitantly, trying to make the specifications of your agreement as clear as possible while still stalling for time. “You don’t seem to be particularly happy about him, uh, choosing me over you, but if I agree to follow you then he’ll do the same so everyone wins, right?”

               “As long as you don’t try to escape again,” Snoke says dryly, and you can feel heat rising to your cheeks. Kylo, himself, is silent, but you almost wonder if he and Snoke are communicating through each other’s thoughts, where you can’t hear them. “So who will you choose to spare? They both mean so much to you.”

               You nervously tear your eyes away from Kylo’s as you look towards Poe and Ladson. Your body is still frozen in place, the hilt of the lightsaber shoved into Kylo’s abdomen as it had once been shoved into yours, and you could feel the massive amount of fear that was running through his veins right now. Even still, Snoke should know better than to kill him. If he did, it would break you, and then you wouldn’t be able to be controlled. Then again, maybe that’s exactly what he wanted, but if that was truly his plan, he was going to find himself to be _very_ mistaken. You wouldn’t break enough to become compliant, no, instead you would spend every second of every day trying to destroy him from the inside out.

               “Can I give them time to plead their case?” you ask slowly, trying to draw out as much time as you possibly could.

               “If you must,” Snoke replies, but he seems to be growing bored of your stalling. Even still, you can’t help yourself.

               “Can you let me, uh, move first, though?” you ask. “I mean, my arms are getting kind of sore.”

               “No,” Snoke says firmly, and you can’t help but let out a breath as you shake your head and turn to Poe and Ladson.

               “Any volunteers?” you ask dryly, but there’s no humor in their faces. Ladson honestly looks as though he might faint at any second, and even Poe’s usual confident demeanor looks as grim as you’ve ever seen it. He just nods at you, almost imperceptibly, and you know that he’s granting his approval to take his life instead of Ladson’s.

               Only you can’t kill him. You can’t bring yourself to kill either one of them, and as you look helplessly towards Ani you can see your fear reflected on his face. You wanted them to talk, you wanted them to stall for time, but time would only serve to delay the inevitable.

               “Which one?” Snoke presses, and you shake your head back and forth.

               “I can’t-“ you start weakly, unable to make the decision that would condemn you forever. Out of all of the terrible things you had done, you had never murdered someone you cared about, and you didn’t want to start now, even when you had no say in the matter.

               “ _Someone is going to die_ ,” Snoke tells you forcibly, saying it with both Hux’s voice and in your heads so you can feel the full weight of his words. “And it is up to you to decide who. You wanted power. You wanted control. You wanted your decisions to matter, to have consequences, and you are finally getting a taste of what that feels like. One of them is going to die, or Ren will. Now choose.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I owe you a warning ahead of time, someone is going to die, and when I say that, I'm not fucking with you, like, haha, oh some Storm Troopers bit the dust and you were so worried.....no, this isn't going down that way. There is going to be named character death, perhaps more than one, and it's going to hurt a lot. This is like Game of Thrones, or The Walking Dead; no one you care about is safe.
> 
> Because I opted not to use archive warnings and there is no major character death warning in the tags, I felt obligated to tell you this now, as I consider Reader/Kylo/Ani/Poe/Ladson to all be major characters. If this is something that really bothers you and you don't feel comfortable reading the next chapter, please message me on [Tumblr](http://streetsolo.tumblr.com/) or PM me on [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/Streetsolo-100707330320784/) and we can work something out. I don't think I wrote anything overly triggering that you haven't seen before in this story, but I don't want to presume anything, so let me know. 
> 
> Otherwise I also feel compelled to let you know that this story is starting to look like it will have around 70-80 chapters, and right now I'm at 510k words (so you can see where we are in relation to the overall story that I've written so far.) I've actually been writing less recently because I've been winding down and I don't want this story to come to an end. I've gotten way, way, way too attached, but alas, every chapter must come to a close so a new one can begin.
> 
> So, in short, that's where we're at. _One of them is going to die, or Ren will. Now choose._
> 
> Who will she choose? Try to hold out until Tuesday to find out who. Until then............


	43. Chapter 43

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Canon-Typical Violence Ahead

               You can feel hot tears running down your cheeks. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t do it. You can’t kill Ladson after everything that he had done for you, taking care of Ani and being your friend when you truly needed one the most. And you couldn’t kill Poe, either, not just because of your latent feelings for him, but because years ago he had invited you onto the Resistance base and treated you as a friend first when he didn’t have to. He didn’t have to teach you to be a pilot, or be kind to you, or work as hard as he did to made sure you felt wanted and accepted, and you couldn’t bring yourself to repay that kindness by sending him to a painful death.

               You look back at Kylo for support, urging him to make this decision for you with your eyes as you reach your mind out to connect with his. _I can’t do this,_ you tell him. _I can’t do this, Kylo, I can’t, I can’t make this choice. I can’t kill either one of them._

Kylo looks at you like he’s not quite sure what to say, and you suppose there is nothing to say. You can see it right now, you thought that killing Kylo would have ultimately destroyed you, but you didn’t know how to cope with Poe or Ladson’s death any better if you happened to kill one of them instead. You didn’t know how to deal with the aftermath of that. If you hadn’t gotten over the guilt for the role you played in killing one First Order major, whose name you could barely even remember, you were never going to get over it, especially knowing that you had killed them in a vain attempt to save Kylo’s life and keep your family together. Just after you had worked so hard and finally felt united with him again, like you were finally on the right track, something like this would have to happen to pull you away from him again. How would you ever be able to be with him if Poe or Ladson had to literally die so that you could continue your relationship? Kylo would do it for you, he would do it in a heartbeat-

               “You make an interesting point,” Snoke notes after a moment, and you close your eyes as you dip your head forward, silently cursing yourself for being unable to shield your thoughts any better than you thought you had been able to. “Ren, considering she’s unable to make a decision, I’ll leave the choice to you. Which one of her two friends will you choose?”

               “Neither,” Kylo says immediately, and you can feel the trails of the tears running down your cheeks as you glance up at him. His dark eyes stare back into yours, firm and determined, and you wish you had his steely resolve.

               “No?” Snoke asks. “If you fail to make a choice, then I’ll force her to take your life instead. Is that what you want?”

               Kylo grits his teeth as he looks at you, and you just shake your head from side to side. As much as you didn’t want Poe or Ladson to get hurt, you wouldn’t be able to take it if Kylo died. Nevertheless, you don’t think Kylo seems to share these thoughts as he looks down at you with firm resolve.

               _You’ll never be able to forgive me if I kill one of them,_ he tells you, and your lower lip trembles as you realize what he was prepared to do.

               _No,_ you tell him. _No, you are not sacrificing yourself for them, Kylo. You can’t do it. You can’t._

 _I’m sorry I brought you here,_ he continues, his voice solid and unwavering. _I let my pride get in the way. I should never have taken you and Ani away from D’Qar._

 _No_ , you insist, desperately trying to move your hands away from the lightsaber, desperately trying to will yourself to move, but it’s not working. Your thoughts and emotions are too scattered for you to focus, and your heart is thumping so rapidly in your chest you feel as though you might get sick at any minute. _What are you going to do?_

 _There is a powerful ancient ritual that dark wielders can use called a thought bomb,_ he explains. _It takes the energy of everyone in the area and forms it into a weapon that will destroy any Force user caught in its blast._

_Kylo, that will kill you too, and you don’t even know if it will affect him._

               _It’s the best chance we have,_ he tells you. _As soon as you can, take Ani and get as far away as possible. Head back to D’Qar_ ; _his influence diminishes with distance, you should be safe there. Please go to Luke and ask for his protection and-_ He looks away momentarily before he looks back at you. _-ask his forgiveness for what I’ve done to him in my place._

 _No, Kylo._ No. _There has to be some other way._

 _He is going to have me killed regardless._ Kylo looks down and away again before he looks back up at you again, his dark eyes burning into yours. _I love you._

_Kylo-_

“Ren, my patience is-“ Snoke starts, but suddenly you have an idea of your own.

               “Stop,” you say loudly. “Stop, I’ll do it, okay, I’ll do it.” Kylo looks surprised, but then again, you suppose he has to. Your lower lip trembles as you meet his eyes and nod your head forward, hoping that he understood what that meant. He does, you think he does, and suddenly you find that you are able to stand up straight as you take your own lightsaber into your hands. Kylo himself straightens up and holds the hilt of his own lightsaber steady in his hand, and you hesitantly drag your eyes away from him and towards Poe and Ladson.

               “Which will it be?” Snoke asks, and you let your face harden as you look them over. This was going to have to look as convincing as possible to buy Kylo as much time as he would need in order to figure out how to channel the thought bomb, and allow you enough time to escape so that Ani wasn’t caught in the blast.

               “Poe,” you say immediately, and he doesn’t look the least bit surprised, or scared. Ladson looks between you both frantically, as if he should say or do something, but there’s nothing to be said. Your eyes burn into his, begging him to realize that this was just a ploy. You knew that Ladson would break down, but you needed Poe like this, firm and resolved; it would only make things that much easier for you.

               “Ani, don’t look,” Poe says without breaking eye contact, but Ani is not about to watch this happen.

               “No,” he snaps, pulling out his own lightsaber. “No, mother, I can’t let you do this-“

               Snoke laughs, a harsh, terrible sound, and Kylo quickly thrusts out one hand to use the Force to hold him in place. Ani turns to him stiffly, and a look passes between them that you hope that Snoke is unaware of. He seemed more or less oblivious to Kylo’s plan so far, and you could only hope that would continue to be true until Kylo was ready to make his move. You didn’t know how Kylo was able to suddenly block your thoughts from Snoke, but the less time you took to question it the better.

               Kylo’s voice suddenly echoes in your head. _Go for just over his right shoulder, it’ll allow you to turn your blade so you can take out the guards on your left._

You turn back to Poe. “Don’t try to move, it’ll hurt less that way.”

_Ani will take out the guards behind Ladson and then I need you to leave quickly. I can only buy you so much time._

               “Any last words?”

               Poe’s lips form the words, but you’re not sure any sound comes out. For a moment your entire body freezes, and you’re not sure if it’s part of the ruse or if Poe honestly thought he was about to die and wanted those to be his last words to you. Nevertheless, you’re honestly not sure you can do it now, but you know that Kylo is counting on you, Ani is counting on you, and so you extend the blades of your lightsaber and hold it in front of your chest. You want to give them some sign to show them that they shouldn’t move, but you can’t, you know you can’t, and so without breaking eye contact, you thrust your blade forward.

               Poe doesn’t break eye contact either, and out of the corner of your eye you can see a flurry of black as Kylo rushes forward to attack Snoke, and your lightsaber sinks into the wall just above Poe’s shoulder. You quickly duck your head and spin it around to the left to take out the guard beside him as you pull your blade out of the wall and swipe the blade around to your right to take out another guard. Poe immediately drops to one knee without being told, scooping up the guard’s blaster so that he can help you in the fight. Ani and Ladson are busy tackling the guards on the other side of you, and you fight side by side with Poe while Kylo takes on Snoke. But he can’t take him on alone, you know he can’t.

               _Get out of here,_ Kylo tells you. _I can’t channel the bomb until you’re gone._

 _You need my energy,_ you tell him. _Let me-_

               You suddenly feel a bolt from one of the Storm Trooper’s blasters graze your side, and you fall to the ground as you try to dodge out of the way. You roll over and quickly put your lightsaber up to block the next bolts that are headed in your direction, sending them back towards the Storm Troopers that fired them. They’re pressing in from all sides, and the sheer exhaustion of trying to keep up with so many bolts while making sure Poe, Ladson and Ani stay safe combined with the pressure of trying to clear a path so that they can escape while worrying about Kylo, while also trying to figure out a plan to send Ani off while coming back for Kylo without letting him know that’s what you’re planning to do is taking a toll on you. So far, it looks like Kylo and Snoke are locked in an epic struggle of the Force, Kylo’s lightsaber braced at his side, the blade charged but ultimately steady as Kylo fights with one hand held in front of him, locked in a battle of mental energies.

               Suddenly, Ani lets out a sharp cry from behind you as he’s struck by a blaster bolt, and you spin around immediately as you feel his pain through the Force. While he falls back, you immediately rush forward and take out the Storm Troopers closest to him before you drop to your knee to make sure he’s okay. You can see him cradling the side of his arm before your head suddenly snaps forward, and you let out a cry of pain. You glance down at your chest as a burst of pain floods through you, but there’s nothing there. Even still, the pain is so intense, unlike anything you’ve ever felt before, until it bleeds out to a hollow sense of numbness that radiates towards your core as you suddenly feel…empty.

               _You know what you have to do. Go._

You turn around slowly to see Kylo standing there, facing Snoke, the tip of his lightsaber poking through his right shoulder. You can see the crackling blade of crimson just, _there_ , and your heart stops beating in your chest as you face the realization that while Ani had been injured, Kylo’s concentration had been severed to the point where Snoke had been able to wrest his lightsaber away from him and plunge it through his chest, in a similar manner to which Kylo had killed his own father. You can almost hear Kylo gritting his teeth in your head, straining against the pain for a single moment more before the lightsaber retracts and Kylo slumps to his knees before he falls to his side. You know he would want you to take that opportunity to escape, or to charge Snoke and try to eliminate him when he least expected it, but your feet are rooted to the floor.

               For a moment you don’t hear anything, and it seems as though all sounds had escaped your comprehension. “Dad?” Ani’s voice is the first to break the deafening silence around your eardrums, and you can feel your lower lip start to tremble again as you stare down at his body.

               “Well, that was unexpected,” Snoke muses. “But I should have known sentiment would have eventually been his downfall. He’s so like his father in that way.”

               You collapse to your knees beside Kylo’s body and take his hand in yours without even realizing what you’re doing. _Kylo-?_

“Bring the girl and the boy,” Snoke says as he turns on his heel. “Kill the rest.” You look up at him, your lips parted in shock as you feel the stiff leather of Kylo’s gloves underneath your fingertips. Snoke just smirks at you from over his shoulder as he strides away, a sneer curling on his upper lip.

_I know you want your revenge._

_Come find me._

The sound of blaster fire suddenly erupts around you again, but you don’t even notice it. Out of the corner of your eye you can see Snoke turn the corner as he strides away, and you can only imagine that he wanted to incite your anger now by making you fight, making you kill as many Storm Troopers as you could to draw your deeper into the dark side and weaken you more than you’ve already been weakened, but you just feel numb from the inside out, as if the Force bond was leeching all the life out of your body as well.

Suddenly Kylo’s voice is there in your head, faint, but still there nonetheless. _Go back to D’Qar. Stay with him. Stay with the pilot. He’ll-_

Kylo doesn’t go on, but he doesn’t need to. Part of him, the insecure part of himself that Snoke had constantly put down since he was a child, told him that you would never be with him when you could be with someone like Poe. It wasn’t true, and you had tried to assure him that it wasn’t, but your recent actions as of late combined with his overwhelming denial that he was worth anything cemented the notion that Poe could give you a better life than he could, but it wasn’t one that you wanted. Kylo had been ready to sacrifice himself for you and Ani, to let you have a life he always _thought_ you wanted, and while you would never have let him go through with it, that no longer mattered. What was done was done, and Kylo was slowly dying on the cold metal floor in front of you, with nothing you could do to save him.

               “I need you,” you tell him, blubbering your words through your tears. You can hear fighting behind you, and you think you can feel a stray blaster bolt dive into the side of your leg, but you barely even notice it. “I love you, Kylo, please don’t leave me, please stay with me. I can’t do this without you, I can’t, I-“

               Ani’s sudden cry as he gets knocked back into a wall is the only thing that breaks you from your trance, and you drop Kylo’s hand quickly as you summon your lightsaber back into your grip. You whirl around quickly, slashing through two Storm Troopers before you plunge one of the ends of your blade into the back of the Storm Trooper that had Ani cornered. Poe had gotten his hands on another blaster and was making short work of the two other Storm Troopers that were nearby, while you used the Force to knock a Storm Trooper that had Ladson pinned on the ground into the wall so hard that you could hear the bones crack in his skull as he slumped to the floor.

               Once most of the Storm Troopers had either fled or were lying lifeless on the ground, you drop back beside Kylo, taking his gloved hand in yours again as you raise it to your lips, just staring down at him. His eyes are shut, and he could almost be sleeping, if not for the fact that he looked so deathly pale, all the color in his face gone. “Dad?” Ani asks again, and you can feel your hands shuddering now, tremoring with emotion that you had never felt before.

               “Take him back to D’Qar,” you say as you climb to your feet, your head still bowed. “Take him and Ani back to D’Qar.”

               “And how do you expect us to get him back there?” Ladson demands. “There’s only the four of us and-“

               You grab him by the shoulders and shove him up against the wall, unable to see him clearly through your tear-streaked vision. “He gave his life to save yours,” you scream in his face. “And you will take him back to D’Qar.”

               “He’s not gone yet,” Ani says as he gets to his feet, but his voice is small compared to yours. “There may be time to save him.”

               “Go,” you tell him. “The hangar isn’t far off. Take him and go, quickly.”

               “What are you going to do?” Poe asks, but you just shake your head from side to side. Someone needed to distract Snoke to make sure they got away safely, but beyond that, this was your mess. You had done terrible things aboard this ship, and you were finally going to atone for them. You had helped the First Order achieve violence on a massive scale, and now you were going to make up for the terrible things that you had done by destroying the First Order once and for all.

               You don’t look behind you as you walk down the hallway, twirling the lightsaber in a figure eight around each side of your body. You can hear Ani’s voice call out your name and you can hear Poe say… _something_ , but you don’t stop to trade words with them. The time for words was over. Your indecision had led to Kylo’s death, and while you knew Snoke couldn’t even keep his word to let Ladson and Poe both live, you should have done something, anything, to help Kylo more than you had. But you didn’t. You were protecting the others, protecting Ani, and you didn’t help him.

               Even still, the time to fix past mistakes was gone, and the only thing left to do now was get revenge. As you strike through two more Storm Troopers that were coming around a corner, in the distance you can see a First Order officer in a dark uniform quickly fumbling with the latch in order to raise the sector alarm. You could not allow that to happen. Without thinking, you stretched your hand forward and raised him up into the air, choking the life out of him as you watched him kick until his legs went limp. You tossed his body carelessly to the opposite wall as you approached, and when you looked down to see his face, you couldn’t help but let a wave of nausea wash over you as you realized that you were looking down into the face of none other than Shayne, his eyes wide and bulging in his sockets.

               You allow yourself to feel a momentary pang of regret before you shake your head and move on. Kylo’s blood was already on your hands, and Shayne’s was hardly anything by comparison. If anything, you had spent so long wondering whether he had lived or died that a part of you was almost relieved to know that there would be no more questions now. Shayne was no longer missing, now he was dead, and his indiscernible presence wouldn’t haunt your conscience anymore.

               You find Hux’s body in the command center, standing with his back to you. As you enter, you can’t help but notice that it’s completely empty, devoid of all other people. You don’t know where they are, but the less people whose blood you had to spill right now, the better. You were prepared to kill anyone, absolutely anyone, who came between you and Snoke, and that sentiment was only furthered as he turned around, wearing a devious smirk across his features.

               “You killed Kylo,” you snarl, brandishing your lightsaber in front of you. “I told you there would be no way I would join you if you killed him, and-“

               “That would only have earned your obedience,” Snoke explains. “I needed to earn your allegiance. I need you to _owe_ me. I need you to know exactly what it feels like to lose what you hold most dear to know just how far you would go to never have to feel that way again.”

               “What are you talking about?” you demand. “You killed him. You can’t bring him back.”

               “Can’t I?” Snoke asks, and you can feel goosebumps prickle on your skin as you realize this had been his plan all along. “I was able to use the Force in order to restore myself at weakened power. What makes you think I can’t do the same for Ren, now, at the height of my power?”

               “So you’ll restore his life in exchange for my servitude?” you ask, but immediately you know that Kylo wouldn’t want that for you. Kylo wouldn’t want to be brought back only to watch you slowly fall to the dark side, to the path that he had since abandoned. He would lose you all over again, and you knew he wouldn’t want to watch you suffer through what he had already experienced. And yet, at the same time, you knew implicitly that you could no longer go on without Kylo. The Force bond had slipped away between you, and you couldn’t _feel_ without it. You had spent the past few years constantly aware of Kylo’s presence, his thoughts, his emotions, his feelings, and now it felt like there was just a big gaping hole where he should have been.

               “Thanks, but I’ll pass,” you tell him with firm resolve in your voice as you steady your lightsaber in front of you, brandishing both of your blades.

               “Are you really so foolish to believe that you can counter me with your inferior Force abilities?” Snoke asks, and if you’re not mistaken, he seems almost insulted by the insinuation.

               “No,” you tell him simply. “No Force powers. I want you to duel me. You have a lightsaber, don’t you? I want you to challenge me in a fair fight.”

               Snoke studies you for a moment, as if troubled. “And do you really think you can win?”

               “No.” Your reply is firm, immediate, and a smile graces Snoke’s lips as he raises his eyebrows in surprise.

               “Very well,” he replies, and from behind his back he produces a lightsaber with a hilt so jet black you could almost see yourself reflected off its polished surface. You’re expecting to see an angry burst of crimson protrude from the hilt, but the color isn’t red at all. It’s

               “Amber.” The words form on your lips, but you’re not quite sure if any sound actually escapes you as you stare at the amber blade in front of you. You had, of course, seen your own amber blade, but you had never opposed one before, and you had never expected to either. Rey had told you that they were rare, simply because amber was a sign of someone that was truly balanced between both the light side and the dark. You didn’t feel balanced, not as of late, but you supposed it at least indicated the potential for both was still inside of you.

               But Snoke was evil. Snoke was pure evil, and there should have been no way that his blades would have been anything but red, or green, or any other color besides _amber_. Was it possible that this was some sort of trick, that he was somehow influencing your vision to only see it as amber to throw you off? “How?” you ask, although you feel as though you can barely get the words out of your mouth.

               Snoke just smiles, pleased to see that your reaction was one that he had obviously intended. “That has already been explained to you,” he begins. “An amber colored lightsaber indicates the equal presence of both light and dark, a potential for _balance_ ; however, that does not mean it dictates _choice_.” You pause for a moment, letting the full weight of his words sink in. Did Snoke have the potential to be both light and dark, and simply chose to draw his power from the dark side of the Force while he committed all sorts of evil atrocities? Was it possible he hadn’t surrendered to the darkness at all, but merely chose to use the dark side when it was convenient for him to do so, without falling into its seductive vice?

               “That’s not possible,” you say, shaking your head back and forth. “No, you’re _evil_. That shouldn’t be possible.”

               “Isn’t it?” Snoke asks as he tilts his head to the side. “The power to create life requires a balance in the Force, between both the light side and the dark. I would not be as strong as I am without being able to harness the power of both.”

               “How can you harness the power of both when everything you do you do to benefit you?” you demand. “There is no good in you. It shouldn’t be possible.”

               Snoke just shakes his head from side to side, as if he’s disappointed in you. “This has nothing to do with me, my young apprentice,” he tells you. “And everything to do with you. You want to believe that you have surrendered to the dark side to excuse your actions. You cannot blame the dark side for what was your own choice. You have the balance necessary to harness the capabilities of both, and if you follow me, I can help teach you control.”

               “You killed him,” you shriek at him, unable to suppress the fury that scratches at your throat as the words leap out of you like knives.

               “I got your attention,” Snoke replies. “Ren was always weak and sentimental, always yearning for the family he never had. He would never be able to reach his full potential with you around, and he proved it by letting himself get distracted. It’s really quite pathetic. I had quite high hopes for him, but he has done nothing but disappoint me at every turn since he murdered Han Solo.”

               It’s right then that you realize that as complicated as the nature of his relationship with his father was, that ultimately that was the point when Kylo had freed himself of Snoke’s control. Not enough to completely break it, no, but while he thought that murdering his father would have made him stronger, it shook his blind allegiance to Snoke to the core. You could see then why he wanted to stay away from you, to protect you: if Snoke could convince him to murder his own father, he wasn’t sure what Snoke would be able to convince him to do. But it seemed Snoke had simply given up on him and found a new target. You and your son, and you were not about to watch Ani slip into the same trap that his father had fallen into.

               “All you did was make me angry,” you tell him, your voice vicious. “You are never going to get what you want out of me, or my son.”

               “Aren’t I?” Snoke asks, his head tilting to the side. “Right now you think your friends are escaping the hangar, taking your son back to the Resistance. Do you think he’s really going to leave and let you stay behind?” He closes his eyes, as if he’s focusing. “Right now he’s using the lightsaber of Anakin Skywalker to cut his way through the lines of Storm Troopers I’m feeding his way. His aggression is much more tempered than his father’s, reflected inwards towards himself-“ Snoke opens his eyes again, a self-satisfied smile playing on his lips. “Yes, I can use him.”

               “But you will _not_ ,” you snap viciously, brandishing your lightsaber in front of you again. “You killed Kylo to break me, but for his sake, I will not allow myself to be broken. You already used me once, manipulated me against him, had me doubt myself and question my loyalty to him, and that will _never_ happen again. You may have thought you could use his life as leverage to control me, but you’re wrong. Kylo didn’t die to save me, he did it to save Ani, to make sure I could defeat you so that his son would never have to suffer like he did.”

               Snoke tilts his head to the side, as if he’s confused. “You really think you can defeat me.” You nod your head forward, jaw set, eyes gleaming with tears that haven’t yet dared to fall. You would not let Kylo’s sacrifice be in vain. He had been right after all. It would only have been a matter of time until Snoke bargained his life for your complete obedience, but that was never going to happen. Kylo would never have wanted that life for you, and you weren’t going to dishonor his memory by even entertaining that notion. No, you would fight Snoke, and you would probably die, but if you could take him down with you then at least you would know for sure that Ani would be safe. You could only hope that you would join Kylo in the After, along with Obi-Wan and Anakin, so you could still see Ani. So you could apologize to Rey. So you could know that your sacrifice would not have been in vain.

               Snoke seems to sense your resolve as he shakes his head again. “It’s a pity,” he mutters under his breath. “In the beginning, you were so fiercely loyal to Ren that you would have bowed to me without question. If he hadn’t sent you away, I could have made you both extremely powerful in your own right.”

               “I don’t want power,” you tell him with more conviction in your voice. “I don’t want control. I don’t want my decisions to have weight and I don’t want to make choices that matter. I just want Kylo, and I may have realized that too late, but at least now I can go out appreciating just how much he loved me.”

               And that was all you had to say. There was no more time for words. You rush forward at Snoke brandishing your lightsaber, bringing it down over your head in an overhead strike that Snoke quickly reflects. He doesn’t just buff you off, however, he pushes the blade up against yours and somehow there is enough power behind his block that you go flying back, the vertebrae in the back of your neck snapping forward as you crash into the back of one of the controller’s consoles.

               As you recover, you look up just in time to see Snoke bringing his lightsaber down towards your head, and you quickly roll to the side in order to dodge him, sending Snoke’s lightsaber crashing through the console. Your roll has taken you through a door, and you find yourself drawn into the room where you had killed Major Dorska. You hadn’t particularly avoided that room, per se, but you can’t help the uneasy feeling that seems to seize you as you turn your gaze over to the chair where he had once sat. Snoke turns, and as he sees where you’ve landed, he begins to laugh, a cold, bitter sound, as he begins taking small, slow steps towards you. Putting aside your unease, you quickly bring your lightsaber up, ready to defend against a new barrage of Snoke’s attacks when you suddenly hear Poe’s voice in your head.

               _Practice makes perfect._

 _Huh?_ You look towards Snoke to see if this was one of his tricks, but his expression has not changed as he continues his slow march towards you. You glance around the room as if looking for an explanation, but find none. Practice? Snapping Dorska’s neck only worked because he wasn’t expecting it, _and_ he wasn’t Force-sensitive. Battling Snoke was completely different in every single way that you could think of. As Snoke continues his advance, you’re not sure how you’re going to be able to overpower his strikes, let alone _him._ Suddenly, again, without warning, you hear Rey’s voice in your head.

               _…when you’re fighting with a lightsaber, especially your own, your awareness and reflexes will increase to a level you will never experience fighting with other weapons._

Suddenly it struck you that the reason why Snoke’s block was so powerful was because he was forcibly channeling his own Force abilities through his lightsaber. Fortunately, you had _two_ crystals in your lightsaber that were powerful enough for you to draw from. You focus, willing yourself to imagine that you were a leaf in the wind, adrift in the flow of the Force, rather than someone striving to force your own destiny on the galaxy. To your right, you can feel the raw power of Snoke approaching, and you instinctively raise your lightsaber to perfectly block a side cut, willing Snoke’s blade to stop before he can complete his strike. The blades make contact, and both you and Snoke momentarily pause with surprise. Rather than being thrown into the wall, you were still rooted in place, still upright, standing strong.

               Snoke’s look of surprise is quickly replaced with a sneer. “Good, I always thought you were a quick study, and you certainly do not disappoint,” he taunts in Hux’s familiar voice. “In time, you will serve me quite well.”

               “I am never going to serve you,” you almost shriek, momentarily letting your anger get the better at you once again. “I am going to kill you, or I’m going to die, but either way I will _never_ let you control me.”

               Snoke just sniffs indifferently. “So be it. You had such potential, and it’s a pity to see you waste it on that fool, Kylo Ren. His own weakness undermined your potential, and it’s a shame to see you give in to it when you could have the strength you’ve always dreamed of having.” He raises his hand and you brace for the inevitable push, only to see that his hand has begun glowing blue. By sheer instinct, you crouch and snap your blade up to protect you, only to find that you are surrounded in a cage of what looks like lightning, barely protected by your lightsaber’s twin blades.

               “How are you doing this?” you shout at Snoke. No one had ever warned you about something like this, not Luke or Rey or even Kylo. You had no idea how he was channeling the Force in such a way, or the sort of raw power that Snoke seemed to be able to control with such ease.

               Snoke just laughs as he allows you a brief reprieve from his lightning storm. “Those fools could never do such a thing,” he explains, as if reading your thoughts. “The girl and the Jedi simply don’t have what it takes, and Ren was always too sentimental to ever harness _true_ power. Power like this requires total detachment, and you would never have achieved it while Ren lived.”

               You just shake your head angrily as you try to ignore him. Snoke was set on believing that you wanted power for the sake of strength, and while that had been true to some extent, you didn’t want it anymore. It simply didn’t matter now that Kylo was gone, nothing mattered, so long as you could keep Ani safe, but you tried to distance yourself from thoughts of them as you tried to assess the situation. Clearly, Snoke wasn’t going to stick to his agreement of not using Force powers, which only meant that you would have to find some way to outlast him. With a cry, you leap towards him and begin your assault, drawing on everything Phasma, Kylo, and Rey had taught you over the years, downcuts, uppercuts, swipes, slowly forcing Snoke backwards step by step towards a door set in the wall. The whole way, Snoke doesn’t look the least bit unnerved. In fact, he looks almost amused through the whole process, easily blocking each of your attacks as the muscles in your upper arms shiver and quake with exertion. Just as you push him to the wall, he shunts your blade to the side and sends a blast of lightning into your chest, throwing you backwards into the center of the room.

               _Shit, that hurt._

You quickly jump up and reignite your lightsaber in preparation for the next strike from Snoke, but he has vanished from the room, presumably through the now-open door on the far wall. You slowly get to your feet, set with the intention of finding Snoke and ending this once and for all. Kylo died trying to protect you and Ani, and Snoke _could not_ get to Ani under any circumstances. You hoped he had left the _Propitiate_ by now, but just in case he hadn’t, you had to do whatever you could to slow Snoke down at all costs.

               As you run towards the door, Snoke’s voice echoes in your head. _Come along, Commander. I remember how you feel about promises, and it’s only fitting you should see the fruits of your labor before you die._

You try to shake off the creepy, uneasy feeling that has since settled around your shoulders like a thin film as you make your way through the door and down a long narrow passageway lined with bulkhead baffles covered in warning signs, quickly realizing where you’re headed. It appeared Snoke was leading you somewhere that you did not want to go at any cost, into the space containing the _Propitiate’s_ main weapon. The passageway comes to an end, and you stop short of a railing overlooking a momentous sight. Below you are the three focusing chambers where all nine of the ignition lasers met, followed by a massive chamber covered in row upon row of Kyber crystals mounted in black steel you supposed was Meranian alloy. You wanted to study it further, but there was no time to focus on the weapon that you had helped create. You had to find Snoke, and quickly. You spot a short bridge connecting the ledge you’re on to a long platform off to the right, and you quickly make your way slowly across the bridge keeping alert for any sign of Snoke.

               _You have nothing to worry about, Commander. It would be poor form to kill a guest before you’ve seen all that I have to show you. Please, do continue._

You push down your feeling of dread as you reach the end of the bridge to reach a circle of consoles surrounded by blast shields, the panels of each projecting multiple screens and data readouts. It seems like a control center, and, given its location, you could only assume that this was the local control station for the main weapon. Once you killed Snoke, you knew that the weapon had to be destroyed, and it seemed as though you were the only one around who could do it. Thousands, millions had already died when it was fired _once_ , and you wouldn’t allow anyone else to suffer through one of your reckless mistakes. Up ahead, there is a dark enclosed passageway, and you look around to ensure that there were no other routes to take before proceeding towards the passage with caution. You knew implicitly that Snoke could be hiding there in the dark, just waiting-

               Your thoughts are cut off by a sudden series of lights flickering on inside the passage, revealing a long gray walkway with windows on both sides, stretching for what seemed like the entire length of the ship, interspersed with platforms placed at regular intervals. You approach the passage with trepidation, taking one slow step at a time, barely daring to look through the windows on either side of you. If Snoke was leading you into a trap, you wanted to be aware of it as soon as possible. Around you, outside the windows, lights begin to flick on as you pass their locations, but you ignore them as you continue down the main passageway.

               _Welcome to the main attraction, Commander._

With a flash of anger at how in control of the situation Snoke seemed to be without you being able to sense him at all, you wheel around several times, hoping to catch a glimpse of him through the glass, when you realize the lights that you had passed weren’t lights. On either side of you are viewing cutouts into the two main firing chambers, which are steadily glowing brighter and brighter red as they power up. All around you, you can feel something changing in the Force, as if all of the energy was slowly being drawn from your body and into the chambers. You watch the gathering red, crackling energy spheres in the chambers for as long as you can, until your legs finally begin to work as you sprint forwards through the passageway towards the next platform.

If those chambers were lit, Snoke was planning on firing on another planet, or worse yet, the Resistance ships coming to aid Ani, Poe, and Ladson. Considering the only other planet nearby was Du Hutta, the Resistance ships were the only likely option, and you had to strike Snoke down before that happened. You come out of the tunnel and sprint to the shielded control room on this platform. Inside, there is no one around controlling the weapon, and Snoke’s taunting laughter fills your head. Through his laughter, you begin to hear a telltale whine followed by a frantic beeping, and you have just enough time to turn and jump away from the control room as it suddenly transforms into a blossom of flame and twisted steel, nearly sending you over the edge to your death below.

               You can hear a ringing in your ears from the explosion, but a quick check of yourself assures you that you had been auspiciously lucky, unharmed by any loose bits of flying shrapnel and other debris. “Fight me,” you scream as you climb shakily to your feet, pulling your lightsaber back into your hand. “Stop running and _fight.”_

_In time, Commander. Your tour is almost over, and this is the final display. I suggest you take cover._

_-again?_ You get a sinking feeling in your chest that drops down to the pit of your stomach, and you turn to see that the two angry red spheres of the chambers have stopped glowing, and from somewhere in the distance a loud, low-pitched hum begins that you can feel reverberating in your core, steadily charging until it’s a high-pitched whine accompanied by a blaring klaxon alarm. You run back to the safety of the tunnel, and roll inside just in time to see the spheres suddenly collapse, sending twin orange beams down white-hot guide rails. As the beams fade into the distance, Snoke’s voice again fills your head.

               _I’m afraid your friends from the Resistance may be a bit…delayed. There is no help coming for you, so this is your last chance._ I _am your only hope. Submit to me now or die._

“Not even a choice,” you spit as you stand back up and continue your search for him. Snoke had already taken too much, and yet he seemed determined to push you, determined to demand more from you. His ambition drove Kylo to send you away for years to protect you and Ani. He had tortured Kylo all his life, suppressing his independence and playing on his insecurities to fashion him into an unquestioning weapon, only to discard him in the end as if he meant nothing, as if he was just an expendable prop to be used. He had cut off Poe and Ladson’s chances of escape, and likely killed hundreds in the Resistance to do it. He corrupted _you_ so that what little time you had left to spend with Kylo, you had squandered directing vicious operation after vicious operation in a desperate bid to gain what you thought was Hux’s approval, and now, he was determined to corrupt Ani, to use him and discard him as he had with you and Kylo. While you still lived, there wasn’t a chance that Snoke would ever take Ani from you, even if you had to give yourself completely over to the dark side to stop him.

               “Stop running and _fight_ ,” you scream as you turn in a slow circle, looking every which way for any sign of him.

               _I see you still choose foolishness, Commander. You’re not far. I’ll be waiting. Make it a challenge for me, at the very least._

You walk back past the remains of the control room and into the next leg of the passage, and you immediately know you’re finally close by the oppressive sense of cold hate coming from the end of the passage. You desperately try to recall anything you can to help you finally take down Snoke once and for all, and one of your earliest memories of your Force training with Kylo slowly comes back to you as you try to hold back your tears.

               _Dark side users draw their abilities from dark emotions, like fear, hatred, and anger._

Suddenly, another voice you don’t recognize adds to this memory, although you can’t be sure where or who it’s coming from.

               _Mmm, much fear I sense in you. Burdened by doubt and suffering you are. To be one with the Force, you must learn to let go, then truly powerful, you will become. Anger, hate, give you strength they will, but worthless allies are they. Love, sacrifice, powerful allies are these. Focus, they give you, in life and death. Use them, and overcome, you will._

Something else draws the memory of a young Ani to you, sitting sleepily on his bed back when you had first arrived on Naboo.

               _He said the dark side is like a stone, like if you throw it in water, it sinks, and then you can’t get back up._

As you walk the long passage leading to the next platform, step by cautious step, it becomes clear to you that in order to defeat Snoke, you had no choice but to complete your fall to the dark side and let it take you as far as it could. Anger would only distract you, and you couldn’t hate Snoke more than you already did. Instead, you would have to draw on the loss of Kylo for the strength to get you through this, and you could only hope your love for both him and Ani would keep you from being totally lost if you somehow survived.

               You reach the end of the passage, and finally you see Hux’s form standing at the platform railing, hands clasped behind his back, overlooking the massive rail guides of the weapon. He isn’t armed, and for a moment you wonder if maybe you had caught him off his guard. You could end this and avenge Kylo, right now, you could, but as you ignited the twin blades of your lightsaber you couldn’t help but notice that they felt stronger than usual, humming with some sort of charged frequency. You take slow, deliberate steps towards Snoke, and stop no more than three feet away from him, your lightsaber poised to engage in a fatal strike. “Any last words, _Supreme Leader_?”

               Snoke only laughs in response as he casually releases his hands, and as you hear a lightsaber ignite behind you, you manage to dive out of the way just in time to avoid being cut in half by his speeding amber blade. You roll out of the dive and bring your blades back up just in time to block his downward cut and twist for a cut to his legs, but Snoke just jumps out of the way and brings his lightsaber down on the floor where you were laying just as you flip back up to your feet. Rey’s instruction about fighting single-bladed lightsabers comes back to you, and you begin spinning your lightsaber, making sure it never stopped moving to maximize the force against Snoke’s blade. Now, it seemed you and Snoke were finally evenly matched, trading cuts and countercuts, and with every passing swing time seems to slow down for you until Snoke’s frantic blocks and your countercuts seem to happen at the pace of your training bouts with Rey. In your overconfidence blocking one strangely-angled cross-strike, however, you miss the fact that Snoke has shifted his weight, planting a kick straight into your chest. As you fly through the air, you curse yourself for falling for the same trick Rey had used against you in your duel so long ago. As you land on your side, you look up to see Snoke shaking his head as he chuckles softly.

               “You’re going to die,” you snap with as much venom as you can must through your heavy breathing, but Snoke himself seems more or less unaffected.

               “Foolish girl,” he says suddenly, his voice tinted with just a trace of acrimony. “So many have told me such, and yet none have succeeded. Now, any last words, _Commander_?”

               “Fuck you,” you growl, your voice low in your throat. “You’re going to pay for what you did to Kylo. You destroyed his life, and in his place, I’m going to take yours.” You pick up your lightsaber, prepared to start another round, but Snoke just shakes his head and brings one hand up in the classic gesture of a Force choke as you feel yourself being lifted into the air.

               It suddenly occurs to you that Snoke was either going to snap your neck like you did to Major Dorska, or he was going to Force choke you to death much like Kylo had once almost succeeded in doing back on the Starkiller Base when you had first met. After everything you had been through, you refused to die this way, and you focused all your strength on trying to resist it as you allowed your thoughts to dwell on how disappointed Kylo would be to see you dying this way. You put as much will as you can into resisting his clutch, and as you feel your toes grace the ground again, you will the very air in Snoke’s lungs to burn as you had once promised so long ago as you raise your hand, sending him flying across the platform and down the way you had come with a few small sparks that seemed to fly straight out of your palm.

               _Holy shit._

               You hold your hand out in front of you and stare at it, almost in disbelief, as Snoke recovers himself with a laugh and gets to his feet somewhere down the tunnel. “Good, good,” he says appreciatively. “Finally, you present me with at least somewhat of a challenge. I can assure you, once you are gone, I will not forget the pleasure that your death will provide me.” As Snoke reignites his lightsaber and walks towards you, you can suddenly hear Ani’s voice in your head.

               _Mom, mom, I don’t know how to get to you, but you need this. You need to take this._

 _Ani, no, you need to go, you need to get out of here_ right now _, you-_

Suddenly you can’t help but get the feeling that Kylo is coming towards you, and you brace yourself instinctively as you hear something clattering beside you on the platform deck. You glance around quickly, and stunned by the impossible, you can see Kylo’s lightsaber lying there beside you, as if Ani had willed the Force to guide it to your location. As you pick up his lightsaber, you can’t help but close your eyes and try to establish your connection to him, trying to open the link that you hope hasn’t yet closed. Almost impossibly, you can hear Kylo’s voice again, echoing through your mind as if he was standing right beside you.

               _Take this. Let me help as much as I can._

You can feel hot tears streaming down your face as you clutch the lightsaber to your chest, and as Snoke shoots you a wary look, you realize that you can no longer feel Snoke stirring in your mind. Somehow, Kylo has managed to shut him out of your thoughts, and you can’t help but squeeze Kylo’s lightsaber a little tighter as you activate it. It no longer fights you like it once did, no longer snapping or crackling with uncontrollable rage. Instead, it gives off a steady, strong hum that matches the harmony of your own lightsaber, as if it’s suddenly become attuned to you and ready to fight. Your training had seemingly begun by holding Kylo’s lightsaber, and it was only fitting that you should meet your end holding it. Snoke has closed the distance now, but his previous smugness seems to have dissolved, replaced by a sense of strained concentration. You simply glare in his direction as you raise your three blades to meet his one, at peace with the fact that you were going to die, but at the very least you would protect Ani and take Snoke out with you in the process.

               _I love you, Kylo. I’ll see you soon, okay?_

You launch off your back foot and begin wheeling both lightsabers, twisting and turning your body into strike after strike. Snoke is impossibly fast, however, somehow fending off every strike you send his way, even managing a few counter-strikes that you quickly block. Snoke had clearly been holding back before, and now you were fighting the _real_ Snoke, no pretenses, no pride, only destiny and the will of the Force to guide your strikes. No matter how you assault him, however, Snoke seems completely tireless, never slowing, never relenting, refusing to allow you to have the upper hand. The memory of Kylo in the hangar passage comes back to you, and you listen closely as the memory stirs.

               _There is a powerful ancient ritual that dark wielders can use called a thought bomb._

You can feel the massive amount of power that Kylo had already managed to store in his lightsaber’s cracked Kyber crystal, but you didn’t know if it was enough or how to use it.

               _I don’t know how it works, Kylo, I don’t know what I need to do. Help me._

For a moment you don’t expect to hear anything, but suddenly Kylo’s voice comes back to you, although it sounds faint and far away. _You have to begin draining all the power available around you, including from yourself, and store it in an energy-bearing crystal. I managed to drain some from Snoke earlier; that’s how you’re able to fight him._

 _But how?_ you ask. _I can’t_ hate _my way into it, can I?_

Another unfamiliar voice comes to guide you.

               _Knowledge is not necessary. Look around you. Feel, don’t think. Trust your instincts._

As you continue to push Snoke down the passageway, you’re about to ask what that was supposed to mean, when your two amber blades suddenly experience another power surge just as they make contact with Snoke’s, blasting him further down the passage.

               _What was_ that _?_

The voice had said to look around you, but you _feel_ it before you can see it, one of the massive Kyber crystals mounted to the side of one of the weapon’s firing chambers. You pull your eyes away from it as you glance down at your aggressively vibrating lightsaber before your mind suddenly makes the connection. Your lightsaber was formed from the remains of the Starkiller Base, and it only made sense that the First Order would have scavenged what they could from its wreckage as well. The weapon’s crystal and your lightsaber crystals must have once been part of the same massive crystal, and now not only were they cooperating the way that you wanted them to, but they are all distinctly attuned to you. With a hesitant glance back towards Snoke, you quickly walk towards the crystal, and your suspicions are confirmed when the larger crystal begins glowing amber as you approach.

               Inspired by new confidence, you stare down Snoke’s advancing form and bring Kylo’s lightsaber up in a looping traditional duelists’ salute. “I’m going to enjoy killing you,” you tell him firmly as you prepare for battle.

               “You can’t do it,” Snoke sneers. “You’re too worried about what will become of your son. Ren suffered the same conflict, and that led to his death, as it will yours.”

               As he begins to walk towards you, you realize that he’s right, but for the wrong reasons. Kylo was always caught between the light side and the dark, even in his darkest moments. You, however, had nothing to lose. Snoke had already taken Kylo from you. As for Ani, even if you died here, so long as you destroyed Snoke here and now, you would never have to worry about him being corrupted, and you could be sure that Leia and the others would make sure that he was well cared for back at the Resistance. Snoke was right, Kylo might not have been able to finish it, but he was wrong about you. You were consumed by the darkness, and you were finally going to use it to your advantage.

               “Goodbye, _Supreme Leader_ ,” you say, then reach out to break the glass and touch the massive crystal with the tip of Kylo’s lightsaber. Instantly, you feel a surge of power unlike anything you had ever felt before, and as Snoke raises his lightsaber to cut you down, you fix him with a glare and freeze him in place before blasting him back to the end of the passageway.

               _Kill him,_ Kylo urges inside your mind. _I’ll see you soon._

And just like that, you feel Kylo disappear from your side, replaced by the raw, unrestrained power of the dark side of the Force that he had been holding back, keeping it from consuming you entirely before you were ready. You were going to need power, and lots of it. Since you and Snoke were the only ones around, you had to draw as much power as possible from the remaining power in the weapon’s crystals, but you had no idea if it would be enough. By instinct, you begin directing all power from the weapon’s crystal arrays to your and Kylo’s lightsabers, storing as much energy as possible. After nearly a minute, you feel the leftover energy run out as you turn back to look at Snoke. He’s advanced about halfway down the passageway, forced to crawl against the force of the waves of energy emanating off of you. He sees you pause, and he meets your eyes with a sneer.

               “It’s not enough,” he taunts. “You’ll never be able to do it. You’re not strong enough.”

               “Watch me,” you spit at him. This was for Kylo, this was for Ani, and everyone that you and Kylo had ever hurt, for everyone that _Snoke_ had ever hurt and destroyed and maimed by his ruthless ambition to conquer the galaxy. Maybe if Snoke was gone for good, the galaxy would finally have a chance to mend and be at peace, and that was what you were fighting for. Not a definite peace, but the hope of one, and the optimism of such a future and what that might bring to your child.

               You turn towards him and kneel, bracing for the inevitable pain, then envision Snoke disintegrating, speck by speck, and the pieces flying into the blades of your lightsaber one by one. Both yours and Kylo’s lightsabers feel like they’re near capacity, so you opt to drain as much of your combined life energies into your lightsaber’s nova crystals as you can. Ahead, you can see that it’s working, as Snoke has collapsed and is clearly in pain. You can only whimper as the pain hits you as well, and it feels like fireworks are exploding inside your mind as you add your energy to the crystals as well. The nova crystals are small, however, and fill up quickly, extinguishing your lightsaber once they’re completely saturated. Now all you had to defend yourself against Snoke was Kylo’s lightsaber and the massive amount of energy you had collected.

               You stand up and brace yourself, not knowing what to expect. The air between you and Snoke is noticeably charged, and as he stands up, you envision the flesh being stripped from his bones before they in turn are crushed to powder. You feel the tension build in both lightsabers until they suddenly reach a breaking point and discharge their stored energy, sending a massive surge down the shielded passageway. For a brief moment, you feel as though a great weight had been lifted from you as you watch Snoke collapse into a heap on the floor. That relief is quickly extinguished when the blast of the thought bomb rebounds off the weapon’s shielded back plates and back through Snoke, as it hits you dead on. The pain of this far outweighs what you had felt when you were siphoning your energy to power the blast. Instead of fireworks exploding inside your head, it now felt as though every cell in your body was being incinerated from the inside out, and you can feel that your connection to the Force has been diminished, at least temporarily, if not permanently. Snoke stirs, turning over with a groan, and you pick up Kylo’s lightsaber to finish this once and for all. In your current state, you doubted your lightsaber would work properly for you, and so you quickly clip it to your belt as you take Kylo’s lightsaber in both hands. It only seemed fitting; Kylo should have been here to finish the job himself, but at least you could finally strike Snoke down for good using the force of your combined energies. As he senses your approach, Snoke grabs his lightsaber and ignites it as he slowly gets to his feet.

               Standing before you is not the body of Hux as you had once known him. No, Snoke had been hit by your blast twice, and it clearly showed. Now, he looked somewhat like your memory of Snoke’s appearance in the holo on board the _Resolute_ , but in a word, _shredded_ , bits of skin dangling from bones that seemed to poke through his muscles at awkward angles. Still, he doesn’t move like he’s nearly been killed, and taunts you even as you approach, with a jaw that hangs open like the mouth of a snake waiting to inhale its prey.

               _I told you that you didn’t have the power to do it. You are so very, very weak, just like your mother._

You ignore this worthless taunt as you limp towards him, picking up Kylo’s lightsaber in one last salute before Snoke charges you, surprised that you can still fend him off in your weakened state. Snoke might have sounded confident and unaffected, but the blast had clearly dampened his speed and his torn body could no longer sustain his previous reflexes. Still, after one rather powerful cut, Snoke deflects your attack into the floor, slashing at your abdomen before he raises his lightsaber for the killing blow. It’s over for you, you know it is, but as you can feel the life leaving your body, you can feel one final surge of energy coming from Kylo, giving you the strength to continue. Snoke is too slow on the down cut, too weakened by the massive depletion of the Force that the blast had caused, and you deliberately twist, cutting cleanly through his wrists before the blow could land, his lightsaber clattering harmlessly at your feet. As he howls with rage and prepares to charge you like a handless specter of Rhen Var, you spin in place, letting the momentum of your cut carry the lightsaber around with you, straight through Snoke’s neck as you separate his head from his body.

               And that was that. The monster that had haunted Kylo since he was a child had been defeated, and although you wished he would have been here to land the final strike himself, you knew that he was there with you regardless. Even still, that was only part one of your plan. You had gotten revenge for Kylo, and now you had to get revenge for yourself. You had done terrible things on the _Propitiate_ , had done terrible things for the First Order, and while you still didn’t believe the Republic to be any better, what the Republic did was not your concern. Those elected officials who had blood on their hands would have to deal with their own sins, but if you had an opportunity to make reparations for yours, then you were going to take it.

               For the longest time, you wondered how the First Order was ever going to fire the weapon without a cooperative Force-user, and now you knew. His remains lay smoking at your feet, never again to channel his exceptional Force abilities to achieve violence on such a massive scale ever again. You pick up Snoke’s lightsaber and clip it to your belt, just in case he had a Force lock on the main firing console, and limp the rest of the short distance to the first ring of consoles by the command center. Almost without thinking, you walk to the console facing towards the front of the ship and lean down over it, poring through the functions on the panel, noting the red flashing lockout lights owing to the fact that you had depleted the crystals. You knew Snoke wouldn’t want to be limited by automatic protection systems, especially on a warship, and so there had to be a way to override the system. Underneath the main panel you find what you need, a strange knob-less control marked _BATTLE OVERRIDE_ , and you bend down to get a closer look. The socket looked suspiciously like it would fit the hilt of Snoke’s asymmetrical lightsaber, and you’re not all surprised to find that it fits perfectly. By instinct, you turn it as though you’re turning a key in a lock, and almost immediately, every flashing red light on the panels around you turns a solid amber, accompanied by a ship-wide alarm and a monotone female voice drifting over the speakers.

               “Command override initiated. All overload protections on fire chambers one and two secured for combat emergency. All available damage control division crews, report to Main Fire Control for imminent emergency response.”

_Shit._

               You quickly turn to the console on your right, looking for the circuits to stop the alarm before the announcement could repeat. Right above a large green button, you find it, a switch marked _ALARM CUTOUT,_ and you quickly flip it, silencing both the alarm and the announcement, knowing that it couldn’t have been that easy. By protocol, you pressed the large green button underneath three times to send a ship-wide signal that the alarm had been cleared and there was nothing wrong. Taking stock of the various warnings flashing on the displays around you, it was clear your thought bomb had severely damaged the weapon, which was exactly what you wanted. In its current state, the weapon would consume itself and implode before it could fire, but you had to warn Ani before you armed the system.

 _Ani, get off this ship now_ , you say quickly. _It’s about to explode and I need you to get as far away from here as possible before it goes off._

 _What about you?_ is the frightened, panicked reply, and although you can’t imagine what it would be like to watch him lose two parents in one day, you knew he would be safer with the Resistance. Besides, if he _hurried_ like you asked him to, there might still be time to save Kylo’s life. He had been shot in the abdomen with Chewie’s bowcaster, had been swiped across the face with a lightsaber, and had gone through countless other atrocities that would have killed a lesser man. Kylo should have been killed instantly, but the fact that he was still hovering in the delicate balance only proved that he could live if they hurried.

               _Someone needs to set this off,_ you tell him. _There may still be time to save Kylo. Go now. Go, quickly._

You return to the first panel and begin flipping the emergency switches underneath all the plasteel safety covers, watching as each red system light changes to green until the last light above a large red lever turns green, and you hear the click of the lever unlocking, then pull it to the _ARMED_ position. Ahead of you, the chambers begin to glow red again, but this time they weren’t slowly lighting up. Instead, they were oscillating, brighter and darker, so you look around until you find another protected switched marked _REACTOR OSCILLATION CUTOUT_ and flip it, immediately causing the firing chambers to stop oscillating and start charging properly. Finally, you flip the last switch after the arming lever, marked _AUTOFIRE_. The ship may not have had an obvious self-destruct button, but the red flashing lights and series of irate beeps that the console emitted when you programmed it to seal the vents around the oscillating reactor and fire as soon as possible told you that –

               An explosion rocks the ship, followed by the General Quarters alarm, and you quickly rush over to the last console, typing in a quick series of commands to pull up the battle space around the _Propitiate._ The Resistance was here, finally, as determined to destroy it as you were, and you breathed a sigh of relief to know that they hadn’t been destroyed after all. Hopefully Poe would be able to communicate with them in some way to let them know that they were escaping so they wouldn’t shoot him down, but at least you had some help in destroying this thing once and for all.

               “Looks like I’m helping out the Resistance again after all,” you mutter under your breath as you direct your attention back to the console and find a way to lower the shields. The TIE Fighters that were around the ship were already in action, there was nothing you could do about that, but the Propitiate had been surrounded by a protective shield that was now going down in three…two…one…

               Another blast rocks the ship, this time much more violently than the first, and it throws you back onto your side, your temple smashing into the top of an adjacent console. You blink, trying to adjust your vision, as you lay on the floor on your side, trying to make some sense of your new surroundings. In an instant, suddenly everything had become strange and distant. The room was suddenly bathed in crimson lights, calling out a blinking warning, but as you tried to focus your eyes on them, they appear to be one unblinking, steady color. There were alarms sounding, but to your ears you felt as though they were happening somewhere far off in the distance. A thick trail of blood trailed like sludge down the top of your head, coating your eyebrow, and you sloppily wiped it away with the side of your wrist, smearing it into your hair as you winced at the prickle of pain from contact with your wound.

               Suddenly the doors to the fire control center opened and you quickly got to your feet, the room swaying as you stared at the two figures in white armor in front of you. You knew they were Storm Troopers by their white armor, but your vision was so blurry that you couldn’t even see their helmets clearly. One of them sees Hux’s lifeless body on the floor and yells something to you, but you can’t even decipher his words, and before you have a chance to ask him to repeat himself, you feel yourself being thrown backwards as a blaster bolt hits you square in your middle, just over the area where Snoke had struck you previously. You crumple to the floor, the air in your lungs feeling hotter and hotter with every breath, and idly you think you can smell smoke in the distance.

               You just lie on the floor, your breathing labored as you lie on your side, ear pressed into the side of your arm. You adjust yourself slightly and as you feel the cool trickle of blood run down your ear, you know that it’s over for you. Fortunately, you’re not in a lot of pain right now. Like Phasma, you had known you were going to die sooner or later, it was just one of those inevitable facts of life, but you had silently hoped that, when you did go, that you wouldn’t have to suffer through to the end, dying a slow death of starvation as you watched your body begin to weaken until it was frail to the point of disuse. No, you were quite content to meet a quick end, and although you were still on the cusp between the two worlds, you could feel your hold slipping on one of them.

               You could hear blaster bolts in the distance, and the two Storm Troopers turn around, but it doesn’t mean anything to you as you see a darkly dressed figure enter the doorway. “Kylo?” you ask softly, your eyes focusing on the shadow, but your brain can barely process what you’re seeing. In seemingly an instant, Kylo teleports from the doorway until he’s kneeling down beside you, smoothing your hair back. And, just like in a dream, you suddenly find yourself in his arms, resting your head against the stiff fabric of his scarf. It’s familiar, and relaxing, and you can’t help but cuddle yourself into him a little further as you content yourself with the cool leather underneath your cheek and his familiar smell of machine oil. You should have been almost surprised that he still had the same leather jacket after a few years, but you supposed a lot of things didn’t change. Naboo changed, but he had always kept flying –

               You blink, and as your vision clears you suddenly realize that the person who was carrying you to safety _wasn’t_ Kylo. “What are you doing?” you demand, more angry at yourself than your savior. “What are you doing? Put me down.”

               “Ani won’t go without you,” Poe yells, and while you can’t hear anything but the sound of his heartbeat in his chest, you assume it’s probably extremely loud all around you, between the blaster fire and the Resistance attacks outside. “And neither am I.”

               You just pout as you collapse into his chest, too weak to do anything more than that. You didn’t know how to go on without Kylo, and what’s more, you didn’t really want to. You wanted to meet your end here on the _Propitiate_ with him, where you could say that you redeemed yourself in a final act of sacrifice and go down as someone who had finally done something good and used their skills to better the galaxy, hopefully erasing at least some of your past misdeeds. If you lived, you would probably be tried as a war criminal and, if not executed, locked in a cell for the rest of your life, where Ani would have to bear the shame of your record, and you would have to spend the rest of your life without him and without Kylo, just waiting slowly for death to take you.

               Before you’re really even aware of it, Poe has you inside the shuttle as he lowers you into a seat. “Time to get out of here,” Poe yells as he turns towards Ladson in the cockpit. On the floor, you can see Kylo’s body lying outstretched and you can’t help but notice how tall he looks, his facial expression stiff and unchanging as he lies with his eyes closed. Ani is sitting on his knees on the floor beside him, hands pressed against his torso, eyes shut, and it looks as though he’s whispering something under his breath. You had explained to him once, a long time ago, that the dark side had the ability to destroy and the light side had the ability to heal. Was he trying to heal Kylo now? You were a bit disappointed in yourself for not thinking of that first, but you doubt it would have mattered anyway. The dark side only offered a perversion of true healing, and you didn’t think you were light enough to have been able to heal him anyway. But if there was anyone that could, it was Ani. Or Luke, or even Rey, if they could hurry back to the Resistance in time. You knew they each had their own reasons for hating him, but they might be able to be coerced into saving his life, at least for Leia’s sake.

               “I need a co-pilot,” Ladson yells back, and as Poe moves away from you to head towards the cockpit, you get unsteadily to your feet.

               “Hey, no,” Poe says quickly, holding out an arm towards you. “No, you need to sit down. You were hurt, you-“ Curious at the extent of your own injuries, you dip your head down as you lift up the hem of your shirt to study your navel, only to find that there’s nothing there. Well, there was something there, but it wasn’t skin. Through your vision you saw just a large patch of crimson, and if you weren’t mistaken, something else, maybe one of your intestines or the part of an organ poking through where the muscle wall of your abdomen had apparently been ripped away. It didn’t hurt, but you couldn’t deny that looking at the wound filled you with a strange combination of callous indifference and steadfast relief.

               “Oh thank the Force,” you manage, and your lips part in an involuntarily grin as a small laugh shakes your shoulders. You can’t see it, but the cracks of your teeth are stained with blood, and the look that Poe gives you as he appraises your wound is nothing short of horror. “For a second there, I thought I was going to live through that.”

               Your body collapses to the floor, and this time, there’s no one there to catch you as you slip away. You think you can just manage to feel Kylo’s gloved hand underneath your fingertips for a final time, and then your light goes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Pippin: I didn’t think it would end this way._
> 
>  
> 
> _Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it._
> 
> Their story does not end here.


	44. Chapter 44

               You had once thought that the First Order was not compromised of evil individuals, just misguided ones, that had all been brought together by Snoke through deceitful, manipulative means in order to try to harness their full potential. He had certainly tried to harness yours, but in the end you had learned that power for the sake of power was what gave rise to the true epitome of evil, and that was something that you wanted no part in. You had, at one point, truly believed that you had wanted strength and control above all other things, but now you knew better. Now you knew what you really wanted, and with that realization, you had lost them. Hux, or maybe it had been Snoke at the time, hadn’t been wrong when he told you that you can’t love what you can’t protect. That had been his warning to you, and you knew implicitly that if you had just stayed on the _Propitiate_ and not tried to run that he would not have taken Kylo from you. No, Kylo had to be punished for his desertion, for as Hux or Snoke had told you himself, when you swore your fidelity to the First Order, it was only annulled by your death. And Kylo had died, freeing himself of that vow. And then you had followed in his footsteps and done the same.

               Then again, just because you were dead, didn’t mean that this was the end.

               You sat up, keenly aware of the silence that was pounding against your eardrums, a steady staccato beat that seemed to match the rhythm of your heartbeat. There was penetrating darkness all around you, and yet this was unlike any of the Force dreams that you had in the past. For one, you could see your body, and as you clenched your fingers into relaxed fists, you could feel your fingertips brush against the calloused skin of your palms. You considered lifting up your shirt to see if your wound was still there, still fresh, but you couldn’t bring yourself to look. If anything, you doubted it was, if not for the fact that your clothes looked more or less unscathed. They had been more than partially burned in the battle with Snoke, but here you seemed, for lack of a better word, clean. Your nostrils were no longer filled with the acrid smell of smoke. You did not feel the sticky conglomeration of blood on your brow, nor the sweat in your hairline. No, you seemed clean, in a way, reborn, although you weren’t quite sure where you were.

               You turned in a slow circle around yourself, trying to answer just that question. You remembered everything that had happened that led you to this point, from the Starkiller Base to your academia to the Resistance to Naboo to the _Propitiate_ and to Tatooine – you remembered it all. You remembered all of your choices and decisions that had led you to this point, and with that realization, came the scarier one that maybe this was your hell. Maybe this was the recompense you had to pay for a lifetime of sins. While you didn’t want to think that you were as morally depraved as some of the people you had encountered in the galaxy, you couldn’t be sure. You had made some pretty bad choices as of late, and those decisions had hurt a lot of other people, especially Kylo. No matter what _he_ himself had done, he had at least had made an effort to redeem himself at the end, and you hoped that if there was some merciful entity out there controlling the Fates, that his punishment would be lessened as a result, if he even had to be punished at all.

               Even still, the word _punish_ strikes a sour note with you, because you don’t feel as though you’re in danger. You don’t even feel frustrated or annoyed with your lack of answers. Curious, yes, but even that seems to be tempered by an overwhelming sense of…calm. It’s quiet here, and painless, and while the silence is merciful, in a way, you want, you need, some sort of stimulus in order to guide you to where you were supposed to go. You didn’t want to believe that you would be trapped in the darkness forever, stumbling around blindly waiting for a sign or a smoke signal to light the way and show you where you should run off to next.

               And that’s when you see it. Out of the corner of your eye, you are sure that you can see a flare in the dark, erupting into the night sky. The darkness is still penetrating, but the flash of crimson light seemed to have illuminated a little bit more of your surroundings, and you can see the fine line dividing sky and earth, and as you look down you can see fine particles of sand beneath your feet. Even still, there is no wind, and the earth seems calm. There are a few stars in the sky, you can see them now, sparkling white-hot balls of flame that look far away in the distance, providing no more than a speck of light to guide your path. You walk towards where the flare went off, stumbling over the sand dunes, again grateful that there doesn’t seem to be any wind to blow it right back into your face as you walk. In fact, there doesn’t really seem to be so much as even a breeze, as you feel the air hanging heavy and still in the night. It’s not cold, not warm, and you just continue your steady ascent towards where you had seen the flare go off without so much as questioning your motivations for doing so. You had asked for a sign, and now you had received it. As you had once told Ani, if you asked the Force for what you wanted, it would provide it to you. You yourself hadn’t asked the Force for much as of late, instead intent on trying to solve all of your problems on your own without even trying to attain the counsel of others, and that, truly, was what had led to your own personal destruction. A part of you wished you could have taken it back, but another part of you felt too calm to entertain these doubts. In the end, things had happened in the way you supposed they were ultimately meant to, even if you didn’t understand why.

               As you continue over the sandy dunes, you don’t even entertain the notion that the flare could be some sort of a trap. You see it burning in the distance, but even as you attempt to walk closer, it still seems to stay the same distance away, just sitting on the horizon. You’re beginning to wonder why this is when all around you, the scenery suddenly seems to shift. You take your eyes off the flare as you look around you, suddenly realizing that the sandy dunes have abruptly stopped, fading into the street of a quiet residential neighborhood unlike anything you had ever seen before. There are houses on either side of you, tall, narrow houses, that sit side by side, all with tall rows of steps leading up to a porch with a wooden door that sat beside a window with long, flowing curtains. Outside the window was a flowerbed with a neat assortment of plants that almost looked to be positioned too equal a distance apart to have grown that naturally. The feeling you get as you study this seemingly endless street of identical houses is eerie, and you can’t help but feel overcome with a haunting sense of loneliness. When you had walked to the flare, you had done so with a burning sense of curiosity without reserve for the danger that could have befallen you, but now your curiosity was tempered by distrust of your new surroundings.

               You turn around to see the flare again, but as you look to your left, you realize that the flare that you had seen burning has morphed into something much smaller, into a candle in the night, glowing softly in the hazy gloom. It is sitting behind the glass window pane, its flame constant and alight, and that’s when you realize that it’s not just one candle. As you turn around, you realize that there’s a candle in every window now, lining both sides of the street, as far into the distance as you can see. As you glance back ahead of you to the first candle you had laid eyes upon, you suddenly see a dark shadow standing behind the candle, its shape obscured both by the shadow cast by the dark curtains and from the light of the candle. You realize that the shadow is watching you now, its identity obscured and anonymous, and you can’t keep a chill from running up your back as the unrecognizable shadow standing behind the window pane snuffs out the candle, letting the edges of its shadow bleed back into the surrounding darkness until all you can see is a dark window, unable to tell if there is anyone there who is still looking back at you.

               You turn around just in time to see the small puff of smoke of the candle on the opposite side of the street being extinguished, and you quickly decide to keep walking. You can feel goosebumps rising on your flesh as you can’t quell the eerie, foreboding feeling that has risen up inside of you, like a knot that was twisting itself into pieces in your stomach. As you pass each house, the candles go out on either side of you, leaving a trail of darkness in your wake that you dared not turn around to face. You try to keep your eyes straight ahead of you to keep yourself focused on the distance, but you can’t help but sneak passing glances at some of the windows, searching for at least one recognizable shape, but most of the shadows seem too obscured for you to see them clearly. Nevertheless, you get the feeling that you are not welcome here, that you cannot stop here, that you must keep going. Out of the corners of your eyes, you think you can see the shadows of familiar people through the window, shadows in the recognizable forms of Shayne and Hux, but you couldn’t be sure that they weren’t just your mind playing tricks on you in wake of the unsettling nature of this street that seemed to go on and on with no end in sight.

               Even though the road seemed to stretch on straight ahead of you, a burning in your calves made you feel as though you were almost walking uphill, and the way the ground seemed to slope beneath your feet seemed to indicate this as well, although you couldn’t be sure exactly as to why your eyes seemed to be playing tricks on you, making it seem as though you had so much further to go when you were almost to the apex of what you assumed to be the most difficult part of your journey. Nevertheless, as your feet got to the top of the hill, you could see a large pale moon in the distance, surrounded by a pale lavender, lilac sky.

               You can’t help but feel comforted by this sudden spark of pale, gentle light, and as you begin to draw closer to it, the houses begin to fall away as your eyes begin to make out the comforting sight of a glow in the dawn. The houses have completely fallen away now, and you can almost hear the dewy grass squishing underneath the soles of your boots as you walk, but it’s a warm feeling, a happy feeling, and it stirs a memory within you of when you, Kylo, and Ani played outside in the early morning hours of Naboo when Ani was still just a child, when things had seemed so much simpler. After everything that had happened aboard the Starkiller Base and with the Resistance, you almost couldn’t believe that things had been able to be so simple, so joyous. A part of you almost couldn’t understand how you could have had such moments of true happiness after so many terrible things had happened, when you had both suffered so much. Maybe it didn’t mean anything, but maybe the gentle glow of dawn was there to remind you that no matter what happened, no matter what terrible things that you did, each day would always come to an end, and in the morning, the darkness would always be snuffed out by a new dawn. No matter what you had done, the light would always be there at the end of every dark day, welcoming you home like an old friend, giving you opportunity after opportunity and chance after chance to return, never ceasing in its seemingly endless struggle to help you find the light within yourself. The sun had already won its battle against darkness a long time ago, and yet it continued the struggle to rise again, day after day, helping you to find your own path back to the light as well.

               You could always wish that there was another universe that you could find yourself in where your circumstances could have been different, but there was no feasible chance of that happening. This was the life you were given, and although you wanted to escape, to start over, to live a life where you weren’t submerged in your bad decisions so that you could begin again and use the knowledge that you had acquired to reinvent yourself, you knew that to be truly, unfortunately, impossible. All you could do was take the mistakes that you had made and use them to push yourself to be better, to keep improving, and hope that you hadn’t burned too many bridges along the road that had led you to this point. Some mistakes you would never be able to take back, some lives lost would never be able to be reclaimed, but there was still the opportunity to do _good_ , if you truly wanted to do so.

               And you wanted to. You didn’t know if Kylo would be there when you awoke, but Ani would be, and if Kylo was truly gone, then he needed you more than ever. Besides, you had so many things that you had to do. You had to apologize to Rey for allowing Snoke to use the connection between you to terrorize her. You hadn’t been cognizant of it at the time, but you felt it was appropriate to apologize for it all the same. You had to apologize to Ladson for taking him hostage, for disappearing for years without so much as even letting him know that you and Ani were all right, and although you had already apologized for that, it needed to be said again. And you had to apologize to Poe, because while you did honestly and truly feel something for him, while a part of you really did think that you loved him, it was completely overshadowed by what you felt for Kylo, and even if he was really and truly gone, there was no way you could be with him after you had watched Kylo essentially give his life for him. True, Kylo had told you to stay with Poe, and a part of you almost couldn’t rationalize how selfless Kylo had become with you, compared to the person who he was aboard the Starkiller Base. He had changed, just as you had changed, and although Poe seemed to think that people didn’t really change fundamentally, you could agree on both accounts.

               People, as a whole, did not change. They either became better or worse versions of themselves based on the situations that they found themselves in and the decisions that they made, but they ultimately still had the capability to choose. You, with your amber blades, knew that better than most. You were truly balanced between both the light side and the dark, and while you had at once thought that that meant that you were supposed to achieve a certain of goodness, you realized now that you could have been like Snoke, manipulating your own powers and using both sides of the Force to your egocentric benefit. If Kylo had taught you anything, it was that it did not matter how much light side or dark side a person happened to naturally contain. That was something that was influenced by the Force, but your lives were governed by something much stronger, by choice.

               And you had a choice now. None of those doors had opened for you, but you couldn’t help but notice that one of those candles had remained lit. If you went back to that house, you would no doubt find the door unlocked. If you truly wanted to, you could resist nature, resist calling, and go back to it and find a permanent residence here among the other shadows, suspended in abeyance, waiting for a familiar face to walk down that road so that you could open your own door to them and offer them refuge as well.

               But you had time yet, and you were not about to waste that time by standing still. You still had hope that Kylo would be there when you opened your eyes, and although you couldn’t be sure you could handle the disappointment if you found out otherwise, you had to be there to help Ani handle it. You wouldn’t be alone. You would have friends there to help you through it, just like you had before, and you knew, implicitly, that whatever happened, they would not let you fall to the dark side again. Whatever happened next, they would be there to support and encourage you, just like they had in the past when you had needed them before. You knew how lucky you were to have them in your life, triumphing you in that way, and your appreciation for their kindness towards you could not have been overstated.

               As you walked across the dewy grass, walking closer and closer to the warm glow of dawn, you felt an inner sense of calmness and peace growing within you as you watched the sun start to break into the sky, branching out into the darkness with its thin, wispy, radiant fingers. The sun would always set, but the sun would always rise, and you would always have another chance, so long as you were willing to fight for what you really believed in, and what you really cared for. That was something you had struggled with before, but now you knew what you wanted. Right now, in this moment, you wanted to let all of your friends and family know just how much you appreciated them and everything that they had ever done to help you or bolster you or support you when things became too great for you to handle. In the overall workings and complexities of the galaxy, your goal seemed trivial and unimportant by comparison, but to you, there could be no greater reward than to love and to know that you were loved in return.

               The light seemed almost too bright for your eyes to comprehend, but you paid it no mind as you walked ahead into its warm embrace, your arms swinging at your sides as you strode confidently forward under the bright lavender sky. You were being given a second chance, and this time, you knew you would not waste it and allow yourself to again fall to the darkness as you walked forward into the light and back to life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I once read a story about an anthropologist who visited a foreign tribe. Every day before dawn, the members of the tribe gathered together outside to perform a ritual. They would yell at the top of their lungs and bang objects together and make as much noise as they could, not stopping until the sun finally rose above the horizon. When asked, one member of the tribe explained that this was to help the sun win the battle against the darkness and rise again. 
> 
> The anthropologist witnessed this happen every day before he finally asked the leader of the tribe if he really thought that the sun only rose because of the ritual they performed every morning. The leader only shook his head and explained that the sun would always rise again regardless of what they did, as the sun had already won its battle against the darkness a long time ago, but there was still a sun within each of us that has yet to win that fight, and that is why they continued, to help their inner suns triumph over their own dark side.


	45. Chapter 45

               You didn’t know quite how to describe where you had been, but you couldn’t deny that you had felt calm, at peace, not only with the world around you, but with yourself, something that couldn’t be overstated after the panic and inner turmoil you had been experiencing since you had first arrived on the _Propitiate._ Now, though, the serenity of your dreamscape was quickly fading away as you blinked yourself back into existence, your eyes struggling to adapt to the bright fluorescent lighting all around you.

               You felt, quite honestly, like total and absolute shit. You weren’t sure which felt greasier, your skin or your hair, but you could almost appreciate the fact that you had cut it now, as you assumed that they hadn’t showered you off after they had dumped you in a tank of bacta. You couldn’t be sure that’s what they had done to you, but the injury to your abdomen had been severe enough to probably kill you, especially when you weren’t quite sure what other injuries you had sustained. Snoke had almost sliced you in half if you hadn’t dodged out of the way in time, and then you had hit your head and taken a blaster bolt straight in the gut; no, there was no way you should have been alive right now.

               All traces of your near-death or possibly even post-death experiences seemed to slip away as you forced yourself to sit upright, grimacing as each vertebra pulled off the bed and sent a fresh barb of pain through your stomach. In fact, the sparks that seemed to be literally shooting out of your abdomen, combined with the splitting pounding in your head, almost made you believe that all of the previous peace and tranquility was a distant memory that might not have even been there at all. As you finally pushed yourself into a sitting position, you finally looked up to see Poe leaning against the end of your bed, watching you closely. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t look much better himself, a scratch across his cheek and a split in the left corner of his lower lip. As your eyes glance to the right, you notice a chair pulled up to your bedside, a leather jacket slung across the back of the chair, as if he had been there a while.

               “Ani okay?”

               “He’s fine. I sent him to get some rest. He’s barely left your side.”

               You can’t help but let your gaze drop as you let your eyes slip closed, lulling your chin against your chest in disappointment. “I shouldn’t be alive.” Poe juts his bottom lip out, but ultimately decides that maybe it’s best not to say anything. You look up at him again, desperate for some break in the tension that seemed to be suffocating the air that you were struggling to push in and out of your lungs at an even pace.

               “You look worse than I do.”

_He doesn’t._

               “You sent Ani away to get some rest, but when’s the last time you left this room?”

               “I’ve been-“ Poe gestures with one hand to show that he had been out and about, and you’re almost relieved to hear that he hadn’t just been sitting by your side this entire time. “Besides, I’ve at least had a shower so I can guarantee that I smell better than you do right now.” He cracks a grin, and you can’t help but let an involuntary chuckle shake your shoulders. It causes a stir of pain in your abdomen, and while your fingers curl, you do your best not to wince. “How are you feeling?”

               “How do you think I feel?” you ask, arching an eyebrow at him, trying to portray at least some note of good humor in your expression. “About as good as I look, which is like _shit_ , if you haven’t noticed.”

               “Well, good to know your sense of humor remained intact,” Poe replies with a light chuckle before his expression suddenly turns serious. “You’re lucky that you didn’t get an infection. That wound was pretty badly-“

               “Messed up?” you ask, raising your eyebrows. “Yeah, I assumed by that look you gave me. You looked pretty freaked out.”

               Poe just shakes his head from side to side, as if it wasn’t worth remembering. “You did take a pretty nasty blow to your head though,” Poe explains, gesturing with one hand in the air as though he’s trying to recall something. “The doctors said, uh…you messed up something in your left inner ear pretty badly, I’m guessing this was when you smacked your head against the console right before I found you? And it looks like the bacta wasn’t able to repair it.”

               You screw your head up and to the side, trying to feel if something was wrong, but you felt more or less all right. “I know that I had a really bad ringing in my ears right after I barely dodged the explosion Snoke rigged in the control room to try to kill me,” you explain as you tap the left side of your head, just above your ear, with one finger. “I feel okay, though. I can hear you fine.”

               “You might have some trouble later on,” Poe says apprehensively, as if he was only relaying what he had heard from the doctors that had been looking after you. “You might be fine one on one, but you might have trouble understanding people in large crowds, for example.” You just shrug your shoulders. Right now, you _seemed_ fine, and you understood Poe just fine, albeit you were in a quiet room in the med bay where there wasn’t much to hear besides the occasional rhythmic beeping of the machines on either side of you. “If you are, the doctors can install an amplifier chip. Basically a med droid would drill a hole into the base of your skull and reroute the sound so instead of hearing through your ear, a device would pick up and manipulate the sound before it’s sent to your brain in a way that’s a bit easier for you to process.”

               “But then I wouldn’t really be hearing _sound_ ,” you say stiffly, and although it’s more of a question, Poe just shrugs his shoulders. Of course, he didn’t know any more about it than you did, he was just relaying what little information the doctors had probably explained to him before you woke up. “No, I don’t like the sound of that. I don’t want anyone drilling anything into me, especially not my brain. I can hear you just fine, and besides…” You let your voice trail off as you pick up your hands, clenching and unclenching them in the air. “I can get by just fine. You remember your Tortutarune, right?” Poe smiles good-naturedly as he holds his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart to indicate that he remembered a little, and the gesture warmed your heart as you remembered that Poe had once asked Taro’s brother to teach him in order to impress you. That seemed like it happened so long ago that you almost might have said that it happened to a different person. From where you were sitting, it almost felt like it did.

               As much as you wanted to think about the past, however, you knew it only served to distract you from the reality of your present situation, and you let your eyes slip closed for a moment as you remembered, well, everything. You had so many questions and you didn’t know how to ask any of them. Had anyone else been by to see you? Now that you were awake, were they going to Force-cuff you to the bed to make sure you couldn’t hurt anyone? Were they going to extradite you to the Republic for a swift trial and execution once your injuries healed? And, mostly importantly, your thoughts drifted back to Kylo, but you felt an ache in your heart so heavy just at the thought of his name that you knew implicitly that you would not be able to get the words to leave your lips despite your best efforts.

               You look up at Poe, and while you remember what Kylo had said to you, you can’t bring yourself to do it. No, you couldn’t do any of it, not without Kylo. It didn’t matter what the Resistance or the Republic chose to do with you now; it all seemed so pointless without him. You wanted to dwell on your time spent with him over the past few years, but the memory was just too painful and you can see Poe’s forehead crease as he observes your pained expression, perhaps thinking that you were still suffering from your physical injuries. At least those would hopefully heal in time, but you knew no tangible scar would cut any deeper than the pain of Kylo’s absence.

               “I can’t do this,” you say quietly, dropping your eyes from his gaze. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this. Not without him.”

               Poe steadies his expression. “Was Ren really worth giving your life for?”

               You know he’s going to make some point about Ani, but you don’t want to hear it, not when you knew that he didn’t understand. “It’s not that simple,” you tell him, trying your best to explain. “This goes beyond simple love and affection. Kylo and I were _bonded_ , and when he died, a piece of me died as well. Like, it felt like someone flicked a light switch inside of me and everything just went _off_ , like I wasn’t thinking, I couldn’t think, because I was just numb all over.” You shake your head. You could tell Poe was about to apologize, but you don’t want to hear it. Both of them had only been in that situation as a byproduct of _your_ mistakes, and you weren’t sure how to forgive yourself for that, if you ever could.

               “Do you know what his last words _were_?” you ask, knowing full well that he didn’t. “He apologized to me. He told me he was sorry for everything that he put me through and told me that I should head back to D’Qar. With _you_. He told me to go back, specifically, with you.” You shake your head from side to side, as if you still couldn’t believe it. A part of you honestly couldn’t. “I know Kylo could be selfish and he had his flaws, but he loved me, unconditionally, and he wanted me to be happy, he wanted to _make_ me happy, above all else, and I was never really grateful for that. I just sort of got used to him always being there, and his thoughts and his emotions were just constantly _with_ me, like I could always feel him through the bond and I just took it for granted that he would always be there and nothing would ever happen to him because he’s _Kylo Ren_ and…” Your voice trails off as you stare out into the distance. “And things weren’t that great between us, near the end, when Snoke was messing with my head, but he stayed by me regardless and I just, I don’t know how to deal with the fact that he’s gone.” Poe isn’t saying anything, and you don’t want to look at him, so you just content yourself with fidgeting with the tubing that was feeding into a needle in the back of your hand. You wanted to pull it out, but that might summon a doctor or a medical droid, and you didn’t want to face anyone or anything else right now. Even confessing this much to Poe seemed more uncomfortable and awkward than it should have been otherwise, but you needed to say this aloud, you needed to feel heard and say what you had to say before it ate you alive from the inside out.

               The silence seems to stretch on for far too long, and Poe seems to sense that you’re waiting for him to say something, because when he speaks again, his voice is light. “So Ren really told you to come back to D’Qar _with_ me?” Poe asks, and you can’t help but snort as a smile tugs at the corner of your lips.

               “Yes,” you tell him as you spread your shoulders and let your hands drop to either side of you. “Yes, because despite the stuff he’s done in the past, he _is_ a good person, at least as far as I’m concerned. He can’t be selfish with me, and maybe it’s just because we were bonded and he saw me as an extension of himself, but yes, at the very end, he told me to come back here with you, probably because he knows you would do whatever it takes to protect me and Ani and keep us safe, but still.”

               Poe just chuckles under his breath as he looks off to the side, and he seems to consider this for a few moments while he rubs his lower lip with his thumb. He raises his eyebrows before he speaks again, as if he’s suddenly come to a decision about something. “If that’s true, then I doubt he’s going to be very happy you told me that, because I’m going to ask him about that later.”

               His eyes roll back over towards you to see the expression on your face, although you can only imagine it to be absolutely deadpan: eyes wide, lips pursed, lower lip trembling slightly as the adrenaline starts to make its way through your veins, making your heart beat so fast you think it’s going to trigger a response from one of the monitors.

               “What?” you ask, and although your lips form the words, you’re not sure any sound comes out.

               “He’s alive,” Poe tells you as a grin spreads across his face, and you don’t know whether to laugh or cry or punch him, and you let the myriad of emotions flooding through you fight for dominance over your expression. Poe just smiles warmly at you before his expression takes on a more reserved edge. “I still can’t believe it myself, but I’ve seen so much that shouldn’t be possible that I shouldn’t let anything surprise me anymore. I saw the lightsaber go clean through him. If that had been anyone else-“ Poe just shakes his head, and you can’t help but smirk.

               “Like I’ve always said, he’s the great Kylo Ren,” you reply, unable to quell the happy excitement in your voice. “He can take _anything_. He’s completely indestructible.”

               “Which is more than I can say for you,” Poe says flatly as he fixes you with a steely gaze, and you roll your eyes upwards and press your lips together as the corners of your mouth quirk upwards in a sheepish smile. “You’re lucky that Rey was close by. She flew straight over from Tatooine to aid in the fight, and she was able to come onto our ship and help Ani use the Force to heal both you and Kylo, or at least, keep you both _somewhat_ alive until we were able to get you back to D’Qar and into the bacta tanks.” You just shake your head from side to side as Poe continues. “She’s sorry about what happened before, back there. She didn’t realize Snoke was manipulating her too, through you. She wants to make it up to you somehow, but I think saving your life is a pretty good way to apologize.” You can tell that Poe’s trying to crack a joke, but for some reason, this rubs you the wrong way. Rey had no reason to apologize to you. Sure, if she had caught on that Snoke was still alive, that would have made things a lot easier for you, but she had been blinded by his manipulations, just as you had.

               “I didn’t want to be saved,” you snap, aware of just how child-like you sound. “I told you to take Ani and Kylo back to the ship and get out of there. You shouldn’t have come back for me. If Snoke had taken me down, then he would have killed you and Ladson and taken Ani.”

               Poe just shakes his head back and forth. “It was still reckless,” he admonishes. “Ani’s not too happy about you running off on your own.” You just shrug your shoulders, as if it couldn’t be helped. “And neither are Ladson and I, if we’re being honest. Snoke could control you through the Force. It was stupid to go in alone.”

               “I took him down though, didn’t I?” you ask, raising your eyebrows.

               “Doesn’t matter,” Poe replies firmly. “There’s people worth living for, and people worth staying alive for.”

               “And Kylo is both,” you say firmly. You know it sounds stupid and selfish, but there’s no way you could possibly explain how much power you had drawn from your Force bond with Kylo. You drew your strength from him, your power from him, and you knew implicitly that you couldn’t go on without him. Ani was starting to become an adult now, and he would have to move on from you to start his own life eventually, but Kylo had become a part of you that you didn’t know how to separate yourself from even if you tried. If he was happy, you felt it, if he was angry, you felt it, and in return, he felt all of your sorrows and jubilations as well. You had gotten so accustomed to his presence within you that you honestly didn’t know what you would do without him.

               “What’s going to happen now?” you ask quickly. “I mean, we’re back on D’Qar, and last I heard, the Republic didn’t seem to like me very much. Should I be worried?”     

               “They’re not going to ask you to perform any more dueling spectacles,” Poe tells you, but it doesn’t strike you as particularly funny with your life and your freedom on the line. “We were able to get the charges of treason against you dropped, considering your status as a prisoner of-“

               “Lock me up,” you demand harshly. “Because I’m not going to sell Kylo out to bargain for my own freedom. Fuck you, no.” You can feel your temper flare with righteous indignation, and you hoped that you never met the person who had suggested that idea in the first place. You didn’t think you’d snap their neck, but then again, you couldn’t really be sure.

               “-of the First Order,” Poe finishes, and you consider this, at least waiting to hear him out. “You took out Snoke and, in effect, General Hux.” You quirk an eyebrow in his direction, and Poe just shrugs. “It seemed a bit complicated to explain to the Senate. All they need to know is that Hux and Snoke are gone, thanks to you. We have been unable to locate Captain Phasma, but this was a big win for us. You brought down the shields to help take out the _Propitiate_ and destroy the _Flare_ for good. We wouldn’t be able to call this a victory without considering what you’ve done.”

                “And Kylo,” you insist. “I barely did anything but lower the shields, the rest of it was all Kylo. Not only did he help me channel the Force bomb, but if he hadn’t pulled me away from the _Propitiate_ in the first place, I probably still would have been under Snoke’s control _helping_ the First Order.”

               Poe looks away uncomfortably, and you can tell he’s not quite sure how to respond to this. “That information doesn’t leave this room,” he says finally. “I know about it, Leia knows about it, Rey knows about it, which means by extension Finn already knows about it, but we’re trying to make it look like you were doing deep undercover for us to salvage your and Ani’s reputation here. That’s what people are being told.”

               You shake your head. Honestly, you had been severely manipulated for almost as long as you could honestly remember, and then you had thought you watched Kylo die and almost died yourself. What people thought of you was not one of your most pressing concerns at the moment. “What about Kylo?” you insist. “What about his reputation?”

               “I think you know what his reputation here is,” Poe says gravely. “We’re doing all we can for him right now, but the Republic’s been after him for well over a decade. No matter what we tell them, I don’t think they’re just going to let this slide. They can’t trace any one specific thing back to you, but Ren has a long history of-“

               “I know,” you say quickly, shaking your head. You didn’t know what you would do if Kylo was saved just to watch him be put down at the hands of the Republic. If anything, you weren’t quite sure you had gotten off so easily yourself. Poe was covering for you with the Republic, but he knew that you had information about the First Order bases that the Resistance didn’t yet know about. Blackmail was an ugly word, but you assumed that topic would be brought up once you were feeling better. You didn’t exactly think that they would turn you over to the Republic if you refused to tell them anything, but they could make your stay here pretty uncomfortable nonetheless.

               “We’re doing all we can,” Poe repeats, trying to offer you some small bit of reassurance. You pause for a moment as you steady your resolve, ripping the needle out of your hand while the machine beside your bed emits a small series of alarmed beeps in protest. “What are you doing?”

               “Take me to him,” you demand, ripping off the various tubes that were connected to your body. Poe says your name in warning, but you’re in no mood to be trifled with. Kylo was alive, and if the Republic was going to take him out, then you were going to have to find him and Ani and get them both out of here as fast as you possibly could. “Take me to him, and I’m not taking no for an answer.”

               “We had a feeling you might do that,” Poe says with a sigh, but he doesn’t seem altogether displeased as a sudden wave of lightheadedness passes through you.

               “What’s going on?” you ask, holding the side of your head for support as your fingers frantically grasp at the blankets on the bed beside you. “What’d you do to me?”

               “Let’s just call it a safeguard,” Poe replies. “We figured after what happened last time you might try to rip out the tubing and go running around, so the doctors hooked an anesthetic up to one of the supplementary tubes; you rip one out and it kicks in so it’d knock you out before you had time to try to escape.”

               “I hate you,” you snap, but there is absolutely no venom in your voice. In fact, it comes out as more of a yawn.

               “No you don’t,” Poe replies with a light chuckle. You can see him pat the side of your leg reassuringly, but you don’t even feel it. “We were only just barely able to bring you back to life, remember? You’re going to need a lot of time to rest and recover after something like that.”

               “What I need to do is make sure Ani and Kylo are okay,” you reply, but your head is fuzzy and you’re not sure how much of what you said was actually coherent.

               “Ani’s just fine,” Poe replies. “And don’t worry about Ren. He was pretty badly injured; he’s not going anywhere. We have _multiple_ guards outside his door, just in case, we have all new sensors installed to see if any unknown ships are entering our airspace, and the monitor _can’t_ be overridden by anyone outside this base, so we aren’t going to make the same mistakes as last time.”

               You just groan and try to speak, but the drugs are kicking in and making your vision increasingly fuzzy, forcing you to squint your eyes shut in your ever increasing struggle to hold onto your waking consciousness. “We’ll let you see Ren as soon as you’re better,” Poe repeats. “But you need to take care of yourself first before you can take care of him. You-“

               He says more, but it suddenly seems as though your ears have stopped working, and you can’t shake the feeling that you’re growing increasingly heavier, as if you’re sinking to the bottom of a large pool. For a moment it almost feels like you’re still submerged in a bacta tank, and you can’t be entirely sure if that conversation had just happened or if your war-ravaged mind had just made you think that you survived, made you think that Kylo had gotten out of everything okay, simply because that’s what you wanted. It had to be true, though, a part of you was determined to hold onto what you had just seen as the truth. Kylo was alive…

               …and Poe had it all wrong. You had been doing nothing but putting yourself first lately, it was what you did. You knew what you needed, and you took it, assuming that everyone would do the same in return. But Kylo was ever-increasingly selfless with you, and you wanted to respond in kind. He had always put you first, putting your happiness above all else, and it was now time that you put him first. You were prepared to do whatever you had to do in order to protect him this time.

               You just hoped that it wouldn’t be too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that sense of peace didn't last all that long. You know when you have an epiphany that you think, "Man, this is going to change my life _forever_!" and then suddenly less than a week later it feels like ancient history? Unfortunately Reader is out of the frying pan and into the fire. Kylo is alive, but they are both captured by the Resistance and have done some, er, _unsavory_ things for the First Order, Kylo especially, and that's going to compound a lot of problems for Reader...and it's only a matter of time until things are going to go from bad to worse. They may have gotten the Republic off her back, but who are we to say the Resistance may be any more forgiving?
> 
> But hey, rejoice and thank the old gods and the new, Kylo and Reader are alive and live to struggle through another day!! ^_^ Will they be able to pull through? Check back in on Tuesday to see what Kylo has to say about their experience. ;) Until then, cheers!!


	46. Chapter 46

               You had a dream about Hux that night, or at least, you thought you did, and although you couldn’t really remember what it was about, it made you realize something important. It had never been your willingness to learn the Force that had allowed you to come as far as you had. It was Hux, and as much as you hated to say it, everything revolved around Hux. He was the person who had threatened your life and the lives of everyone you cared about back on the Starkiller Base, and you knew that if you wanted to protect them, that you had to become stronger, tougher, and you had to take the power and control that seemed to come so naturally to Hux and take hold of that strength for yourself. You knew that, one way or another, you would have had to strip him of his authority, of his hold over you, and the only way to do that was by learning the Force, an ability that he would never be able to obtain. Only through the Force would you have been stronger than him, and only through the Force would you have been able to win a game that you had never wanted to play in the first place.

               You weren’t sure if Snoke had chosen Hux’s form simply as a matter of convenience or because he knew about your complicated history with Hux and wanted to use it to his advantage, but a part of you assumed that maybe it was both. You weren’t quite sure when Snoke had taken over Hux’s body, but a part of you had to assume that it could have been Snoke all along, even back on Naboo, getting under your skin and provoking you into a role that you felt compelled to play, simply because you felt forced to stand your ground against him. Then again, maybe that had been your own doing. Maybe you truly were capable of that level of malice and Hux hadn’t been able to escape Naboo after all; perhaps that was where he had met his final stand, or perhaps he had fallen victim to Snoke somewhere along the way back to the _Propitiate._ You would, unfortunately, probably never find out the answer, but you weren’t quite sure you could forgive yourself for what you had done regardless. Even if Snoke had been manipulating you to his own ends, you should have been strong enough to see through it, to realize that your own thoughts were slowly turning against you, changing you into someone that you wouldn’t like if you had met her. You knew you should have realized this, should have done more to prevent it, but you had regarded everything with such apathy that you just hadn’t cared, and now you were beginning to realize that you were going to have to terms with the heavy price you would have to pay for your callous indifference.

               The only thing that made things worse was that the more you seemed to blame yourself for what had happened, the less the others seemed to blame you for it. You had had visitors during your waking bouts of consciousness, although you were more or less out of it a great deal of the time and couldn’t really remember the words that had passed between you. Even still, you gathered that they more or less attributed all of your actions as of late to be the work of Snoke, giving you little to no credit over what you had done yourself. Finn, in particular, having been exposed firsthand to the brainwashing and propaganda of the First Order, understood completely, and his firm belief was that your temporary loss of morality was simply due in part to Snoke’s steady manipulations and nothing more. Maybe he just wanted to try to convince you of that to help try to quell the guilt that you were feeling over everything that had happened, but you tried to appreciate it all the same.

               It seemed that Finn’s unwavering confidence that what had happened to you was due to the manipulations of Snoke and the First Order seemed to infect everyone else as well, especially Ladson, who was exceedingly gentle with you when you finally woke up. While he was with you, he would go on and on to anyone that had visited about how you had risked your life, had _given_ your life, to defeat Snoke, when you weren’t sure how much Ladson actually knew about Snoke in the first place. You supposed maybe he was just happy to have you back, and you had to admit that there was a certain sense of relief that he didn’t hate you for all that you had put him through as of late. You hadn’t reached out to Ladson for years, and although you still maintained that it was a risk that you didn’t want to take, you couldn’t change the past. Maybe if you had reached out to him, the Resistance would have found your location and you would have ended up being captured and you were right not to have said anything at all, but there was no way you were actually going to find out, and if Ladson wanted to keep it in the past, then you were content to leave it there as well.

               To be honest, it almost bothered you how apologetic Rey was about the whole ordeal. She seemed to consider everything that had happened to you as her fault, for not sensing that she hadn’t defeated Snoke when she thought she had. Indeed, she seemed to think that Snoke targeting you was more of an extension of revenge against her, but considering how you knew that he had wanted to train you before Kylo sent you away, before you ever met her, and not to mention his plans for Ani, you assumed that Snoke had multiple reasons for why he had targeted you, none that you were truly anxious to entertain aloud. She assured you that you would meditate back in the Green Room together as soon as you felt better to get you back to your old self in no time, and that even Luke wanted to help. You weren’t quite sure what he could do, but you assumed he wanted answers more than anything else, and you didn’t really feel like you were in a position to deny any to him. For some reason, you didn’t want to ask Rey about why Snoke had an amber lightsaber or what that meant about you, but those seemed to be the perfect kinds of question to pose to Luke.

               Ani had already gone to see Kylo a few times while you were out of it, and he said that although Kylo was still occasionally too weak to even open his eyes or form much more than a coherent thought, he was still in there, he had _felt_ him. All at once, you could understand why you seemed to be constantly swarmed with visitor’s day and night, trying to keep you from seeing him. If Kylo really was in that bad shape, no one could be sure just how he would react to you seeing him, and you weren’t quite sure how you might react yourself. You had seen Kylo backed into a corner, you had seen him defenseless, but you had never seen him truly vulnerable, and it almost scared you a little bit to think about seeing him that way. You were concerned that there also was a possibility that Kylo was in a state that he might never wake up from, but if that was the case, it only made you want to see him now more than ever.

               “Hey there,” Rey says as she walks into your room a few days later. Finn, Poe and Ani are not far behind, situating themselves in various spots of the room so they didn’t all stand around your bed staring down at you, as though you were some sort of attraction to be gaped at.

               “Hey,” you reply, sitting up on your elbows slightly to make yourself look better than you felt. Honestly, you felt weaker and weaker from just lying in bed day after day, but they had made it clear that they weren’t going to let you go until you had rested up a bit more. “Ladson busy today?”

               “Out on a training exercise with Asher,” Ani pipes up. “He wanted to bring him by, but I told him that it was probably best that he waited until _after_ you were fully recovered before he started bringing new people by and making introductions.”

               “Smart idea,” you reply dryly as you roll your eyes. “I’m not even entirely comfortable with you three seeing me like this.” They pause, a bit uncertainly, and you let out a loud sigh. “Yes, I can count. Don’t worry, my brain is still more or less intact. Ani’s my son, I’m not including him.” Ani beams slightly, and you shoot a reassuring smile in his direction. “But I’m tolerating it.”

               “No one thinks you’re weak,” Rey tells you, getting to the heart of the concerns immediately. You had forgotten that she had an uncanny knack for doing that, and you weren’t sure whether to be comforted or annoyed by it. You were slowly recovering, but you still couldn’t be sure what emotions were your own yet.

               “Just the opposite,” Poe adds. “We saw your guts hanging out of you. How you were able to hold on and live through that is beyond me.”

               “Cause she’s a fighter,” Finn chimes in, and you turn to him as you arch your eyebrow. “Fair enough, I didn’t see it, but I heard the stories.”

               “Stories?” you echo, and Finn nods his head as he keeps going.

               “Word around base is Snoke cut you clean in half with his lightsaber and they had to stitch you back together,” Finn tells you with a bit of humor in his voice, and you roll your eyes as you shoot a look at Poe.

               “Didn’t come from me,” Poe says, holding his hands up in surrender. “We’ve been advised to say as little as possible, which is probably what contributed to all the rumors.”

               “What about Kylo?” you ask, turning specifically to Ani to compel the truth from him. “Are there any rumors going on about him?”

               “Well,” Ani looks nervously back to the group before looking back at you. “For a while, no one knew he was on base, which was the way we wanted to keep things. Then someone must have let something slip-“

               “And now everyone know he’s here,” you say slowly, and all at once a much darker realization strikes you. “And now the Republic knows he’s here.”

               “Not necessarily,” Poe says quickly, and all three of them look alarmed now, like they’re not sure what you’re about to do. Even still, you’re confined to a bed with a needle in your arm that would make you pass out if you tried to remove it yourself. At the present moment, there really didn’t seem like much that you honestly _could_ do.

               “Do I really scare you three that much?” you ask dryly, arching an eyebrow. “You’ve been either treating me like glass or like a time bomb waiting to go off. You’ve got Rey and Ani here to hold me back. I’m not going to _do_ anything.”

               Poe looks like he’s about to say something, but keeps his mouth shut as he turns to Rey. “It’s complicated,” she says softly. “Snoke is, was, extremely powerful, and we don’t know what kind of control he still has over you.”

               You want to throw it back in her face that she didn’t seem too friendly herself back on Tatooine, but you knew that would only prove her point. Even still, you were able to keep that thought behind your lips, and you supposed that self-control was a good first start at getting back to your old self again. “Fine,” you admit as you shake your head in defeat. “I know I can’t exactly ask for anything after all that’s happened.” You look around at each of them in turn. “I fought you and left you for dead, I kidnapped you and almost got you killed-“ You point to Finn and hesitate for a moment. The little contact you had with him since you had left the base was probably auspicious enough to save his life. “Is there anything you hold against me?”

               “Like I said, the First Order’s capable of some pretty powerful brainwashing techniques,” Finn says with a shrug. “You wouldn’t have realized anything was happening until it was already too late, so you’re good in my book.”

               “Good to know,” you say as you turn to Ani, communicating solely by thought. _I’m not going to get mushy, but you know there’s a lot I’ve got to apologize to you for, specifically. For one, getting you into that situation to begin with. For not being stronger, for almost dying on you, for almost letting-_

 _Don’t blame yourself for that,_ Ani responds with a shake of his head. _Dad already explained. It was necessary._

You can feel your heart sink in your chest. _How is he?_

Ani’s face brightens considerably, despite your glum demeanor. _It’s why we’re all here. Do you want to see him?_

“Yes,” you exclaim so loudly as you jump up that it startles Poe and Finn. Rey looks more or less surprised by your outburst, but she catches on almost instantly.

               “Ani-“ she warns, and your eyes dart back and forth between them, trying to figure out what exactly you weren’t being told.

               “You said today,” Ani responds, looking more hurt than anything, and your eyes shoot to Poe, knowing he was probably the one who had ultimate authority on the matter.

               “So this was a test to decide if I’m, what, better now?” you ask, trying to keep your voice casual. “I’m good. I’m fine. I mean, physically I could probably use some more r-and-r, but I’m well enough to see him.” You glance at Ani out of the corner of your eye. _Is he good enough to see me?_

 _He was doing better this morning_ , Ani replies happily, and you sit up in bed a little straighter, ready to go.

               _Did he ask to see me?_ you ask, waiting for that final affirmation to push you out of bed completely.

               There’s a few seconds of uncomfortable silence before Ani’s reply. _No,_ he says softly, and your expression falls flat. You can see the concern in Rey’s eyes, but you don’t want to look at the rest of them.

               “On second thought,” you begin softly as you drop your gaze. “I’m not feeling, uh, great yet. Maybe I should, you know, wait.”

               “What?” Ani exclaims, as if he couldn’t believe your sudden change in attitude either. “But-“

               “He probably wants to wait until I’m better,” you say with a shake of your head. “Or he’s better. Either way, I should, uh, wait yet.”

               There’s a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, as no one really knows quite what to say. “You can’t feel him anymore, can you?” Rey asks softly, breaking the silence, and Poe’s head quickly shoots up to look at her before back to you.

               You look down, fiddling with the wires feeding into your veins, coiling one of the fine tubes around and around your middle finger. “No,” you admit softly. “I guess they’re right. The Force bond really is broken by death.”

               “But you’re still here,” Ani tells you, his voice louder than you would have preferred. “You’re both still here. You didn’t die, you-“

               But you did. You had died, and apparently, the Force bond had snapped with it. You didn’t like it any more than Ani did, in fact, you fucking hated it, but you couldn’t help but let your anger give way to a hollow sense of numbness in your chest. Your Force bond with Kylo had been something that you had treasured above all other things, and now you had lost it with possibly no way of getting it back.

               “Can I talk to Rey, please?” you ask quietly, and while the rest of them look a bit uncertain, Rey nods them out. For once, you didn’t think that their apprehension had to do with any real fear of you hurting Rey, but simply because they could hear the dejection in your voice. You didn’t know how to handle their pity, especially not Poe’s, but that wasn’t something you really wanted to think about right now.

               There’s silence as they shuffle out of the room, and suddenly it’s just Rey standing there at the foot of your bed. “I feel as though I must apologize again-“

               “Don’t,” you say quickly. “Please, just, don’t.” You let your eyes drop to the corner of the bed. “Sit?”

               Rey bobs her head forward a few times in a quick series of nods as she gracefully scoots around the end of the bed and sits down, scooting back a bit so she can sit cross-legged as she waits for you to speak. “You know more about this than any of them would,” you say quietly. “I think, no, I _know_ I technically died, and I think Kylo did too.” You wrestle with yourself for a few moments, trying to think back. “I had something of a vision, I guess, while I was there, well, wherever there was. Do you want to see it?”

               “No,” Rey says quickly, and her answer surprises you. “No, I think that’s something too personal for me to see.”

               “Fair,” you relent, getting back to the matter at hand. “Wherever I was, I didn’t see Kylo there though. I know there’s a great beyond, if you will, where Ani and I have talked to Obi-Wan and Anakin, but I don’t think that’s where I was. I think I may have been in between that, but…” You let your voice trail off as you try to collect your thoughts. “I mean, I guess I just thought that if Kylo and I both died that we’d still be together in the after, that we’d still be connected. But we’re not. Now we’re just…nothing.”

               “You don’t feel anything for him?” Rey asks, as if she’s surprised, and you open your mouth to speak but no words come out.

               “No, I do,” you manage at length. “I mean, of course I do, but I can’t _feel_ him. Like his thoughts and emotions were always like, right _there_ , and now I don’t think I could even tell where he’s being held on base.”

               Rey pauses for a moment, studying you. _Can you hear me?_ she asks, without moving her lips, and you nod your head forward.

               _Yeah, just fine,_ you reply. _Why?_

“Your abilities are fine,” Rey tells you. “I can’t speak to the Force connection to know exactly what you were experiencing, but you can still communicate with him, you can still sense him. Maybe not as readily-“

               “But if a Force bond breaks, can a new one be established?” you ask, unable to quell the anxious tone in your voice. It distresses you more than anything, but right now you can’t really help yourself.

               “I suppose it can,” Rey admits hesitantly. “But it might depend on the individuals, on whether or not they want a bond to be re-established.”

               You swallow hard as your force yourself to meet her eyes. “Does he really not want to see me?” you ask softly.

               “Not asking to see you is not the same as not wanting to see you,” Rey says lightly. “But I can see why you’d be concerned after everything that’s happened.”

               “Is he okay?” you ask quickly. “I mean, have you talked to him at all, or-?”

               “I loathe him,” Rey reminds you with a light chuckle, as if this was something that you had forgotten. “But considering Leia asked me to watch him as a personal favor, I am in no position to refuse her.”

               “And-?” you ask, leaning forward slightly against your pillows.

               Rey looks at you like she’s trying to make a decision about something, and you just relax your expression to look as sincere as possible, making no attempt to conceal whatever she was trying to see. “And let’s go see him.”

               Somehow, despite your bandages and wrappings, you were able to convince Rey to let you have a shower before you went off to see him. You knew that Kylo probably looked like shit, but you didn’t want him to be concerned with how you looked as well. You couldn’t be sure what Ani had told him and what he would want to hear from you, but you didn’t want him to know just how close you yourself had come to permanent death. You knew he would be disappointed in you, and that was not an emotion that you wanted to dwell too much on, especially considering how you weren’t sure how much you were going to be able to read him. His emotions had always been more or less accessible to you through the Force bond unless he was explicitly trying to shield them from you, something that he had no reason to do for quite some time.

               But as the two of you got closer to his room, you suddenly couldn’t deny just how nervous you felt to be seeing him again. You shouldn’t be, this was Kylo, of all people, but suddenly you weren’t sure just how to act around him when you couldn’t read him through the Force bond. You would have thought that he would be fighting people left and right to have a chance to see you again, but for some reason you couldn’t help but think that he was more or less indifferent. Maybe it was because you couldn’t sense his feelings, but it suddenly struck you that although your feelings had not changed, maybe his had. Maybe now that he was no longer bonded to you, he didn’t care for you as much as he once did.

               “You’re letting your doubts consume you,” Rey observes as she walks beside you towards Kylo’s door, but her voice is light and slightly teasing.

               “I can understand why you’d want to keep him out of the medbay, but did you really have to throw him in a cell at the other end of the base again?” you ask. “It didn’t stop him from escaping last time.”

               “We have more security this time,” Rey assures you. “And he’s closer to Leia’s room now too, so it’s easier for her to visit him.”

               You flush, realizing that you had not asked about Leia the entire time you had been on base, nor had she come by to see you. “How is she doing? Is she okay?”

               “She’s okay,” Rey repeats, and you just nod your head, trying to make it look like you understood what she meant. At the very least, you can see what Rey meant about the extra security, as you pass four sets of guards before you finally get to the light Force lock on Kylo’s door. “Try and open it.”

               “I don’t know if I’ll be able to,” you say quietly, almost a bit embarrassed with yourself.

               “Try,” Rey urges, and by her tone you almost wonder if she’s curious as to whether you’ll be able to open it too. You hold up your hand and try to focus, try to center all of your thoughts on being able to see Kylo again, but before you can figure out what exactly you want to focus on, the door gives a small beep and slides open. “See? You still have it.”

               “You did that,” you say as you turn your head around to face her. “I barely focused. There was no way I should have been able to do that.”

               You almost expect her to admit that she had helped you unlock the door, but Rey just seems confused at your outburst. “Maybe you’re stronger than you realize,” she offers as she tilts her chin up towards the door. “Anyway, go on inside. I’ll be right out here waiting to take you back when you’re done.”

               “Okay,” you say as you take a deep breath. “Thanks.” You turn back to the door and steady your nerves before you turn around and walk inside, trying to quell the shaking in your hands as you press them against your sides.

               Kylo is lying on a bed inside, slightly propped up from the stack of pillows piled behind him. His eyes are closed, and even from across the room you can see that he looks pale, his cheeks only a shade or two darker than the color of the walls. There were no chairs around him, and so you quickly walk over and drop to your knees by the side of his bed, slowly placing one leg down at a time, silently cursing your body for being weak from disuse. You take one of his large hands in yours, and as you run your thumbs over the back of his hand, you can’t help but notice that the skin there feels colder than it should, especially when his hands were usually so warm. Regardless, you lift his knuckles to your lips and hold them there, trying to reach out to him with your mind, and just as you think you can feel the faintest hint of a connection, Kylo finally stirs.

               His head lulls over to you before he opens his eyes, and his eyes seem to search your face, as if trying to place you. “Hey there,” you say quietly, but Kylo says nothing at all as he rolls his head back front and center to face the ceiling. The silence is uncomfortable, to say the least, and it’s not something that you’re used to. “How are you feeling?”

               “Fine,” Kylo responds, and the curtness of his answer surprises you. Did he really not feel anything for you anymore not that the bond had been severed between you? Had he really just been with you all this time because of it? A part of you almost didn’t want to believe it, but then again, you had no other way to describe Kylo’s apathetic behavior towards you. Hadn’t Ani had told him what happened to you, or was that why he didn’t want to speak to you? Was he angry that you had taken Snoke head on and not fled back to D’Qar when you had the chance? If so, there was little that you could do about it now, and you wouldn’t have changed your approach even if you could. Ani was safer with Snoke gone, and as much as even you hated to admit it, you were the only one there that could have stopped him.

               “The Force bond is gone,” you offer, trying to spark even the smallest bit of conversation, although your misery is more than just a little apparent in your voice. You didn’t want to cry in front of him, but at least this seems to prompt a reaction out of him as Kylo rolls over and strokes your cheek with the back of his hand.

               “I know,” he says, just as quietly, and his voice is soft, comforting. “I had a hard time sensing you. I thought perhaps you were closing yourself off to me, but-“

               “No,” you exclaim, grabbing his hand in both of yours as you press it to your forehead. “No, no, I would never do that. I’ve been waiting to see you for ages, but I haven’t been, well, well myself.”

               Kylo presses his lips together in a firm line. “Ani told me what you did. About what happened.” He glances down to your navel, and you reluctantly let go of his hand as you pull up the bottom of your shirt, thankful that Rey had at least given you some decent clothes to change back into before you went off to see him. You hadn’t exactly taken much time to examine your body then, but through the thin layer of bandages you had applied yourself, you could clearly see that there was still a red gash surrounded by layers of bruising. The whole thing looked like a dysfunctional mess, and Rey had already warned you that they were going to be applying more bacta and a stronger bandage when you got back to bed to keep everything more or less in place.

               “My guts fell out,” you tell him with a slight bit of humor in your voice. “And you took a lightsaber to the chest. Apparently we’re both really strong people.” Kylo just shakes his head like he has nothing to say to this, and you can’t help but hold onto his arm with both hands. “Okay, I’m not really liking how I can’t really feel what you’re thinking without trying, so, any ideas how to get the Force bond back up and running again so we can stop feeling like this?”

               “No,” Kylo says as he looks away from you again, and you can feel your heart plummet in your chest.

               “No because you have no ideas or no because you don’t want to?” you ask, and his silence confirms your answer. You can feel your hands starting to shake, and you quickly look down and away from him as you scooch back a little ways from the bed. “So after all this time, it really was just the Force bond keeping us together? You really don’t love me?”

               Kylo turns back to you, and his expression is one of complete shock. “Of course I love you,” he tells you firmly. “But I can’t bring myself to hurt you that way. Not again.”

               “Hurt me?” you ask, the confusion apparent in your voice. “How would that be hurting me? Kylo-“

               “We both know what’s going to happen,” Kylo says softly, and you let your gaze drop. “As soon as I’ve recovered, they’re going to send me off to the Republic, and you know what will happen to me once I’m there.”

               “Incarceration?” you ask hopefully, but Kylo just shakes his head.

               “Execution,” he corrects you. “I wish my mother would have just accepted this, but she has seemingly persuaded her friends to do all that they can to try to convince the Republic to spare my life.” He glances aside at you, as if he suspected that this was really more your doing. “But considering your pilot helped save us when we were trying to leave Naboo in the full sight of the Republic fleet, I doubt they’ll listen to anything he has to say about what happened aboard the _Propitiate_. _”_

               “But he’s going to try,” you insist. “They’re all going to try, Kylo, you lived through the impossible. They didn’t bring you back just to watch you die again. No one’s going to let that happen.”

               “No one?” Kylo asks, quirking an eyebrow. “I am sure there are many people on this base who would like nothing better than to see me dead.”

               “But I don’t,” you tell him firmly. “And remember, Phasma’s still out there. She may be able to break us out again.” Kylo forces a weak smile to his lips, but doesn’t laugh. “And if she doesn’t, then Ani and I will break you out. We’ll-“

               “And where would we go?” Kylo asks, and you hesitate, trying to think. You had already tried to live on the run, and that hadn’t exactly worked out in your favor. “Ani hasn’t talked to you yet, but he wants to stay here.”

               “Then he can,” you say, in no mood to argue. “But I’m getting you out of here. I’m not going to let-“

               “You should stay here too,” Kylo says softly, and you stop talking as you meet his eyes.

               “I’d only stay to take care of Ani,” you say firmly. “There’s nothing else for me here.” Kylo rolls his eyes to the side and gives you a look to indicate that he doesn’t quite believe you. “No, Kylo, Poe and I-“

               “It’s fine,” Kylo says quickly, but he looks away from you regardless. “I never expected you to stay as long as you did. I never expected that you would have stayed with me all this time. You knew you could have gone back. A part of you always knew that was an option for you, even with the Republic’s charges, they would have kept you safe here.”

               “Maybe,” you reply, keeping your voice uncertain. “But right now, this isn’t you talking. You’ve never given up this easily before, what changed?”

               “What changed?” Kylo asks incredulously, and you quickly drop your gaze. In all fairness, it was a pretty dumb question considering the events that had just transpired. “Snoke was there the entire time, and I couldn’t sense him. You were in danger, Ani was in danger, and I didn’t do anything to protect you.” He looks so angry with himself, that you try to think of something, anything, to appease him.

               “But you were ready to sacrifice yourself,” you offer. “You-“

               “Because Snoke was in my head,” Kylo yells at you, and you literally flinch. “He was planning on killing both of them anyway, but if I didn’t take myself out, he was going to make me kill you. Then he was going to kill me and take Ani and there would have been no one left to protect him.”

               You open your mouth to speak, but for a moment no words come out. You had thought that Kylo’s rare moment of sacrifice had been too extreme when he offered for you to kill him instead of Ladson or Poe, but yet now you were learning the truth, that it had been to protect you all along. Honestly, a small part of yourself had already assumed this, but it didn’t lessen the fact that he had almost died to try to protect you at least a little while longer. “You’re an idiot,” you snap at him. You don’t feel his anger through the Force bond, and that, in itself, depresses you enough to try to compensate with anger of your own. “Snoke was using you, even then. He would never have had you kill me. He wanted you to die so that he could bring you back, and in so doing keep me under his control.”

               “And to break the Force bond,” Kylo admits bitterly. “So we would no longer be bound to each other. I had to die regardless.”

               “But you’re alive now,” you insist, leaning forward against the bed again. “And Snoke’s dead. He knew that the bond between us was stronger than any of the control he could ever exert over us, and trying to destroy it only made us stronger.”

               Kylo just shakes his head. “From the moment I saw him, I knew it was over.” You stay silent as you gnaw on your lower lip, waiting for him to explain. “There was no way he would keep me alive when I was worth so much more to him dead, and even if we somehow had managed to escape, we would have ended up right back here regardless. You would still be here with Ani and the pilot, and I’d still be sent off to the Republic to die.”

               “Kylo,” you say softly, but he just shakes his head.

               “It’s fair,” Kylo says firmly. “I took the choice away from you and you’ve wondered, I know you, you’ve always wondered what would have happened if things had been different, if I had never taken you off this base. Now you’ll get to find out.”

               “No,” you say firmly as you can feel tears spring up behind your eyes. “Kylo, I don’t know how to tell you that I love you more than anything, but I do love you, more than anything, and I’m not going to sit back and watch you die.”

               “You think there’s anything you can do?” Kylo asks, arching an eyebrow, and you just slump forward against the bed, resting your face in your forearms. You didn’t know what to do. You really and truly didn’t. All you had wanted to do was to protect Kylo, to keep your little family together, and in that you had failed. You had been given opportunity after opportunity to try to do right by them, and yet each time you had failed, and now it looked like you were going to lose him for good. You can’t help but sob openly into your arms beside him, and you think you can almost feel Kylo’s surprise through the Force bond that no longer flowed steadily between you as he strokes your hair back away from your face, trying to comfort you as best he could.

               “Please don’t give up,” you beg on your knees in front of him. “Please, I’ll do anything, anything I can, but just please don’t give up.” Kylo puts his hand on your head, smoothing your hair back, and you can’t help but whimper as you wipe your face on your arms in a futile struggle to get a hold of yourself. “Please, Kylo, I already lost you once and I can’t do it. I know I need to take care of Ani but I just-“

               “Shh,” Kylo tells you, pulling your arms away from your face. He takes one of your hands in his as he pulls you towards the bed and you lazily climb up, wincing as you adjust yourself beside him so that you can rest your head against his chest. Kylo tucks you under his chin as he wraps his arms around you, burying his nose in your hair. “Are you still in a lot of pain?”

               “Emotional or physical?” you ask, but don’t wait for a reply. “Both. I mean, I was told that we were both in a bacta tank for a good long while, but I guess these sorts of injuries take a lot to heal.”

               “You should never have challenged Snoke yourself,” Kylo says firmly. “Did you even think about what Ani would do if he lost both of us at the same time? I died so that you could live, so you could go on and protect him, not so you could throw your own life away.”

               “I was protecting him,” you insist. “And I don’t know what happened. You were dying in front of me and it was like everything switched off. I killed Shayne, I killed everyone who crossed my path before I got to Snoke. I just knew that I had to kill him, and if I didn’t, Ani still wouldn’t have been safe, not here. I didn’t just take out Snoke. When the Resistance attacked, I managed to lower the shields and close off all the ventilation around the _Flare_ so it would explode and take the _Propitiate_ out with it. I told Ani to take your body and get off the ship with Ladson and Poe. I was supposed to be the one to stay, to fix the mistakes that I had made while I was under Snoke’s control.”

               “You can make far more reparations alive than dead,” Kylo tells you softly, and you wrestle out of his grip as you look up at him.

               “That’s it,” you tell him, your eyes wide with the realization. “Killing you won’t solve anything. All those people that you murdered can’t come back now, it’s too late for that, but there’s no reason for you to die too. Like you said, you can make far more reparations alive than dead. We just need to convince the Republic of that and then you’ll get to live, you’ll-“

               Despite your newfound optimism, Kylo just shakes his head. “Hux is dead, and Phasma, if she knows what’s good for her, will stay hidden for a long time now. The Republic doesn’t just want reparations, they want blood. They want to make an example of me, to dissuade others from ever challenging their rule again.”

               “And you’re just going to give them what they want?” you ask incredulously. “No, Kylo, do you really want to die that badly?”

               “Of course I don’t,” Kylo snaps. “But there is no way out of this for me, don’t you understand that? Either they kill me or they lock me up, either way there’s not a chance they would ever let me see you or Ani ever again.” He shakes his head. “If I did have to spend the rest of my years in isolation, I’d rather we not be bonded. I wouldn’t want you to ever have to go through the pull of constantly being reminded of me-“

               “It’s a bit too late for that,” you snap irritably. “You already basically did that to me once, when you gave me our son and then walked away for _years_. Every time I so much as looked at him I was reminded of you, and that’s not going to change now.” You shake your head. “And why do you talk about being locked up like it’s such a bad thing? It would only be a matter of time before I broke you out-“

               “And then where would we go?” Kylo asks dryly. “Then you truly would have committed treason against the Republic, and Ani wouldn’t be able to see either of us ever again. Are you really that selfish?”

               “I’m selfish?” you demand angrily. “I’m the one trying to save your life, but all you seem to want to do is talk about ending it.”

               “I’m not trying to end it,” Kylo tells you. “That already happened once, but there’s no point in trying to deny what is going to happen to me. It’s only going to make it harder for you when it does.”

               “It’s already hard now,” you argue, the seeds of desperation growing in the pit of your stomach. “What can I do, Kylo? What can I do to convince you to at least-“ Kylo looks away from you, and you don’t continue. There was no point. The last time he was in one of these cells, he had been begging for you to give him another chance, and now you were here begging for him to at least try, but he wouldn’t. He had made up his mind that he was going to die to the Republic, that they were going to put him down, and nothing you could say or do would change his mind. “Fine. If that’s what you want.” You struggle to sit up, ignoring the pain in your abdomen as you swing your legs out of bed. Kylo says your name and grabs hold of your arm, but you shrug him off.

               “No,” you say fiercely. “No, I’m done. When I thought that you died, that was it for me. I thought I had lost everything, but now you’re here, you’re back, and you don’t even care. I know you can’t feel me right now but you can _see_ how hurt I am and you don’t even care. Do you remember what happened last time you were in one of these cells? I told you that it was it for us, that I couldn’t see you any longer because it hurt me too much to watch you go off and be executed, and now it’s the same thing all over again. But if that’s what you really want, if you want to just be resigned to your fate, then I’m not going to keep trying to convince you to live. Just know that this means that this is _it_ for us though. I love you, but if I can’t convince you to at least try to save your own life then I’m not going to waste the rest of mine trying either.” You stand up now, not daring yourself to look back at him.

               “I’m not coming back,” you tell him with finality. “I know I can’t exactly talk right now after the bad decisions that I made, but I thought that you would always be there for me. And you won’t be, you won’t even try to be, so I guess that’s just it then.”

               “What do you want me to tell you?” Kylo demands. “You want me to tell you that I’ll try to plead my case to the Republic? Try to convince them to spare my life?”

               “Yes,” you yell at the opposing wall, as you still couldn’t bring yourself to turn around and look at him, knowing it would only weaken your resolve if you did. “You said Leia has a plan. Talk to her, talk to Poe. Work out a deal with them to take to the Republic. You still know more about the First Order than I do. If you can help them in some way, they might agree to spare your life and then we can figure something out.”

               “He’s only doing this for you,” Kylo says quietly. “You must know that.”

               “Or he’s just a good person,” you say resolutely. “They’re a rarity in the galaxy, I know, but he’s not just doing this for me. He’s doing this for Ani, for your son, and he’s doing it for Leia. Do you really think she wants this for you? Despite all the terrible things that you’ve done to her, do you really think she wants to watch you die?” Kylo doesn’t answer, and you just shake your head. “Fine then. Goodbye Kylo Ren.”

               “Stop,” he says loudly, and all at once you can feel your movements begin to slow as you start to walk towards the door. He’s using the Force to try to hold you in place, but he’s incredibly weak, and he can’t stop you from leaving if you really want to. But you don’t. You don’t want to. “I’m not strong enough to get up and chase you,” Kylo says softly. “So if that’s what you’re hoping for, I’m going to disappoint you.”

               “I want you to tell me you love me,” you say as you turn around to face him. “I want you to tell me that you’ll do whatever it takes to try to be with me and Ani instead of just giving up.”

               “I don’t want to get your hopes up,” Kylo says quietly. “I don’t want you to think that there’s a chance that I’ll stay, or a chance that I’ll come back-“

               “I just need to know that you _want_ to,” you say, your voice breaking again. “I just need to know that you’ll do anything you can to find your way back to me.”

               “I will,” Kylo says softly. “You know I will.”

               A moment of silence passes before you turn around, and before you know it you’re in bed beside him again, hands fisting in his dark hair as you kiss him, pulling his lips to yours as you lose yourself in the familiar sensation. You take in one greedy kiss after another while Kylo holds you steady, his one hand planted on your lower back. This thought pulls a smirk to your lips, and you can’t help but giggle into Kylo’s open mouth as he pulls away slightly.

               “Should I ask?” he asks as he arches an eyebrow, and you lean forward to brush the tip of your nose against his.

               “I just realized, it’s going to be a while before we can fuck again,” you tell him. “Or we’re going to have to be _really_ gentle when we do. Like, I’m still injured and you’re still weak-“ You pause as you gently lower your hand to his chest, moving excruciating slowly so that Kylo has plenty of time to stop you if he wants to. Your fingers reach out and gently stroke the stiff bandage underneath his shirt. “Does that hurt?” Kylo shakes his head to indicate that it doesn’t, and you bite your lip as you stare down at it. “Do you still have a, um, hole in you?”

               “Skin cauterizes,” Kylo tells you, and you can’t help but shiver at the thought. “Luckily there are more hollow spaces in the human body that you would believe, and it didn’t penetrate any major organs. I’m also lucky that it was made with my lightsaber; it was a clean wound.”

               “Clean,” you repeat with obvious distaste for the word. “But how long is it going to take for you to heal?”

               “Months?” Kylo offers, and you shake your head from side to side.

               “The Republic’s not going to want to wait _months_ ,” you tell him. “Weeks, maybe, but months is pushing it.”

               Kylo just shakes his head. “Whatever happens, I just need to know that you will be okay.”

               You can’t help but shake your head as you look up at him sadly. “After everything that’s happened, I don’t know if I can ever really _be_ okay,” you tell him.

               “I know,” Kylo says softly, brushing your hair back as he kisses your temple. “I know.”

               You had once thought that your experience aboard the Starkiller Base would have been the most damaging experience that you had ever encountered, but you had no idea what had been in store for your future. You were hoping now that you had already been tested in every possible way and that things would stop now, that things would slow down, but a part of you didn’t want it to. You wanted to spend your days in idle monotony, but with Kylo, and you weren’t sure if that could ever really happen on board the Resistance base when he was basically awaiting his execution. You knew you would have hours and hours to dwell upon your idle thoughts, and that’s exactly what you didn’t want.

               Snoke had been inside your head, subtly manipulating you into some twisted version of yourself that you barely recognized, and while you still weren’t quite sure that you were totally back to yourself, your death almost felt like you had hit the reset button and helped bring you back to a place where you should have been all along. Even still, that didn’t erase what you had done in the past. You still had a lot to atone for, a lot of amends to make, and not everyone that you needed to apologize to was still around to hear it. You had killed Shayne, you weren’t exactly sure how Ladson would react to that piece of news, but considering how much he had never really liked him, you were almost afraid to tell him. A part of you was afraid he’d hate you for it, he’d hardly be wrong not to, but a part of you almost feared he’d react with casual indifference, and that was something that you couldn’t accept. It didn’t matter what your mental state had been at the time. You had still done something wrong, and while you wanted to make things right, Shayne was gone now. The least you could do was try to do something to at least honor his memory, perhaps by carrying on the work that he started with the Resistance, maybe at your old academia. As much as you didn’t really want to go back there, they probably had better resources, and besides, you couldn’t be sure the Resistance would even still want you here. Ani would want to stay, you knew that, but you had done enough to ruin his life. He would get more support at the Resistance than he ever could from returning to his sleepy home planet with you.

               There was nothing for you back on your old planet, except Sadie, of course, and you had no idea where to start making things right with her. You wanted to, but a part of you almost assumed that she would be too terrified to see you again, and you couldn’t blame her for that. If she didn’t, and you couldn’t really hold it against her if she didn’t, then you would have to spend the rest of your life regretting what you had done to her, and you supposed that in the end that was only fitting. You had not only physically suspended her movements and forced her to stay in the room with someone that had abused her so terribly, but you had taken it one step further and knocked her out and left her _unconscious_ with her abuser present. In retrospect, you couldn’t imagine what in the galaxy had possessed you to do that. You wanted to say that you weren’t thinking clearly and blame it on Snoke’s manipulations, but Snoke’s subtle mind games could only excuse so much. Kylo may have killed people under Snoke’s brainwashing, under Snoke’s control, but just as he had to hold himself accountable for what he had done, so did you.

               “Hey Kylo,” you say quietly as he plants gentle kisses along the side of your face.

               “Hmm?” he asks, his lips still hovering over a spot on your temple.

               “Snoke was lying, right?” you ask softly. You can feel Kylo stiffen, and you almost regret saying anything at all.

               “About what?” Kylo asks.

               You’re about to tell him to forget it, but he can’t read your mind so easily anymore, and you could feel your heart sink with that realization. It only hurt worse when you realized he was probably feeling the same way. “My parents,” you say after a moment. “I mean, I know you probably have no way of knowing, but-“

               “I don’t know,” Kylo says quickly, and it almost seems like he wants this conversation to be over and done with. Snoke had been a liar and a manipulator, and it only made sense that he had been full of shit, simply throwing out things that he had picked up on through your own insecurities in order to try to manipulate you further, but a part of you couldn’t help but wonder. You disliked your father for selling you, but you had never really brought yourself to hate him, for whatever reason, you just hadn’t. Maybe this explained it. Maybe a part of you knew that, deep down, he wasn’t truly your own flesh and blood. “I wouldn’t dwell on it,” Kylo advises, and a small smile rises to your lips as you realize that although the Force bond wasn’t still in place, he still knew _you_ , could still tell when you were thinking thoughts that you shouldn’t.

               You nod your head forward, trying to take his advice. “Don’t look backwards, look ahead,” you tell no one in particular. You pause, immediately regretting your choice of words. “Actually, I don’t know how far ahead I want to look. If the future’s a place without you in it, I’m not sure I want to go there.”

               “You’ll pull through,” Kylo tells you, and you just shake your head, unable to be sure how he seemed to have such resolute confidence in you when you weren’t sure yourself. You probably could, if you tried, but so much had happened as of late that you didn’t even truly know what trying looked like.

               Nevertheless, you stay with Kylo for a long while, cuddled up in his warm embrace on the bed, silently begging the connection between you to open up again before you hear Rey’s voice in your head, urging you to get back to bed so that they could reapply the bacta on your own wounds. Kylo makes a face immediately after you hear her voice, and you can’t help but laugh as you prop yourself up on one elbow, knowing she had probably reached out to him as well. “The scavenger?” you ask him, mimicking the bitter tone he usually used when he addressed her, and he just shakes his head in dismay.

               “You’d think they’re torturing me enough just by keeping me here,” Kylo muses, and you can’t help but laugh as you reach up and kiss him quickly before you slide your legs off the bed.

               “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” you tell him. “They’ve been keeping me more or less out of it when no one’s around with me, probably for my own good, but as soon as the coast is clear I’ll sneak back down here to you.”

               “Just take care of yourself,” Kylo says softly, and you nod as you get up and make your way towards the door. “Promise me something?”

               “Hmm?” you turn around quickly, ready to pledge your complete love and devotion to him as soon as he asked.

               “Don’t,” he says firmly, and your brow creases in confusion. “Whatever Snoke said to you, don’t dwell on it. He has a way of pinpointing your deepest insecurities and exploiting them, it’s how I allowed him to get so much power over me.”

               “But he’s gone-“ you start, but Kylo shakes his head like it doesn’t matter.

               “Just don’t,” Kylo repeats. “Whatever he said, you need to assume that it was just a lie to get you further under his control, and nothing more.”

               “Okay,” you say softly. “But then will you promise me something?” Kylo raises his eyebrows, waiting for your request. “Don’t give up on me, on yourself, on us, please? I know things look dark now, but we’ve come out of worse before. Just, please don’t give up?”

               Kylo glances down and to the side, and you let your heart sink in your chest as you turn away from him. As you take a step towards the door, you suddenly hear his voice in your head, strong and sure. _I won’t._

               It brings a smile to your face, and you momentarily forget that he can’t feel your happy energy through the Force as you turn around and rush back towards him, kissing him quickly with both hands planted on either side of your face before you head out to meet Rey. She’s waiting on the other side of the hallway with her arms relaxed across her chest, wearing a bemused expression on her face. “Did you have a nice visit?”

               “I did,” you reply happily, and she gently pushes herself off the wall as you begin to walk back towards your room together.

               “I don’t know what you see in him,” Rey admits as she shakes her head from side to side. “I doubt I’ll ever know.”

               “That’s fair,” you admit. “To be honest, if our positions had been reversed and he had kidnapped and tortured me like he did to you, I don’t think I’d be where I am right now.”

               “Don’t _think_?” Rey asks as she raises her eyebrows, and you just shrug your shoulders.

               “Things turned out the way they turned out,” you say simply, slowing your pace slightly. “I mean, there’s no use focusing on the hypotheticals. It’s about as pointless as trying to figure out the past.” Rey turns to you, the same bemused expression on her face, as she raises an eyebrow in a silent question. You bite your lip hesitantly and think it over. The question itself couldn’t hurt, could it? After all, it was only a question, one, simple question, and if there was a chance that you could find out the answer, then wasn’t it worth asking? The worst you could be told was no, and then that would be that.

               “Hey Rey,” you begin softly. “You think there’s any chance that I could ever find out who my parents were?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sigh. So poor Reader is still a bit off-kilter after her experience with Snoke, and it's not going to be easy for her to get past everything that happened, especially now that the Force bond between her and Kylo has been severed. But will they be able to get it back? Will she manage to convince Kylo that there is still a way out of this, no matter how hopeless it seems? As always, things will probably get worse before they get better, but at least you only have to wait until Thursday to find out!! ;) 
> 
> PS: IT'S BEEN ORDERED. I'M SO EXCITED. 18 WEEKS. I CAN'T WAIT.  
> https://collectibles.starwars.com/prop-replicas/kylo-ren-helmet/
> 
> P.S.S: Please no one tell me mom I threw down 2.5k on this....it's a surprise and she still has two weeks left in Bora Bora so she won't know until she gets back. xD


	47. Chapter 47

               “If anyone tries to send Kylo to the Republic before he’s had a chance to heal, I’ll kill them,” you tell Poe as he steps into your room the next day. He just looks more confused than anything, and you can’t help but inwardly sigh as you feel your intimidation factor slip down a few notches. You were sure that if you had threatened Poe this way back when he had been your prisoner, he would have been downright scared, but now the tables were turned and you weren’t going to do yourself any favors by approaching him with hostile aggression.

               “You’re in no position to be making threats, especially as weak as you are,” Poe reminds you. “But I’ll excuse that, considering what Rey told me yesterday.” You roll your eyes and groan loudly as you shift your weight, clearly uncomfortable. “You really let what Snoke said get to you, huh?”

               “I didn’t,” you say tersely as your eyes snap back to meet his. “It was just a question, I asked, and now I know.”

               “I know what that’s like,” Poe reminds you, but you just shift uncomfortably in your bed again, not sure you really knew what to say to him. At least Poe remembered his mother from when he was a young child, but you hadn’t even known what your mother looked like. Not to mention there was the added fact that he had met people who had known his mother, like Leia, and while that must have hurt on some level, that they knew her potentially better than he had ever been able to, at least he was able to piece together a tapestry of what she was like from the stories that everyone shared about her, not to mention the historical record she left as her legacy after the war ended. He _knew_ who his mother was, had proof that she was a real tangible person who made a difference in a lot of people’s lives. Your mother? You couldn’t even stand to guess.

               Regardless, Poe seems to sense that this is not a topic of conversation that you want to entertain, and so he quickly switches the topic of conversation back to Kylo. “I don’t know if there was more to it than what I saw,” Poe admits. “But from where I was standing, it looked like what he did directly saved the life of a Captain of the Resistance, and while that may not mean anything to someone like Deso, I think we can make a substantial case for his, well, _reformation_.”

               You tilt your head to the side, not understanding what he was trying to say. “Snoke wanted him dead regardless,” you tell him slowly. “He was in his head. He told him-“

               “Right,” Poe says quickly, as if you were missing the point entirely. “But I, and with a little convincing, Ladson, managed to persuade at least a few senators that Ren died trying to save our lives.” He’s looking at you so optimistically, like it’s supposed to comfort you, but for some reason you’re more put off by it than anything else.

               “Why?” you ask eventually, and Poe’s face falls flat, as if he had expected you to be happier about it than you seemed. In truth you _were_ happy, but you had been so affected by your negative experiences lately that you honestly couldn’t seem to think that anything would actually ever end up in your favor. “Sorry, but optimism doesn’t really seem to be in season for me right now.”

               “Fair,” Poe admits slowly as he tilts his head to the side in consideration. “You and I have a lot to talk about on that front, but I thought you would at least be happy to know that Ren is going to stay here, under our care, until his trial.” He hesitates for a moment, choosing his next words carefully. “Which we think it would be best if you weren’t there for.” You’re about to open your mouth to speak, before Poe cuts you off. “For a multitude of reasons.”

               He was being brusque with you, maybe for the first time ever, and instead of being put off by it, for some reason, you kind of liked it. Poe was treating you as a person, not as someone that he _liked_ , and while you couldn’t remember a time when he had treated you truly differently because of your relationship with him, so much had changed in that time that you could no longer be sure. Either way, it seemed a lot easier to talk to him now than it had been back on Tatooine, although you couldn’t be entirely sure that the situation was all that much different. You had been his prisoner then while he held all the cards, withholding as much information from you as he felt necessary, and that was as true now as it was then.

               “Okay,” you say after a moment, taking the time to think it over. “I get that Deso hates me and it could be dangerous for me if I go-“

               “That’s an understatement,” Poe informs you, and you tilt your head to the side in consideration.

               “And you’re afraid of what I’ll do if they sentence him to death?” you ask, trying to stifle the laugh that’s risen in your throat. “Yeah, I’d probably be afraid of me too. I don’t blame you for that.” Poe says nothing as he stares you down, and you just sigh as he gestures to the chair beside your bed. “Yeah, you can sit.”

               “There’ll be plenty of time to talk about the trial later,” Poe tells you. “But I think we need to clear a few things up first.”

               “This sounds like a conversation that I’m not going to want to remember happening,” you say without looking at him, as Poe looks more somber than you’ve ever seen him. He wasn’t coming to you as someone who liked you, or even as a friend. He was coming to you as a Commanding Officer of the Resistance, and you suddenly weren’t sure how to feel about that.

               “I need you to tell me everything,” Poe says after a moment. “I need you to tell me everything you did for the First Order, every order you followed, every order you gave, what role you played in the creation of their superweapon, everything you can remember.”

               “And if I don’t?” you ask, raising your eyebrows. It’s meant to be a joke, but it’s not funny. You’re so past the point of making jokes that even you almost feel embarrassed by your behavior. “Okay, you’re right. You’re right, I-I screwed up. I more than screwed up and you have every right to hate me for what I did to you, so-“

               “Maybe I wouldn’t hate you if I could understand,” Poe offers, his voice quiet, and suddenly it strikes you that if this was a ploy to get you to tell him everything, it was a good one, and he was putting on a pretty convincing act at that. Even still, you didn’t think he had to act, not when you had kept him prisoner after you had captured him on Tatooine. He had every right to be wary and cautious of everything that you said, of everything that you did, and you weren’t going to hold that against him when back on the _Propitiate_ you had almost ended his life.

               “You want me to start at the beginning?” you ask after a moment. “I mean, I’m sure I’ve told you some of this stuff back on Tatooine-“

               “Tell me again,” Poe says quietly, and you’re honestly a bit off put by his unfamiliar tone as you consider the possibility that he wanted you to repeat your story to see if he could detect if it was rehearsed in any way. You wanted to tell him that although you were a great many things, you weren’t a liar, until you remembered that you had purposely misled him about Kylo’s whereabouts, and he could no longer sincerely trust anything that you had to say.

               You grit your teeth and resign yourself to telling him everything, knowing that Ani had probably more or less done the same anyway. “After Kylo took me away from here, I woke up on Naboo,” you begin, but determinedly look away from him, speaking to a spot on the far wall. “I didn’t want to be there, and I was upset about it for a long time, but he was good with Ani and Ani wanted to stay so we stayed. Not long after he told me that the Republic had branded me a traitor, that they wanted me dead, and so I didn’t think I could really go back after that. I didn’t try to reach out to anyone, I didn’t want to, it just seemed like too much of a risk.”

               “Do you think we would have sent you away if you came back?” Poe asks. He has his fingers steepled as he listens, his forehead pressing against the backs of his index fingers in consideration as he listens intently to every word.

               “I’d like to think you wouldn’t,” you reply with a light laugh. “But then again, I didn’t really want to put you in that position.” When Poe doesn’t speak again, you continue your tale. “Phasma was doing a lot of trading with blasters and plasma on Naboo, and I suppose this leads into your largest question of the superweapon. She reverse-engineered a captured lightsaber, developing a way to use Kyber crystals to vastly improve the yield from a single plasma pack by as much as thirty times. She applied it on a smaller scale, to a blaster that Ani liked to use, because the more powerful you were with the Force, the stronger it was.” You bite your lower lip. “She never shared the _full_ details of the technology with me, but back on the _Propitiate_ , I’m the one who suggested to Hux that he should take what she had already created and apply it on a massive superweapon scale in order to fix some of the problems they were having in reverse-engineering the Starkiller.”

               “Did you help them build it?” Poe asks, and you shake your head from side to side.

               “No,” you tell him, but Poe is again quiet as he seemingly waits for you to continue. “No, I didn’t build anything. It was just my idea, but I let Hux, well, I guess, Snoke run with it and-“

               “After the test firing on the Hutts, what was the first target?” Poe asks. “Were they going to focus it here on D’Qar? Were they going to focus on the Republic?”

               “I don’t know,” you admit as you shake your head. “I honestly, truthfully, have no idea.”

               “Who was going to use the weapon?” Poe asks, and he mistakes your hesitation for a reluctance to answer. “You? Ren?”

               “That never came up,” you explain quickly. “I mean, I guess Snoke would have, probably, although he was still Hux at the time. We only found out that he was Snoke the same time you did. If Hux approached Kylo asking him to use the superweapon, neither of them said anything about it to me.”

               “And you really didn’t sense anything?” Poe asks, and you narrow your eyes at him, as if he was insulting your competence with the Force. Even Rey hadn’t been able to discern that it was Snoke who had been manipulating her, although you granted that she hadn’t been around him on a daily basis.

               “No,” you say as you shake your head. “No, I had no idea.” You cross your arms over your chest as he continues to say nothing. “You know, I heard once upon a time that the Senate had _no_ idea that Palpatine was a Sith Lord even though the Jedi Council interacted with him on an almost constant basis, so it’s not that hard to believe.”

               “So all that time you thought you were talking to Hux-“ Poe starts, but you’re too insulted now to let him finish.

               “All that time?” you echo. “I never even knew the _Propitiate_ existed until you found me on Naboo, and that’s just where Phasma brought us. I wasn’t the one calling the shots.”

               To his credit, Poe seems somewhat pleased by this, although he continues to say alarmingly little. “So over the past few years, where were you? What was your role in the First Order?”

               “Try non-existent,” you tell him with a light laugh. “Um, let’s see. I was on Naboo for a long while with Ani, just training him, raising him, typical, you know, normal stuff. Sometimes Kylo went away to do things with the First Order, sometimes he went with Phasma, and they left us there alone, but he never really talked to me about where he went or what he was doing, and I didn’t really ask.”

               “So you were on Naboo all that time?” Poe asks, and for a moment you almost feel as though this is an interrogation.

               “Not exactly,” you admit. “I mean, like I said, Phasma was trading blasters and plasma and who knows what else, and I got, I don’t know, scared the Republic was going to find us. Naboo’s a Republic world and I figured, you know, if they got to me and Kylo before you guys did then they would lock us up, throw away the key, and Ani would be left alone without any way of reaching out to anyone, so we left.” You pause as you try to think back. “We actually went to, uh, Tatooine first, and I absolutely hated it there so we went back to Naboo but then left a few days later because of something, I can’t remember, and then Kylo just brought us from base to base.”

               “And what did you do on base?” Poe asks, and you roll your eyes.

               “Nothing,” you tell him. “Honestly, it was really pretty boring. Uh, I raised Ani. I learned how to cook, somewhat, although to be honest Phasma taught Ani mostly everything and then he sort of taught me. Kylo didn’t want us roaming the base so occasionally when Phasma came over she would take us to the blasting range, let us train, let us get out and stretch our legs, but otherwise it was kind of, I don’t know, isolating.” You shrug your shoulders absent-mindedly. “I don’t know, we moved around a lot from base to base on different planets so it never got too boring, sometimes Kylo was away for days at a time, that was lonely, but I tried to make the best of it, for Ani’s sake, make sure he was constantly busy doing things so he didn’t get too bored.”

               Poe stops for a moment as he looks up and seems to consider you for a moment. “So you didn’t really get involved with anything the First Order did until after you entered the _Propitiate_?”

               “Yeah, basically,” you reply simply. “The rest of the time I was just playing parent to, well, both of them, I guess. You know how volatile Ren can be, although he really simmered down a lot since I met him on the Starkiller Base, probably since you met him too. Being on Naboo with him was almost like being with a whole different person. I think taking care of Ani really helped with that.”

               “How do you figure?” Poe asks, and you visibly struggle with the question.

               “Well,” you begin slowly. “If he lashed out, he knew I would just take Ani and head back here, and he didn’t want that to happen, so he had, I don’t know, incentive, I guess, to curb his temper.” You turn your head to look at him now. “I mean, considering what happened, I know Kylo and his father never really got along, but he’s really done his best to be there for Ani. He was patient with him when he taught him, tried to teach him to find balance in the Force, and, uh, yeah.” You laugh at Poe’s confused expression. “Yeah, that’s what I thought too. I think the second or third day I was on Naboo, I wasn’t speaking to him at all because I was just trying to figure out how to get back here and then when I woke up, Phasma told me that Kylo had taken him Force training and I was _so pissed_ , like, I had no idea where they had gone or what he was teaching him, but that night Kylo brought him back and Ani was happy and he said, well, I forgot what he said but Kylo used a really insightful analogy about how the dark side is like sinking stones that honestly kind of surprised me, you know, considering it was coming from him, but yeah.” You can’t help but let a smile surface to your lips. “I mean, Ani seems pretty well-adjusted, doesn’t he? Wouldn’t have happened if Kylo was as shitty a parent as most people probably expected him to be.”

               Poe seems like he wants to say something, but holds back. “So,” he says, changing the direction of the conversation a bit. “Why did you join in with the First Order? Was it Ren’s idea?”

               “Not exactly,” you say softly, remembering how Kylo didn’t seem all that pleased after your little declaration in Phasma’s living room. “I sort of had my own Force vision that Anakin Skywalker gave me, and it was kind of like a warning, that Kylo would be captured and Ani would be taken away, so I wanted to do whatever I could to protect them.” Poe seems to sense that you’re holding something back, and you just shrug your shoulders. “I don’t know, there was a lot to the vision, it was sort of one of those nightmare how-bad-can-your-life-become scenarios.”

               “So it scared you?” Poe asks, and you nod your head.

               “Basically, yeah,” you admit. “I mean, I don’t know if that was Anakin’s intention, I think it was just a warning and I may have interpreted it the wrong way, but I don’t know, I just wanted to protect them, that’s _all_ I wanted.” You roll your eyes to the side as you let out a heavy sigh. “Then Sadie and Ladson showed up a few days later, and you know how that all turned out.”

               “Tell me,” Poe insists, and you huff uncomfortably.

               “Do I have to?” you ask, and when Poe doesn’t answer you roll your eyes again as you cross your arms over your chest. “Fine. I was mean to them; I guess that would be the best way to say it. I mean, okay, I was more than just a little mean. I didn’t really want to hear anything they had to say and then when Hux came in the room, Sadie tried to run away so I used the Force to keep her in place, and she sort of broke down after that.” You shake your head from side to side. “I was _just_ trying to get answers out of them as to why they were there so I could keep Ani and Kylo safe. That was my priority.” You pause for a moment and let a sheepish grin come over your face. “And, I mean, not going to lie, I was a little freaked out to open the door and just see them _there_ after all that time. It wasn’t something I really expected, you know?”

               “Yeah,” Poe says as he nods his head in understanding. “So you regret that you harmed them?”

               “I mean, I tried not to,” you say, unable to hide the confusion in your voice. “I mean, okay yes, I threatened them, I used the Force on Sadie and I knocked them both out so that we could escape, but I don’t like to think that I _harmed_ them, at least not physically.” You pause for a moment as you think of something, but then shut your mouth quickly.

               “What is it?” Poe asks, tilting his head to the side as he silently urges you to continue.

               “I didn’t hurt _them_ ,” you say quietly. “But I, uh, I hurt other people. I’ve killed other people.” You fidget with your hands uncomfortably, looking at the hole that the needle had left in the back of your hand, grateful that at least that tubing had been removed and not replaced.

               “People?” Poe echoes. “Were they civilians?”

               “No,” you say immediately, before you falter. “I mean, no, uh, if I did, it was indirectly. The First Order had installments on planets throughout various systems, and so they requested my help in advising them on the cultures of the different species that lived there so they knew how to interact with them, like how killing the Lamells would get them nowhere, but they could make alliances with them by trading advanced technological secrets to get them to cooperate.”

               Poe seems troubled by this. “But from the sound of that, it sounds like you may have helped save some lives.”

               “Yeah, I think that’s how I got suckered into it,” you say, shaking your head from side to side. “I thought I was helping, but the First Order doesn’t believe in alliances, they believe in ruling. I don’t have any specific examples to give you, but I’m pretty sure once they established a trust with those societies, that their planets were drained of their resources and either left to fend for themselves or were obliterated like the Hutts. Or both.”

               “But did you know that was going to happen?” Poe asks, and you just shake your head for what feels like the fourth time in two minutes.

               “I should have had some idea,” you offer weakly, but in truth that hadn’t really been at the forefront of your mind or your concerns. You simply hadn’t thought about it.

               “What about the people you _directly_ killed?” Poe prompts. “Civilians?”

               “No,” you say, shaking your head. “No one in the Resistance either. My first kill was on the _Propitiate._ Hux asked me to go to a meeting of officials and explain my role there, and one guy kept heckling me, and no one else was paying attention to me, so I sort of lost my cool and used the Force to snap his neck.” You look down and away. “Kylo told me it was okay because he was probably going to choke that guy out for speaking out of turn anyway, but he didn’t kill him, I did.”

               “Do you think that Snoke’s influence factored into your decision to kill him in any way?” Poe asks, and you can’t help but stare at him incredulously.

               “It wasn’t a _decision_ ,” you tell him firmly. “I don’t know, I wasn’t thinking, I just didn’t _think_. I was mad, I reacted, I killed him. It didn’t bother me much at the time, but I took someone’s _life_.” You shake your head from side to side again. “It doesn’t matter if Snoke influenced me or not, that was still me. I killed him, his blood is on my hands, it’s my fault.”

               You can feel your heartbeat literally echoing in your chest as you stare down at your open palms, clearly haunted by what you had done. You had killed him, and while you hadn’t liked him, while he most likely would have been dead by now anyway, you still had blood on your hands. And it wasn’t just his blood.

               “Shayne,” you say quickly, screwing your eyes shut as you spit his name out like a dirty word. “Yes, Shayne, I killed him, I killed Shayne.”

               “When?” Poe asks, and you can tell by the confusion in his voice that he wasn’t expecting this confession.

               “After I told you to take Ani and go,” you explain. “I was walking down the hallway and I took out a few Storm Troopers that were coming towards me, trying to stop me.” You shake your head again, trying to think back. “I don’t know, I was in some sort of a daze, I guess, I just knew that I had to get to Snoke and I had to cut down anyone in my way, anyone that was trying to stop me. At one end of the hall I saw someone trying to activate an alarm and so I snapped their neck without even thinking about it and when I got closer I saw that it was _Shayne_ and I just-“ You bite your lower lip to keep it from trembling. You tried to tell yourself that it was okay, that it wasn’t your fault, that you shouldn’t _care_ because you thought he was dead long before that anyway, but you had no idea how much of that was really you talking. Of course you should care. Shayne might have had no hope of escaping from the _Propitiate_ before it was destroyed, but if he didn’t, that would have merely been an unfortunate consequence of the circumstances, and not something that you were directly responsible for.

               “I screwed up,” you snap at Poe, even though none of this was his fault, you still couldn’t feel a flash of anger towards him for making you relive this. “Is that what you’re really looking for me to say? I screwed up, fine, I screwed up. I did bad things not because Snoke was in my head, but because I’m a terrible person, because, let’s face it, Snoke may have messed with my head, but only because there was darkness there already for him to work with. I always had the _potential_ to cause chaos and destruction and to kill, but I just didn’t because-“ You stop, your words failing you.

               “Because?” Poe ventures, and you stare back down at your hands as you let your shoulders slump.

               “Because I didn’t want to,” you mope. “I don’t know, because I didn’t have a reason to hurt anyone? I don’t-“ You pause and take a quick sigh. “I don’t _like_ hurting people. I don’t like that we kept you and Ladson hostage for a while trying to figure out what to do with you. I just wanted to keep Ani and Kylo safe and everything else came second and I know how screwed up that sounds, believe me, I know, but it just didn’t bother me at the time like it bothers me now.”

               Poe is silent for a long while, letting you collect your thoughts, but you no longer have anything you want to say. “Is that it?” Poe asks quietly. “Just the officer, Shayne and a few Storm Troopers?”

               “A few Storm Troopers,” you scoff, immediately hating how the words sounded. You knew Poe didn’t mean anything by it, but it still hurt nonetheless. “You know, they were people under there too, people like _Finn_ , taken from a home they would never know and trained and brainwashed to be killers-“ You shake your head. “And I helped the people responsible because I thought it would help _me_.” You can’t help but let out a laugh as you sink your palms into your hands. “I am so _screwed_ _up_.”

               Poe looks like he wants to comfort you as he reaches forward and places one hand on your thigh, running his hand up and down over the blanket in a comforting gesture. He looks like he wants to say something, but he remains silent, and you wonder if there’s a reason that he’s been so remarkably taciturn as he gets to his feet. He leans forward as if he’s making a move to kiss you before his lips graze your cheek until they hover just in front of your ear. “I’ll be back later, okay? Just sit tight for now.”

               “Okay,” you say softly, a bit intimidated by the sudden closeness, as Poe stands up straight again. Something was happening, something you weren’t in on, and you were suddenly _very_ concerned as to what that was.

               “In the meantime,” Poe says. “There’s, uh, someone who wants to pay you a visit. I’ll be back soon.” You just tilt your side in confusion and Poe casts you a knowing smile before he heads out the door, letting it close behind him. You stare after him for a few moments, waiting to see who it was that would enter next. The minutes tick by, and you’re almost wondering if you should physically get up and check for yourself when the door opens and Ladson walks through.

               And he’s not alone.

               _Oh fuck._

Sadie is following closely at his heels, arms wrapped around her torso, head bowed, as though she’s more than a bit nervous to see you. Your jaw opens and shuts dramatically, but your mouth seems to have forgotten how to form words. “See, what I’d tell you?” he asks, turning to Sadie. “She’s speechless.”

               Sadie looks around the room, looking everywhere but at you, and you can feel your heart rise up in your chest as you struggle to find the right words to say. “Look, Sadie, I’m _so_ sorry-“

               “You’re going to be,” Ladson says, with a shrug of his shoulders. “You know, maybe.” You open and shut your mouth, trying to figure out what that meant. “There’s a reason Sadie’s here. Why do you think that is?”

               “Something to do with why Poe was asking me all those questions,” you respond immediately, your voice flat, your face deadpan, as you realize with dawning horror what was happening.

               “To be fair, I think you got the good end of the deal,” Ladson admits idly, pacing the length of the room. “Rey’s with Ani, and Luke’s interrogating Kylo, but we figured you would just come out and tell Poe the truth, I mean, all things considered; plus, it’s a lot less painful for you this way.”

               “Interrogating,” you repeat, your eyes wide. “For what? Poe told me that Kylo’s trial wasn’t-“ Ladson raises his eyebrows and tilts his head to the side as you realize the severity of the situation you were now in. “ _My_ trial? But Poe told me that the Republic had dropped all charges against me.”

               “The Republic did, yeah,” Ladson says with a slight nod. “But considering what we had told them about what happened on Naboo, the Resistance is trying to evaluate how much of a threat you are to them.” You open and shut your mouth, but no sound comes out. “And what sort of action to take against you, whether it be imprisonment or-“

               He doesn’t continue. He doesn’t need to continue. You had thought that you might be safe at the Resistance, but you were wrong. It suddenly explained why Poe had been so quiet; he had probably been secretly recording your responses somehow to play them back for the Resistance and see how well they fit into Kylo and Ani’s version of events. It wasn’t just what you _did_ that was important, it was also whether or not you told the truth, whether or not you could still be trusted. And if they decided that you couldn’t be? Were they really willing to simply put you down?

               But this was Poe. He would try to defend your life, wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t Leia? But the others, the Republic generals that had defected to the Resistance, the ones who didn’t know you, never met you, would they share the same level of understanding?

               Your situation was suddenly no better than Kylo’s. The last time you had been on this base, you had been called the Champion of the Republic, and now those same people were debating whether or not to imprison you or execute you.

               “I’m sorry,” Sadie says quietly as she steps forward and lifts her head to finally look at you for the first time since you had seen her on Naboo. “Looks like things really have changed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And oh how things come full circle!! I don't think anyone at the Resistance would fully be in favor of Reader's execution (at least I hope not!) like they might be for Kylo, but there are going to be some punishments handed down and Reader is inevitably going to have to face the consequences of her actions, Snoke's manipulations or not. How that may change things for her, especially considering she's resolved to work with the Resistance to do all she can to help Kylo, remains to be seen......
> 
> ......but bad news bears, friends, there will be no updates on Saturday. I am going camping in the Adirondacks again (yes, again) so I won't be able to update during that time. I am going with, erm, slightly better companions this time around, so unless something drastic happens, you can expect your regularly scheduled updates come Tuesday as I have no plans to repeat what happened the last time. So until then, try not to worry about Reader's fate (or mine!) ......too much....? xD Until then, cheers!!


	48. Chapter 48

               You purse your lips and shake your head from side to side, letting your shoulders rise and drop. “I did what I did,” you admit. “I made a lot of bad decisions, and I should be held accountable for them. It’s only right.”

               Ladson and Sadie share a look, as if they weren’t expecting this. They seem to shuffle awkwardly around each other for a few moments, as if they’re not sure who should speak first. “I’m not going to speak for Sadie,” Ladson begins. “But I still have trouble reconciling everything you did as if you were _totally_ under Snoke’s control.”

               “Don’t-“ you start, but Ladson makes it clear he wanted to say what he wanted to say without being interrupted. You wanted to tell him you agreed with him, tell him that he should hold it against you, that he shouldn’t forgive you for what you had done, but you supposed your words wouldn’t mean anything to him right now.

               “No, let me talk,” Ladson continues. “You really messed up back on Naboo. I can understand being wary of us, hell, I can understand not being happy to see us, but that thing you pulled with Sadie? And Hux? You left us there alone with him, you knocked _Sadie_ out and left her alone with him. I wanted to call you out on it, I wanted to tell you that you were making the wrong fucking move, but I didn’t honestly see a point. I didn’t think you would listen to me, and I was honestly afraid of what you’d do to me. Do you know what that feels like? To be afraid of you?”

               _I do, actually._

               You knew exactly what it felt like to be afraid of yourself and what you would do, but you knew that an honest answer would only serve to upset him, and so you just shake your head from side to side. No, you knew what it was like to be afraid of yourself, but you didn’t know what it really felt like to be on the receiving end of your fury. Back on the Starkiller Base, you had practiced using the Force against Ladson, but that was just fun, just practice. Even when you had sparred with him, you were never in danger of seriously hurting him, or worse, ending his life, like you had been on Naboo. Ladson had every reason to believe that you would have killed him and Sadie, and despite the fact that you hadn’t, the thought that you quite easily could have, that you might have, clearly left an impression on him that you doubted could ever be erased, not that you really blamed him. Had the positions been reversed, and you had been in his position, you doubted you would feel any differently.

               “You’re lucky the Resistance found us pretty quick,” Ladson tells you. “Hux was long gone when I woke up, as I kind of expected he would be, but even in those few minutes…what if he had taken Sadie hostage again? Did you even _think_ about that?”

               “No,” you say quietly, looking down at your hands. They seemed remarkably small for some reason, compared to the bulges of your outstretched legs underneath the blankets, and you had a hard time rationalizing the thought that they were both a part of your body, one unified organism that made up who you were. Your thighs, your knees, your hands, your wrists.

               “You’re lucky he didn’t,” Ladson reminds you, and you can’t quite make out if he’s yelling or not; suddenly his voice feels very far away. “They didn’t want me to get involved again after that, after you made it clear that you didn’t trust either of us. Poe didn’t want me to get involved either, but I insisted in coming to Tatooine because I _hoped_ that you would have realized what a mistake you made on Naboo and came back to your senses, but no, you were _worse._ ” He shakes his head from side to side, as if he still doesn’t believe it. “And then to kidnap me and Poe? That was the best part, because we had no idea what you were going to do with us, whether we should try to escape or not, and you kept giving us mixed signals. One day you acted like you wanted to free us, and then other days you acted like you didn’t care if we rotted in there for the rest of our lives.”

               He seems to be waiting for you to say something, but you can’t meet his eyes. “I’m sorry,” you offer softly, but the words seem oh so hollow in your throat.

               “Poe was optimistic,” Ladson says, and he almost scoffs it, as though his optimism should be treated with rebuke instead of praise. “He said he thought he got through to you back on Tatooine. I don’t know if it had anything to do with getting into your pants-“ you flush and look away. “Although, speaking of which, before I continue, I really want to know, why did you do it? Kylo was right there on Tatooine, he was probably worried about you even despite that sand storm you guys were stuck in. Why did you do it?”

               “Because I felt bad and I wanted to feel worse,” you tell the pool of blankets between your legs. Ladson says nothing and the silence seems to stretch on for a while before he speaks again.

               “You fucked up big time,” Ladson reminds you, and you let your eyes slip shut as you let out a sigh of acknowledgement. “I mean it, you really screwed up, but I want to know, from your own words, how much of it was Snoke’s doing and how much of it was your doing. When you held us prisoner, was that Snoke or was that you? Back on Naboo, was that Snoke or-“

               “It was me,” you tell him quietly, scratching at the inside of your wrist. You can see the blue of your veins against your tender skin, and for some reason, it makes you uneasy. “It was me, it was all me. Snoke messed with my head and changed the way I thought, but he didn’t create anything that wasn’t already there. He brought out the worst in me, but it was still me. I always had the potential to do bad things, the capability to use the dark side of the Force, and I did, and I didn’t think twice about it. Snoke didn’t control me, he just helped me to not care about the terrible things I did, but all of that bad stuff, it came from me, and I’m sorry.”

               You can feel pressure building behind your eyes while you talk, but you don’t let the tears flow. For whatever reason, they just don’t come, and you’re not quite sure whether it’s because you’re too proud to cry in front of them or because a part of them needs them to hate you, needs them to not forgive you in order to prove once and for all that you really were a terrible person. Poe could forgive you, but that was Poe. He had his own dealings with death and bloodshed; he knew the price of war and the cost of lives that you wish you hadn’t taken. Sadie, however, had been removed from this, and dragged back in _because_ of you. So many bad things could have happened to her _because_ of you, and while it was only a miracle of the Force that she was safe, you still couldn’t help but take responsibility for it, because that was what you _had_ to do.

               “See?” Ladson says, and he raises an eyebrow as he turns to Sadie. “I told you she was back to normal.”

_…what?_

               Your eyebrows dip together as you look at them sharply, your lips pressed together in a firm line as you take them in. Ladson’s tone had been far too light, too amused, to condemn you to a life of being on the receiving end of his cold shoulder. “Hate me,” you tell him, trying and failing to raise your voice at him. “Don’t, don’t forgive me for what I did to you. I ruined your lives. I could have killed you.”

               “You’re right,” Sadie says as she turns to Ladson, and you hit the bed on either side of you in frustration.

               “No, don’t forgive me,” you insist. “Seriously, Sadie, I could have fucked things up for you _so bad_ -“

               “Could have,” Sadie repeats. “I don’t pretend to understand what happened with Snoke, but Ladson told me what it was like being mind controlled as a Storm Trooper and if it was anything like that-“        

               “It wasn’t,” you assure her. “Totally different. Snoke didn’t do anything, okay? This was me, this is all me being a terrible person.” But they’re both smiling at you now, like they’re enjoying their own little private joke, and you can’t help but raise your hands toward them in a classic sign of the Force. They don’t even flinch. “Guys, I can _kill_ you.”

               “But you’re not going to,” Ladson tells you, and you roll your eyes.

               “Am I really not intimidating?” you ask. “Is it because of the bed? Or the room?”

               “You do kind of look like shit,” Ladson admits, and if you were any closer to him you probably would have hit him.

               “You were different back on Naboo,” Sadie informs you. “I can’t put my finger exactly on what it was, but everything about you seemed different, your eyes were different. Now it just, I don’t know, it feels like you’re you again.”

               “And that doesn’t excuse anything,” you remind her. “You should _hate_ me.”

               “But I don’t,” Sadie says, and her voice is full of a new type of emotion that makes you stop short. “I don’t know how much they’ve told you, but Rey started having nightmares about you and she started acting, I don’t know, differently, which is why they sent us in, to see if you were acting any differently too. We sort of expected that you might have changed, especially since it had been a while since we last saw you, but once we were there, seeing how you treated us like you didn’t even know us, that was when we knew that it wasn’t really you.”

               “But it was me,” you insist. “They’re having a trial right now to determine that I’m guilty.”

               “I may have just played that up a bit to see how you’d react,” Ladson offers, and you grit your teeth and narrow your eyes at him, nipping at the bottom corner of your lip in silent frustration. “Okay, I mean, to be fair, it’s _basically_ a trial, although it’s more of a formality than anything else. You were with the First Order, and even though you didn’t do anything wrong-“

               “Oh, I did plenty wrong,” you remind him. “I did _a lot_ wrong, and you can’t just blame Snoke for all of it.”

               “You didn’t do anything so unspeakable it’s unforgiveable,” Ladson says with a shrug. “I mean, in the past few years here with these guys, I’ve seen them do stuff that’s pretty unforgiveable too, heck, even Poe’s done a few things that I couldn’t believe, but that’s war. Hopefully with most of the bad guys out of the picture, things will start wrapping up soon, although they’ll probably want your help in ending things for good. You’ve got to have some valuable information running around in your head, and they’re going to want that.”

               “And is that what this trial is going to determine?” you ask as you arch an eyebrow. “It’s basically a formal way of declaring that I need to make reparations for my crimes under the First Order by telling the Resistance whatever they want to know?”

               “I think?” Ladson offers, spreading his hands in a telltale sign to show that he really, honestly didn’t know. “I know Poe offered to work with you to find out what you knew, to help acclimate you back at the Resistance, and Finn and Rey are going to help you with that. They want to get you back into your old routine here-“

               “They really want to train me with blasters, again?” you ask with a short laugh. “Are you kidding me?”

               “Well-“ Ladson shrugs uncomfortably, as if he didn’t know what to say to that. “Poe believes that people are creatures of habit. Put you back in the same situation that you were in before, and you’ll come back around to our side. Or something. I don’t know, he’s your boyfriend.”

               “He’s not my-“ You can’t even get the words out of your mouth as your face flushes scarlet, and Sadie laughs at you. She _laughs_ , and it’s a sound you haven’t heard from her in so long it almost hurts your heart to hear it.

               “After Ren took you away, they came to visit me,” Sadie explains. “Ladson told me that you had, you know, gotten _involved_ with him-“ She draws out the word as her eyes flit to the side, and you can’t help but groan as you bury your face in your forearms, rubbing your nose back and forth between the tender patches of cool skin there in a weak attempt to conceal your embarrassment. “-I almost didn’t believe it. I thought the whole thing was a joke at first, I really did, and that you were going to pop out and yell _Surprise!_ at any time. Then Rey and Finn came in and explained everything-“

               “Rey and Finn were there?” you ask, unable to help yourself. You could just imagine Ladson showing up with Rey, Finn, and Poe and explaining that Ren had kidnapped you and Ani and while that _had_ been everything you ever wanted last time you spoke to her, this was a bad thing now because you had since been fucking Poe. You screw your eyes shut as you make a face, feeling your cheeks flush. “Let me guess, Asher was there too?”

               “He came with, but he stayed with the ship,” Ladson explains. “He uh-“ Ladson hesitates for a moment, and you signal for him to keep going. “Okay, we ended up brawling in the hangar. I was trying to steal a ship and he was trying to stop me.”

               “I thought Poe was kidding,” you say as you shake your head and let out an incredulous laugh. “You really tried to steal a ship from them? Do I even want to ask?”

               “This was right after the Republic branded you a traitor and demanded the Resistance call off the search,” Ladson explains. “I tried to talk to Poe about it, but he was still off looking for you. I thought that you might have stopped in to see Sadie; I thought Ren might have brought you by there because you and Ani would feel safe there, but no one wanted to look. They said their sources hadn’t seen you but I didn’t believe it so I wanted to take a look myself. I told them I just wanted to take one ship and go home but they said they couldn’t spare any ships so I just decided to try and…take one.”

               “And they didn’t lock you up for treason?” you ask, crossing your arms over your chest.

               “No, luckily Poe got back in time to break up the fight,” Ladson continues. “I thought I was going to have to fight him too, but he, uh-“ He doesn’t seem to know how to continue, and you just sit there and wait for him to keep going. “Okay, well basically Leia told him to stop looking and he wasn’t too happy about that, so he basically said, _Fuck it, let’s go,_ so we all piled on board and went to visit Sadie. We didn’t stay long; they discovered the ship was missing pretty quick and Asher decided to tell Leia it was my fault to protect his Commander, so I was basically put under the Resistance’s version of house arrest for a while.”

               “Well, glad to know we’re both criminals,” you tease him lightly as you turn to Sadie. “What about you? You do anything terrible lately?” Your eyes drop to the scar on her neck, and your expression immediately sobers. Sadie was good, and beyond that, she was innocent. You would do absolutely anything you had to in order to protect what was yours, and you were starting to get the feeling that Ladson would do the same, but Sadie was good. If she had the opportunity to kill Hux, you almost doubted she would take the opportunity unless it would have guaranteed her escape back on the Starkiller Base. But if she happened to see him walking down the street? No, she wouldn’t have her revenge. She was too good for that; she would simply turn on her heel and walk the other way.  

               “Not yet,” Sadie tells you, and that only serves to sober you further. That had been your reply when Kylo had asked if you had killed someone, back when you hadn’t thought that you ever really _would_ , but then you did, and you didn’t know how to cope with it. “Especially now that the gang’s back together.”

               _The gang._ For some reason, this reminds you of the time you had spent together on Starkiller Base, and it only brought to mind someone that was noticeably absent. You knew Poe hadn’t told them about what you had done; it wouldn’t have been right for him to do so. It was something you had to confess yourself.

               “Um, guys,” you say softly, fidgeting with your blankets. “I did something bad.”

               “Yeah, we know,” Ladson says dryly. “And we already said that although we’re not exactly _forgiving_ you for it, we’re not exactly holding it against you either, so-“

               “No,” you say quickly. “Um, besides that.” Their expressions both sober as they look at you, bracing themselves for what you have to say. “I, um, I kind of, maybe, well, I kind of, uh, well, I _did,_ uh, kill…Shayne.” You bite your lip as you glance up at them. Sadie just looks confused, and Ladson has both eyebrows raised and looks almost sort of surprised. “After I told you and Ani and Poe to go, I started cutting down all the Storm Troopers in my path to try to get to Snoke. Some guy at the end of the hall was trying to raise an alarm so I snapped his neck without even thinking about it, and when I got closer I saw that it…was… _Shayne_.”

               Sadie looks like she doesn’t know what to say, and Ladson looks at her before he turns back to you. “That actually doesn’t bother me,” he admits with a shrug of his shoulders and Sadie turns to face him incredulously. “What? Fuck that guy. You said he was working for the First Order, right?” You nod your head stiffly. “Well, there you go. He was a bad dude and he got what was coming to him. Heck, if you want forgiveness, I’ll forgive you for that.” Sadie makes a loud exhale as she slaps his arm, and Ladson turns on her dramatically. “What?”

               “Could you be a little more _supportive_?” Sadie asks, glancing between you and Ladson several times, and you shake your head.

               “No, don’t be supportive,” you tell her. “I don’t need _supportive._ I need someone to kick my ass and tell me that I’ve done very, very bad things.”

               “We’re just glad to have you back,” Sadie says, and you can’t help but release a heavy, frustrated exhale. You and Sadie went back a long, long time, and while you were at least a little bit surprised to see how easily she seemed to forgive you, you supposed a part of her _wanted_ to forgive you. She didn’t want to hold this against you any more than you did; she had things going on in her own life that she wanted to tell you about, events that you hadn’t been there for, and she just wanted to finally have the chance to share them with you, so you could be her friend again.

               “So uh,” you gesture vaguely into the air. “You, uh, got married while I was away?”

               “Yes,” Sadie says excitedly, clapping her hands together. “He’s a professor at the university. He’s from Yavin Four and he is so nice, and he’s so smart-“

               “He’s totally normal,” Ladson chimes in. “Totally boring.”

               Sadie slaps his arm without blinking and you can’t help but laugh. “-he’s _understanding_ ,” she repeats, and it only now occurred to you that Sadie had probably opened up to him about what happened with Hux. You had no idea how most men would have reacted to her situation, but you were grateful that Sadie had found someone who could appreciate the enormity of what happened to her and take things at the pace she needed to take them at. The thought was sobering, and only made you feel that much worse about what you had done when you had left her with Hux. You felt like you were going to cry in earnest now, and Sadie seems to sense this as she continues, changing the topic slightly. “He’s running the shop for me back at home. When you’re all healed up, you and Ani are going to have to come out there and visit us again. I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to be. I’ll leave the adventure and the rough stuff for you two. I enjoy my quiet, normal, boring life, thank you very much.”

               “Do me a favor and take Ani with you,” you tell her, half-seriously. “He can use some of that normal, uncomplicatedness.”

               Ladson just smirks as he shakes his head. “Ani and Asher get along so well it’s scary,” he tells you. “Ani wants to fly his X-Wing, and I think Asher’s probably already told him he could.”

               “He what?” you ask flatly. “What did Kylo say? Kylo really said that’s okay?”

               “To be fair, I don’t think he asked,” Ladson says with a shrug, and you groan as you stretch your neck out to one side. “Hey, isn’t he a little old to be asking for permission?”

               “Maybe,” you offer, fidgeting uncomfortably. “I just, I don’t like to think of the implications of how badly Kylo and I screwed up and how that affected him. Part of me wants to try to make it up to him, and the other part of me just wants to let him sort of live his own life without me so I don’t screw it up worse.”

               “I think a good balance is probably best,” Sadie tells you, and you just shrug your shoulders.

               “If it makes you feel any better, Asher agreed to meet you,” Ladson offers. “If it helps you feel better about the whole thing.”

               “Agreed?” you ask hesitantly, and Ladson shrugs his shoulders.

               “He’s a mechanic at heart,” he tells you. “He likes his ships, his droids, he likes working on things, likes fixing things. He doesn’t necessarily seem to like, well, people.”

               “He’s kind of shy,” Sadie tells you. “But more in a stand-offish way. It’s hard to describe, but you’ll see. He’s a nice guy, but I don’t know how he’d feel about me calling him that.”

               “Do I even want to ask?” you mutter under your breath as you arch an eyebrow in Ladson’s direction.

               “She’s just being dramatic,” Ladson huffs. “He’s fine, he’s normal, a bit quiet, but if you really want to get him talking, just ask him about how he managed to retrofit the engines on his X-Wing without compromising the load-balance and you’ll get him going for _hours_.”

               To be fair, you had no idea what exactly Ladson saw in Asher, but then again, without meeting him, you couldn’t exactly say for sure, not that you had any real right to cast any judgement, considering who you had been involved with. As long as Ladson was happy, you were happy, and if Ani liked him, then he was probably just fine. Sadie and Ladson talked to you some more, but in the back of your mind you couldn’t help but think how much trouble you had trusting people in general, and this was something that had seemed amplified under Snoke’s control, to the point where it made you doubt even being able to trust Sadie and Ladson, two people who had always had your best interests at heart.

               It never really occurred to you until now that they had _always_ put your interests ahead of their own judgements. Neither of them had any particular reason to like Kylo Ren, or think he was good for you in any way, and yet they always provided steadfast reassurance that he would return for you. They never spoke ill of him, at least not while you were nearby, and they had helped care for his child, which, during those early years, was a clear challenge that you were glad that they had been there to help with. You wanted to say it was just the shock of them appearing again after so long, and the fear of them separating you from Kylo, but the truth was they had simply come to extend an olive branch, and that was the exact reason why the Resistance hadn’t stormed your home and taken you by force. They had come to give you an option, a choice, but you had seen it as a threat and treated them accordingly.

               Even though you could understand why you did it, it still didn’t make it right, and you knew that, but Sadie and Ladson seemed focused on letting the past lie so that you could move on with your futures, and you wanted to do the same. Hux was dead and couldn’t trouble Sadie any longer, and you doubted you would be much fun to speak to if you constantly kept apologizing for all of your past mistakes every time you saw them. At a certain point, while you still felt incredibly guilty about what you had done, no one wanted to hear your constant apologizing. You had gained back their friendship, but now you would always be caught in the tricky folds of resenting yourself and trying not to let it show until those feelings faded away for good and you were left with the person that they believed you to be.

               You could fool them quite well, but there was one person who you knew you couldn’t, and after Sadie and Ladson left to get dinner, you waited patiently for him to come back. In truth, you didn’t know how long this trial would take, or how to feel about it, although you could understand where the Resistance was coming from. This was a time of war, and they needed to know if they had anything to fear from you. Considering you didn’t rightly know whether or not you had anything to fear from yourself, you considered their concerns well-founded and didn’t hold it against any of them. These were the thoughts that eventually pulled you down into a heavy sleep, and the medication that was still flooding your veins at steady intervals kept you under for what felt like a long, long time.

               It was morning when you awoke, although you couldn’t quite be sure how you knew. Maybe it was because Poe was sitting at your bedside, looking clean and awake and not like he had just endured a lengthy, stressful trial on your behalf.

               “Hey, you,” you say as you blink and stretch your arms, and Poe leans back as he crosses his arms over his chest.

               “Hey there,” he replies. “I came back last night but you were pretty out of it. Sadie said you seemed in good spirits, though.”

               “I guess,” you reply, shrugging your shoulders absent-mindedly. _Happy_ didn’t seem a word to describe you, if it ever did. You had never particularly been one to subscribe to the ideal of achieving happiness in and of itself. It was a welcome byproduct of pleasurable experiences, to be sure, but it seemed elusive if sought directly, and that had never been your goal. No, you would settle for _content_ , although you hadn’t been able to really call yourself that lately either.

               “So you don’t hate me?” Poe asks, and you just laugh as you shake your head quickly from side to side.

               “Oh, for tricking me into answering all your questions for the trial?” you ask. “No, I don’t, although I should probably ask how that went.”

               “They’re going to execute you,” Poe replies flatly, and there’s a moment’s pause before you release a snort of laughter and Poe chuckles good-naturedly.

               “Don’t even _joke_ ,” you tell him. You want to reach out and slap his arm lightly, but he’s out of reach so you narrow your eyes at him as you swat the air with one languid hand, making it clear that you wanted to do it all the same. “So come on, what _is_ my punishment?”

               “Nothing too severe,” Poe says with a shrug of his shoulders. “You’ll be working with me to help determine where the First Order had the most influence, where they still have their strongest reaches, which planets are most likely to still be loyal to them and the like.”

               “Oh, that sounds like so much work though,” you say lightly, and Poe looks you up and down before he grins, realizing your jovial mood was at least somewhat authentic.

               “It’s nothing compared to what I have to go through,” he says teasingly. “I’m the one who’s going to be accountable for you, so don’t let me down. Some of the others weren’t too keen with the idea of letting you loose on base considering everything that’s happened, so you’re going to have to do more regular training and meditation with Rey to show that you’re balancing yourself out, coming back to the light side of the Force and all that.”

               “Piece of cake,” you reply with a shrug of your shoulders. You had actually _missed_ meditating with Rey in her Green Room, and the fact that it was now mandated made absolutely no difference to you whatsoever.

               “And Luke’s going to want to talk to you too,” Poe says, and your face immediately sours.

               “He’s going to want to get into my head, isn’t he?” you ask, and Poe looks away from you for the first time as he shrugs his shoulders.

               “I don’t know,” he admits. “He might, but that’s up to you. I know that they wanted him to look into your head to see what you’ve been up to, but Rey helped me convince them that you would tell me the truth if we asked you, and compared to what Ani and Ren have said, it sounds like you have.”

               “That’s such a dirty trick,” you mutter as you shake your head, and Poe arches an eyebrow. “Testing me like that. You didn’t just want me to tell you what I did, you wanted to see if I would tell you the truth to see if you could still trust me.”

               “We trust you,” Poe says, leaning forward and bracing his hand on one knee. “Okay, sure, maybe not everyone here does, but the people that matter, your friends? Leia? We trust you. You were only trying to protect the people closest to you, and we don’t blame you for that. That’s all anyone here is trying to do as well.”

               You just shrug your shoulders uncomfortably. “So does everyone here hate me? Ladson told me, well, some things that weren’t the greatest to hear.” You look down hesitantly, and when you look back up to meet Poe’s eyes again, his face is troubled.

               “I’ve never lied to you and I don’t want to start now,” Poe admits. “There are people here who don’t like you, who think that you really did help Ren escape the base the first time he was here and hold you accountable for the casualties that happened here.” You let out a sigh as you look away, but Poe reaches forward and places his hand over yours. “Hey, we know that’s not true. Everyone that matters knows that’s not true, but I just, I thought you should know.”

               “Well, thanks for telling me the truth,” you mutter as you glance down at his hand, but he doesn’t pull it away. Instead, you move your hand around so that you can run your fingertips along his palm, and you sit in silence for a few minutes, gently stroking your fingers back and forth against his calloused skin. “I shouldn’t ask this, but you did know that I wasn’t going to hurt you, right?”

               “On the _Propitiate_?” Poe asks. “Yeah, of course.”

               “How though?” you ask, looking up at him. “I mean, I thought I made it look as convincing as possible-“

               “So did I,” Poe replies. “I saw the look you and Ren shared right before you turned to face me. You looked nervous, the same kind of nervous look you always had back in the cockpit when I asked you to do something you weren’t sure you could do.”

               You can’t help but laugh at this, and it brings a smile to your face before another thought occurs to you, but you can’t ask it, at least, not right now. “Anyway, I already apologized to Ladson and Sadie for everything, but I don’t know how to make it up to them, not really.”

               “I think they’re just looking for you to be their friend again,” Poe offers. “They know you can’t take back what you did, but they know you want to, and that’s what counts.”

               You pause for a moment, and you struggle, and fail, to meet his eyes as you ask your next question. “And how am I supposed to make things up to you?”

               “You don’t,” Poe responds, and your heart skips a beat as you look up at him, momentarily misreading his words and his tone. “You have nothing to make up to me. Remember, I was the one who let Ren take you away from here to begin with-“

               “No.”

               “If I hadn’t-“

               “No.”

               “-then maybe-“

               “No,” you say firmly, and Poe stops. “No, don’t do that. Don’t you dare do that. It’s been far too long to hold that against yourself, and it’s not fair to me, Poe, it’s not fair. I could have come back, and I didn’t. That’s on me. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Poe looks like he’s about to ask a question, but you know what it is before he even opens his mouth. You want to lie to him, everything in your body is screaming for you to just lie to him, but you can’t. For whatever reason, you just can’t.

               “Yeah, I did,” you tell him, and he has the decency to look surprised for a moment. “I thought about you a lot. I never took the stone off, which, you know, Kylo wasn’t always too happy about-“ Poe chuckles as he looks down, gnawing on his lower lip. “But yeah, I, um, I thought about you, sometimes more than I would have liked.” This hurts, you can tell by the pain in your chest that this is a real confession, and you’re not sure how to feel about telling it, but you wanted to tell the truth. If nothing else, he at least deserved that much. “Sometimes it was just, you know, where you were, what you were doing, hoping you were safe on base, having dinner with Rey and Finn and Ladson, hopefully not missing me too much.”

               “I did,” Poe tells you. “You know I did, we all did. Ladson was sure you were safe, but I just, I don’t know, I just hoped that you were, that he wouldn’t hurt you or Ani. That wherever you were in the galaxy, you were happy and not locked up somewhere wishing I would come find you.”

               “Sometimes I really wonder what would have happened if you had,” you mutter idly. “I don’t know, I guess I just wanted the best of both worlds. I wanted to still see everyone here and live with Kylo and Ani back on Naboo, and it couldn’t happen, it could never happen, but I just, I don’t know. That’s what I wanted.”

               “Do you wish that I had been able to find you sooner?” Poe asks, as if he really wants to know, and you think over this for a moment.

               “A part of me did,” you confess softly, offering him a reluctant smile. “But I don’t know if I would have gone back with you.”

               Poe just smiles and nods his head in understanding. “I think I would’ve understood,” he says after a moment. “Considering everything that happened with the Republic, you had nothing to come back for.”

               “I don’t know about that,” you say after a moment. “I mean, I had just started to feel accepted here, like I fit in, like I belonged. A part of me was really jealous in a way, bitter, that you guys were probably having a great time back here doing all this cool stuff and I was just –“ you shrug your shoulders. “-alone. I mean, I had Kylo, and Ani, and sometimes Phasma, but it wasn’t the same. Like, it was hard not having friends or anyone to talk to.” You laugh and shake your head back and forth. “Listen to me, I’m so _whiny._ Here you guys were risking your lives for the Resistance and I was just sitting there feeling sorry for myself because I had no one to talk to.”

               “Different circumstances,” Poe says simply. “You can’t compare the two.” He meets your eyes again. “And when it comes right down to it, you didn’t have a choice. Like you said, the Republic wanted to make it as difficult for you to come back as possible.”

               “But I could have come back,” you insist gently. “It was still my choice not to.”

               “Deso-“ Poe starts, but then shakes his head. “Had a vendetta against me, and he took it out on you. That wasn’t right, to pull you into something that you shouldn’t have been involved in. I’m sorry for that.” You want to point out that the Resistance had pulled you into something that you shouldn’t have been involved in and that was how you had gotten into this mess to begin with, but for one reason or another, you keep silent.

               “Don’t be sorry,” you tell him firmly. “Deso’s an _ass_ , okay? Besides, you sort of more than made up for it when you saved our lives heading away from Naboo.”

               “Like I could have done anything else when you saved BB-8,” Poe offers, but you just shake your head.

               “That wasn’t me, that was Ani,” you tell him. “Kylo ordered Phasma to destroy it, and it was Ani that stopped the bolt before it hit him.”

               “Still,” Poe says, shaking his head. “You could have used the Force to dismantle him, and, uh, what did you say before? Break him down to sell him for spare parts?”

               You groan loudly while you roll your head to the side. “Great, next you’re going to tell me that I’m never going to live down knocking you out with my staff.”

               “To be fair, I think I may still have a scar,” Poe teases, and you groan again, wishing you could slap him, but you can’t, and now it’s not just the distance between you that’s a challenge, but you also realize that you’re holding hands now. You hadn’t realized when that had happened, and there’s a brief moment of silence as Poe realizes it too. You wait for him to pull away, but he doesn’t, he just stays there with his hand wrapped around yours, and the moments tick by as you realize how natural it all felt. You couldn’t be sure what this meant, if anything, but if there was one thing you didn’t want right now was the silence for you to escape into your own thoughts when you couldn’t be sure what Poe was thinking.

               “Thanks for defending me,” you tell him, and Poe looks up at you like he’s not quite sure what you’re talking about. “For the, uh, trial. I know you had to get the information out of me, but uh, I know you stood up for me and tried your best to protect me so, uh, thanks for that.”

               “You think I’d let anything happen to you if I could help it?” Poe asks, and you blush as you look away, and Poe seems to take notice. “Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. It was just a technical formality since you were with the First Order, it had to be done, but they know what you did, they know that you took out Snoke and helped destroy the _Propitiate_ , and they’re grateful for that.” His face brightens a bit. “If it makes you feel better, Leia wants you to stop by and visit her when you finally get out of here.”

               “Yeah,” you reply, glancing around at all the monitors beside your bed. “Do you happen to have any idea when that is, because I’m not saying that I’m getting bored in here, but I-“

               “You’re getting bored in here,” Poe finishes for you, and you grin as you nod your head forward.

               “Yeah,” you agree. “But, uh, where am I going to go exactly, once I get out? I doubt my old room’s still available, unless Ladson’s still living there.”

               “No,” Poe says with a shake of his head. “No, he’s living with Asher, and that’s where Ani is staying now too. We’re a bit tight on space considering we had a recent influx of volunteers as of late, so we had to shift things around, move some people to other bases, it’s a hassle, but we can use the extra manpower.”

               “Ah,” you say with a nod of your head. “I guess I could, um, stay with Kylo until the trial and then figure out something else after that.” For some reason, you’re not exactly sure Kylo would even want you to stay with him, and Poe seems to pick up on your reluctance.

               “There’s not a lot of space in there,” he offers. “Those beds are built for one, and with your injuries, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be sleeping on the floor.”

               “Okay then,” you say, dropping your shoulders back dramatically. “So if there’s not enough room with Ladson and Ani, and Kylo’s room is too small, then where am I going to stay?”

               “Don’t you remember?” Poe asks. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be watching out for you. You’re under my charge now.” You bite your lip, unsure how to tell him that you weren’t sure sleeping with him was a good idea. Fortunately, you don’t even have to say anything. “I’ll let you have top bunk if you think you’re well enough to at least climb a ladder.”

               You can’t help but laugh as you shake your head from side to side. “Sure,” you reply, letting a happy smile tug at the corners of your lips. “That sounds great.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are going to be pretty tough for Reader going forward. Some days she's going to feel like she's okay, like she can handle what's happened to her because there's other people there that care about her, and other times she's just not going to understand why they've forgiven her, or be suspicious as to what they want from her next. It's not going to be easy for her to deal with, especially considering what might happen to Kylo as she questions whether or not she's the best person to be able to help him....but maybe there's someone else who can help the both of them. Someone who might still come back......
> 
> Basically Reader is still going to suffer with the effects of what happened as she struggles through PTSD from not only her encounter with Snoke (the full consequences of which have yet to be revealed) but after everything that had happened with the First Order, as she struggles to try to figure out who she was before and how that fits in relation to who she is now. Reader knows who she cares about, her priorities are still Kylo and Ani, but she might need to take some time to figure out just who she is again independent of both of family and her friendships in wake of everything that's happened. In short, the worst may be over, but in a way, it hasn't even started yet. 
> 
> Heh, this all sounds very, very cryptic as I try to hint and still saying nothing at all. If you guys are still reading, I take it you still trust me at least. Until Thursday, cheers!! (And I have big exciting news to reveal on Thursday too!! ^_^)


	49. Chapter 49

               “They’re letting me out today.”

               You stand in front of Kylo, arms pressed straight down across the front of your body, clasping your wrist with one hand. You weren’t sure how Kylo was going to feel about your new living situation, but considering the circumstances, you didn’t have a lot of options. Then again, if he asked you to stay and sleep on his floor, you would have agreed in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, the Force bond between you was broken, and he had no real way of hearing your thoughts as easily as he could before. As uncomfortable as it made you, it also meant that you had to be explicit with everything you said to him, making sure he understood what you wanted.

               Considering you were no longer sure yourself, you knew this was going to be somewhat of a challenge. It wasn’t that you didn’t know what you wanted, that wasn’t quite fair to say, but it was like two separate halves of your life had finally been twisted back together, and you didn’t know how to make them fit. On one hand, it seemed as though nothing had changed from the last time you had entered the Resistance base. Kylo was going to be sent off to be, most likely, executed, and you would stay at the Resistance base and try to do your best to raise Ani there, although now it seemed that Ani would be quite capable of finding his own way without you, and you couldn’t help but think that maybe he’d be better for it. You, yourself, felt like a stone, pulling down anyone that got close to you, and you didn’t want there to be any sort of emotional tether that would pull Ani down with you.

               “Are they letting you stay on base?” Kylo asks, and the thought depresses you. He should know that, implicitly, without being told. “My uncle was here. He said they were having some sort of trial for you-“

               “Just a formality,” you tell him quickly. “It’s fine, really. They just want to make sure I don’t snap, I guess. I’ve got mandatory meditation with Rey to make sure I don’t dabble in the dark side of the Force, and Poe’s been ordered to keep an eye on me.”

               Kylo raises his eyebrows expectantly, as if this information wasn’t news to him. “And he’s the one you’ll be staying with, then?”

               You’re a bit pleased that Kylo had able to deduce this without explicitly telling him, and while you hoped that he took your brightening expression as a sign that he could read you at least somewhat, you couldn’t help but think that maybe he took it the wrong way, that you seemed happier _because_ you were staying with Poe. “If it makes you feel any better, it’s not what you think,” you offer. “He’s got a bunk bed; I’ll be sleeping on the top bunk. So I’ll be sleeping in his room, but not _with_ him.”

               Kylo studies you for a moment before he sighs and shakes his head, and you gnaw on your lower lip as you drop your eyes. You know what he wants to say, but you don’t want to hear it. “I can’t ask anything of you,” Kylo says, shaking his head from side to side. “Soon I’ll be sent off to the Republic, and you’ll have to figure out what you want for yourself. I won’t be a part of your life anymore, and-“

               “Don’t say that.” The words are out of your mouth, quick and urgent, and you can already feel like you’re about to cry. Kylo narrows his eyes at you, as if your outburst was more of an inconvenience than anything else. “I know what you’re about to say, that at least we got a few happy years in to raise Ani together, but I don’t know what to do if you’re not here now.” You rake in a shuddering breath, almost embarrassed with yourself for getting so emotional so quickly. “And _don’t_ tell me that things will be okay because I have the pilot, because that is _not_ what I want to hear right now.”

               “You’re not alone,” Kylo says firmly, forcefully. “I’ll be here for you however you need me, but you can’t rely on me anymore, not when I won’t be around for much longer.”

               “You don’t know that,” you insist. “Has Poe been here to talk about your defense? About what you plan to do?”

               “He’s been in here,” Kylo mutters under his breath, and you tilt your head to the side as you study him. It takes you a long moment before something finally clicks.

               “Me?” you ask quickly. “What about me? What about me were you talking about?” Kylo gives you a look that shows you should already know, and you can’t help but blush. “No, that’s not fair, Kylo. You can’t just-“

               “He knows if he fails to protect you and Ani from whatever anyone might try to bring against you, that my last act in the galaxy will be to end his life,” Kylo tells you sternly, and you can’t help but sigh as you shake your head. It didn’t surprise you all that much that Kylo was probably bartering his cooperation for you and Ani in some way, but you still didn’t like to be reminded of it, despite the fact that it was probably necessary.

               “Still not fair, Kylo,” you insist. “I can look after Ani and myself just fine on my own.” Kylo gives you a dubious look, and you can’t help but flush as you cross your arms over your chest and huff. “Okay, but I can _try_. It’s not Poe’s responsibility to protect us.”

               “But he wants to,” Kylo says quietly, and you blush as you look down and away.

               “Because he’s a good person,” you reply quietly. “It’s nothing more than that.”

               “It’s more than that,” Kylo responds, but he doesn’t sound angry when he says it. You can’t exactly read him as well as you once did, but he seems to be frustrated to see you lying to him, or at the very least, denying that you felt something for Poe. This wasn’t ever a conversation you ever wanted to have with him, at least not verbally, but considering that he could no longer read your thoughts, you were going to have to be explicit with him, no matter how uncomfortable it made you.

               “Fine, yes, I like him,” you blurt out, crossing your arms over your chest in a vain attempt to protect yourself. You didn’t like being this vulnerable, not with Poe, not with Kylo, not with anyone. It almost felt like admitting it was a weakness; the emotions could be locked away inside without ever having to assign vocabulary to their meaning, but as soon as you said them aloud, you had to make sense of these feelings in a way that you preferred not to dwell upon. “We have, I don’t know, chemistry, but it’s something totally different from what I feel for you and I don’t want to explain it, because I can’t think about it, because I’m yours, Kylo, I’m yours and I don’t want that to change.”

               “I’m sorry,” Kylo says softly as he looks away from you, and you can’t help but pout as you plop down at the side of his bed, taking both of his hands in yours.

               “I’m selfish,” you tell him. “I’m really horribly selfish for putting you through this. I know-“

               “You’re not,” Kylo says with such finality that it surprises you. “He was there for you when I wasn’t. I can’t hold that against you.”

               “Then I can hold it against me,” you say firmly. “I can’t do it to you, Kylo, I can’t. Not again.”

               Kylo looks away for a moment as he lowers his head in dejection, but when he looks at you again, his eyes are blazing with new anger that’s so immediate it startles you. “Why do you insist on doing this?”

               Your lip trembles, and you shake your head slowly from side to side to show your confusion. “Please tell me what I’m doing wrong because I honestly don’t know,” you tell him quietly, afraid that his sudden change in mood had happened so quickly without you being aware of it. It was tangible proof that you could no longer feel him through the Force as you once did, and this frightened you more than you wanted to admit.

               “I am trying to do _right_ by you,” Kylo says through gritted teeth, and you can tell he’s making a concerted effort to restrain himself. “I want you, but I know I can’t have you, not when the Republic is going to cut my life short in only a few weeks now. It is _easier_ knowing that you and Ani will have someone to look after you, but I don’t want to keep _discussing_ it. I took this life away from you, and it’s only fair to give it back to you now.”

               “But I don’t know how to make you understand that I don’t want it,” you exclaim, holding his hand tighter than ever. “If I had to choose, you know I’d pick you, any kind of life that you’re in, we’re in it together. It will _always_ be you.”

               “Not always,” Kylo says quietly as he looks away from you again. “I know why you never took that stone off. You never wanted to make a decision about who you would choose if it came down to it, and now you don’t have to. You can say you choose me because you know I’ll be dead soon, that it won’t make a difference. You can’t make that choice now that it’s no longer yours to make.”

               “Just for the record, I want to storm away right now,” you tell him crossly as you release your hold on him. “I’m not going to, but I just want you to know that I’m thinking about it.”

               Kylo reaches up to stroke your cheek, and you can tell by the coldness of his fingers how incredibly weak he was. This wasn’t just about the Republic; part of Kylo was concerned that he wouldn’t even live long enough for that to truly matter. He had been doing better, his heartbeat strong and steady, but he had been pierced through the chest by a lightsaber, and the fact that he was still alive this long was a miracle in itself.

               You take one of his hands in both of yours again, rubbing the back of his hand with your thumbs. “How about this?” you offer. “I tell you now that I’ll _consider_ what you’re saying about him if it’ll make you feel better that I won’t be alone here, and his name never comes up in conversation between us ever again.”

               “Thank you,” Kylo says, reclining back down onto the pillows, and you force a small smile to your lips.

               “I do want to know where this altruism is coming from, though,” you tease gently. “Since it’s so very unlike you.” Kylo looks like he wants to say something, but even he can’t get the words out. “You just want me to be happy, I know.” Kylo raises an eyebrow, and you can’t help but laugh slightly as you continue to caress his hand in both of yours. “I guess there’s some things that the severed Force bond can’t shake, huh?”

               “Don’t,” Kylo says as he shakes his head back and forth. “I don’t want to risk it.”

               “Why?” you ask, unable to conceal the slight whine in your voice. “But why, Kylo? _I_ want to be connected to you again, and-“

               “And when you lose that connection?” Kylo asks softly. “When we’re forced to part again? No. It’ll be too painful, for the both of us, and I don’t want to go through that again.”

               “So you don’t miss me?” you ask, releasing his hand to cross your arms over your chest. “You don’t miss me even a little? You don’t miss being inside my head and knowing what I’m going to say before I say it? Feeling everything I feel? You don’t miss any of that?”

               “Sometimes,” Kylo says quietly, and his candor surprises you. “Sometimes I wondered if the things I felt for you were real, or if my affection for you was simply brought upon by your affection for me through the Force bond, creating a mutual dependence on each other.”

               “And now?” you ask quietly, almost afraid to hear the answer.

               “I love you,” Kylo says, meeting your eyes, and you can’t help but smile as you gently lie down in bed beside him, kissing him softly, gently.

               “Good,” you tell him. “Because I honestly don’t know what I’d do if you told me you didn’t really love me at all. You were prepared to die for me, and to know you only would have done it because your perception was skewed because of the Force bond, I don’t know how I would have been able to handle it. It just seems…wrong.”

               “It wasn’t just you I was protecting,” Kylo says softly. “Ani too. No matter what happened between us, he is _our_ son. The Force bond can’t change that.”

               “Do you think he hates us?” you ask after a moment. “I don’t know what to do with him after you go, Kylo, I really don’t. He told you he’s staying with Ladson and Asher, right?” Kylo nods his head. “Like, I almost want to insist that they find us a room so that I can spend time with the both of you before you go, but I don’t think I’m in much of a position to ask for anything, and-“  

               “He seems happy,” Kylo says quietly. “I wouldn’t want to take that away from him again.”

               “You gave him an opportunity to grow up with his father,” you say firmly. “He may like spending time with his friends, but they can’t replace you. Remember how happy he was when he first got to Naboo? When we brought him down to the lake and we watched him playing in the water?”

               “You mean when _I_ brought him down?” Kylo asks dryly. “If I recall, you still weren’t speaking to me.”

               “And if I could take that back, I would,” you tell him firmly, letting emotion creep into your voice. “There’s so much I wish I could take back, Kylo. If I hadn’t let Snoke control me then we wouldn’t have had to leave the _Propitiate_ and maybe we wouldn’t be stuck here-“

               “Don’t,” Kylo says firmly, shaking his head from side to side. “Ani had been wanting to come back here for quite some time, he just didn’t know how to tell you. He didn’t know how you’d react to it.”

               “And yet he told you?” you ask incredulously, and Kylo tilts his head to the side in consideration.

               “Once we were already here,” he admits. “But we couldn’t have kept going on the way we were, even if Snoke hadn’t returned. Do you think he would have been content to just let his life waste away sitting idly on Naboo?”

               “I just want him to be safe,” you say with a sigh. “But I want to do what’s right by him too, I just don’t know what that means. He could have been killed, or captured by Snoke, or worse, and that would have all been my fault.”

               “He doesn’t hold any of that against you,” Kylo says quietly, but you shake your head from side to side.

               “I’m a horrible parent,” you tell him. “Really, and I want to try to make it up to him somehow, but I don’t know how. He’s off flying with Asher now without even asking our permission to do it, and I don’t know whether to scold him or just let him go off and do whatever he wants.”

               “He’s going to do what he wants regardless,” Kylo says with an idle shrug. “We can only hope that we’ve taught him well and he’ll make better decisions than I did in my youth.”

               “Well, considering where he is, I doubt they’ll really let him get away with much,” you admit. “Besides, Ani doesn’t seem to share either of our violent tendencies, which is a relief.”

               “Just…watch over him,” Kylo says quietly, and the resignation in his tone could not be overstated. Your hand immediately finds his and you squeeze it gently, trying to fill him with all the reassurance you could muster before you remember he could no longer be affected by you in that way.

               “Does he know what’s going to happen?” you ask quietly. “He hasn’t really stopped by to visit me much.” Kylo looks surprised, but only momentarily. “Yeah, see, he hates me.”

               “He doesn’t hate you,” Kylo says firmly. “He’s still getting adjusted to everything here, and he knows he’ll have more time to spend with you once I’m gone. He knows what’s going to happen, but unlike you, he’ll at least accept it.”

               “No,” you say firmly, shaking your head from side to side. “I don’t believe that. How can he just _accept_ that you’re going to die and not try to do anything to stop it?”

               “Don’t,” Kylo warns as he squeezes your hands. “I mean it. Don’t try to rescue me, or help me escape. There will be no way for the pilot to protect you if you do, and I don’t know what they’ll do to you.”

               “I can’t do it,” you say, shaking your head. “Kylo, please, I can’t just sit back and-“

               “And this is why I can’t re-establish the Force bond,” Kylo tells you, almost a bit regretfully. “Because if it hurts you this much now, you won’t be able to handle it when the time finally comes.”

               “What if it were me?” you demand. “What if the positions were reversed? What would you do? Would you just let me die?” Kylo doesn’t answer you, because he can’t, because he knows the answer you need to hear will be a lie. “Okay, let’s stop this, okay? This discussion, it’s, it’s morbid. We don’t know for sure that the Republic is going to execute you.”

               “Don’t we?” Kylo asks dryly, and you shake your head.

               “We don’t,” you say firmly. “Poe and Leia are working on this, along with who knows how many other people, okay? Leia is not going to let her only son get killed by the Republic, no matter what you’ve done. Have you seen her yet?”

               “Yes,” Kylo says quietly, and you know by the look in his eyes that you’ve won.

               “See?” you exclaim. “She’s not going to let them kill you either. You’ll stand trial but there may be a way to get you out of this.”

               “So they don’t kill me,” Kylo says flatly. “So they lock me up in a cell for the rest of my life. Is that somehow better?”

               “It would be,” you tell him firmly. “Because if you really don’t want me to try to break you out now, I won’t, but you need to at least uphold your end of the bargain and not give up on yourself. If I find out they are keeping you prisoner for life, then I will find Phasma and we will round up the biggest force of Storm Troopers that we can find and we will free you.”

               “And you?” Kylo asks. “You could never return to the Resistance. We could never see Ani again.”

               “But he’d know that you were okay,” you tell him forcefully. “That we were together again, and we were happy. Don’t you think he’d want that for us? He gets what he wants, to stay here, and we can be together again.”

               Kylo just shakes his head from side to side. “If that’s your plan, find Phasma, but don’t come along,” he says firmly. “If you can stay as far removed from any escape attempt as possible, they may not be able to trace it back to you.”

               “But then how will I find you? What if the rendezvous falls through?” you ask, and Kylo fixes you with a sad smile.

               “You would tear the galaxy apart to come find me, I have no doubts about that,” he tells you.

               “Maybe I won’t have far to look,” you offer, and Kylo tilts his head to the side in confusion. “The Republic may not feel comfortable holding you, as powerful as you are, so they may ask the Resistance to hold you, and then Ani and I can come to visit you as often as we want. Heck, if you’re here, I’d never have to leave your side.”

               Kylo turns over slightly so that he’s leaning closer to you, and you can tell the change in position causes considerable effort for him to make, but you don’t comment on it. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

               “Yes,” you insist. “Yes, Kylo, I know you can’t exactly feel me right now, but I mean everything that I’m saying to you. I do want to be with you, more than anything. I screwed up, okay? I screwed up so badly, and you’re here because of me.”

               “You think the Resistance wouldn’t have captured us eventually?” Kylo asks, and you shake your head.

               “It doesn’t matter,” you say firmly. “Yes, I feel guilty over everything that’s happened, but guilt isn’t the primary reason why I want to save you. We had a life together, _have_ a life together, and I’m not ready for that to end yet, I’m sorry, I’m just not. I don’t care if that makes me stupid, or weak, or pathetic, you died and came back to life, and yet somehow now I’m more afraid of losing you than ever.”

               “You’re not going to lose me,” Kylo says quietly. “If we had a choice, if I wasn’t in this position, we would leave and go off somewhere, but as it stands…” He shakes his head, as if confirming something to himself. “You can have a stable life here, one where Ani can grow and you don’t have to worry about protecting us all the time. He can give you a better life than I can, and I don’t want you to waste that trying to save me.”

               “We should have killed Hux sooner,” you say suddenly, running your hand down the front of Kylo’s shirt. “Or Snoke. Whoever. We should have killed him and taken over ruling the First Order, and then we could have made a truce with the Resistance and just focused on inhabiting and taking control of the Unknown Regions where no one would be around to bother us.”

               “Do you think Ani would have been happy with that?” Kylo asks, and you shrug your shoulders.

               “I don’t know,” you admit. “Maybe he would have, but then again, maybe that could be part of the deal that we made with the Resistance, letting him go back there if that’s where he really wanted to go. Then he’d have the freedom to visit us whenever he wanted to.”

               “Don’t dwell on these thoughts too much,” Kylo warns you. “I’ll do everything I can to try to let them spare my life if that will make you happy, but I won’t beg them.”

               “Please don’t,” you say with a light laugh. “You have a reputation to maintain. In fact, if you are going to go out, please just do me a favor and kill as many Republic officials as you can? Especially Deso? Poe couldn’t bring himself to do it, but you know Deso has targeted me and Ani specifically, and he can make life quite unpleasant for us if he wants to.”

               “I will,” Kylo assures you with a confident smile, and he reaches up to kiss you at the exact moment you reach down to kiss him. A happy energy bubbles up between you, and as you run your hands through his hair, down the nape of his neck, you can almost _feel_ something building between you, a nervous spark of energy that you had felt before back on the Starkiller Base but hadn’t really recognized it for what it was. Whether you wanted it to or not, you and Kylo were connected, and the more time you spent around him, the more time the Force bond had to reassert itself and make itself as strong as it was before; it seemed it was something that just couldn’t be helped, and you were not going to spend any less time with him before he was sent away from you, possibly for the last time.

               Kylo seems to sense this too as he pulls away from you slowly, his dark eyes burning into yours. “I love you,” you reassure him.

               “I know,” he says as he kisses you again, strongly, firmly. He hesitates for a moment as if he’s testing something, and then he seems to almost nod to himself before he pulls away slightly. “The bond is reasserting itself.”

               “Let it.” You have no idea how you can put so much conviction in your words, but it’s there nonetheless, and Kylo doesn’t even try to challenge it. He just nods softly as he leans up to kiss you again, and you reach down and gingerly stroke his cheek, embracing his touch for as long as you would be able to do so.

               It’s a long while until you finally hear a knock on the door, and you quickly scoot out of Kylo’s embrace as you head over to open it. Before you can stand, however, Kylo catches your hand before you can pull away completely, pulling you back down for one long, lingering kiss that brings a smile to your face before you get up and answer the door, brushing your hair behind your ears in an effort to look as composed as possible. You had expected Rey to be standing there, or one of the guards, but you weren’t expecting Poe.

               He looks a bit awkward to be there, and Kylo crosses his arms over his chest as he appraises him as he walks into the room. He didn’t look weak, couldn’t look weak, not to you, but you were amazed at how intent he seemed to be to not even look injured, sitting up as straight as he could while still leaning back on the pillows, and idly you wondered if he had even gotten up to walk around or if he was in too much pain for that yet. A part of you did want to ask, but you knew better. Kylo was too proud to admit his weaknesses, even to you. Before you had at least been able to pick up on it through the Force bond, but now that side of him was lost to you, at least until the Force bond came back for good.

               “How’s it going?” Poe asks, making a deliberate effort to sound casual. “Feeling okay today, Ren?”

               “You don’t have to pretend to like him for my sake,” you offer quickly, forcing a polite smile to your lips. “He tortured you, you’re enemies, you have no reason to like each other, I get it.”

               “It’s not you,” Kylo says dismissively, his voice purposely gruff. “He acts this way every time he comes in here.”

               “The General asked me to make an effort,” Poe replies coolly. “I’m following her orders. For her sake, I’m making an effort.”

               “I want to visit her as soon as I’m allowed to,” you say suddenly, turning to Poe. “Do you think that’d be okay?”

               “As long as someone’s with you, it should be fine,” Poe replies, and you nod your head in understanding.

               “I’ll take Ani with me,” you tell him as you turn back to Kylo. “See? How does it make you feel to know you’re not the only terrifying person on this base?” Kylo just shakes his head as he looks away from you, and you honestly couldn’t expect any other reaction from him. He would humor you while you were alone, but with Poe around there wasn’t a chance that he would be anything less than remote and taciturn.

               “Is there something you needed?” Kylo asks sharply, making it clear he wanted Poe gone as soon as possible.

               “This one,” Poe says, jerking his thumb over in your direction as he turns to face you directly. “They want you back in the medbay. A little more bacta, a few more bandages, and they said you should be good to go, as long as you check back in every few days to make sure there’s no infection. Keep the bandages dry while you shower and you shouldn’t have any problem, but they want to make sure that it’s healing okay, just in case.”

               “Why isn’t the bacta working?” Kylo asks suddenly, and you can tell he seems a lot more concerned than he’s letting on, although you’re not sure quite how you know that. Was it the Force bond starting to develop between you once again, or did you just really know him that well?

               “I-I don’t know,” you say quietly, and Kylo gives you a nasty glare as you exchange an uneasy look with Poe. “Did they happen to mention anything?”

               “They said it was unusual,” Poe says awkwardly, but you could tell by the awkward way that he shuffled his feet that he didn’t really feel it was appropriate to say anything more. Regardless, he doesn’t need to, as Kylo seems to have the answers that you need. Whether you can get them out of him, however, seemed to be a different story.

               “Kylo, talk to me,” you urge. “You know what’s going on, right? Why am I not healing as well as I should?” Kylo looks down and away, and if you’re not mistaken, he looks almost guilty. “Kylo, talk to me.”

               “Talk to Luke,” Kylo says with finality, and you raise your eyebrows in surprise. Kylo hated Luke, at least, you were pretty sure he still did. You had no idea if they had made peace between them, but that wasn’t really your primary concern right now.

               “They think I’ll be okay, right?” you ask as you turn to Poe. “The doctors-?”

               “Ignore them,” Kylo says firmly, although he’s not looking at you now. “Do as I say. Talk to Luke.”

               “I will,” you reply, just as firmly, and Kylo meets your eyes for a moment as you feel a sort of charge pass between you. Kylo was worried about you, there was no doubt about that, but you couldn’t quite be sure why when you felt okay. But if it was serious enough that he wanted you to talk to Luke of all people, then you would. You had to talk to Luke anyway, so this was just one more thing to ask him about. “I’m going to head back now so I can be officially discharged from the medbay and go see Ani. Will you be okay here?”

               Kylo grunts, as if he was insulted you’d even ask, and you can’t help but grin as you walk over to his bedside again. You take one of his large hands in both of yours and raise it to your lips as you kiss his knuckles before you gently lower it back down on the bedside, reaching out to him with your mind to keep your affection just as Kylo wanted it, private. _I love you, Kylo. I’ll be back soon, okay?_

_I love you too. Just be careful._

_I will, okay? Don’t worry about me. Just worry about you getting better._ With that, you turn back around to Poe and dip your head forward in the smallest of nods to show that you were ready, and Poe casts a nod in Kylo’s direction as he escorts you out. Once the door is safely sealed behind him, you head down the hall together, side by side.

               “Should I even ask what that was about?” Poe asks as he raises an eyebrow, and you can’t help but laugh.

               “Did it sound like I knew what he was talking about?” you ask as you raise an eyebrow, crossing your arms over your chest more out of habit than anything else.

               “No,” Poe admits. “But you were talking to him again, weren’t you? In your head? I could see it.”

               “It’s almost scary how you’re almost able to read that,” you say with an idle shrug to show that it didn’t bother you all that much. “I don’t know, he’s concerned about me. You said the bacta couldn’t heal my hearing, it’s not doing much for the wound in my side, and at first I thought it was something Snoke did to me, but if he wants me to talk to Luke about it, I’m thinking it might be something else.”

               “Then why wouldn’t he just come out and say it?” Poe asks, and you shake your head from side to side.

               “Because he’s not sure,” you reply automatically. “He’s not going to go ahead and tell me something unless he’s sure about it. I’m guessing that’s why he wants me to talk to Luke, of all people. Either he thinks he might be wrong, or he’s hoping he’s wrong, in which case, I’m hoping it’s the first.”

               “But you feel okay though?” Poe asks, putting a hand of your upper arm as if to steady you, and you nod your head forward as you pull a tight smile to the corners of your lips.

               “I mean, yeah, more or less,” you say with an idle shrug. “I mean, I’m stressed about almost dying, worried about Kylo, worried about Ani, worried about how things are going to be for me here, but that all seems to be pretty par for the course for me.”

               “I’m doing everything I can-“ Poe starts, but you shake your head.

               “But you shouldn’t have to,” you insist. “It’s my family, my responsibility to take care of them. I still don’t want to ask for help, but I know that’s how I got into this situation in the first place, so I’m still trying to come to terms with that.”

               “It’ll take time,” Poe says comfortingly. “And you have that here. Seriously, we’re all here to help you. Take as much time as you need.”

               “Thanks,” you reply with a small smile. “It’s, uh, it’s good to know that you’ve got my back.”

               “I don’t know who I’d be if I didn’t,” Poe replies good-naturedly, and while you just smile and nod, something about that stays with you. Even through the meeting with the doctors, which Poe was thankfully absent for, you couldn’t help but let the words cycle around through your head over and over again. _I don’t know who I’d be if I didn’t._ What did that say about him?

               And, more importantly, what did that say about you? A part of you almost felt as though you were overthinking it, but another part of you was sure that comment said something about you that you could neither describe or define, and you weren’t quite sure how to feel about that as you struggled in vain to apply that adage to yourself and your own situation.

_I don’t know who I’d be if I didn’t._

What did that mean? And would you ever find out?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kylo is breaking my heart. ='( But in better news, I have awesome news. Two weeks ago I was contacted by a small indie company that would like to work on making a graphic novel for _A Flare in the Dark_. Considering Disney and licensing, it would still be fanfiction, meaning it would be posted online, for free, probably on imgur and then shared through my Tumblr. The reason they're doing this is because they're just getting off the ground and they're looking for exposure, although they've asked me to withhold their name for now because apparently they've reached out to several popular fanfics out there, but apparently they like mine the best because they said it's the most original and the best suited for a graphic novel adaption for the balance between smut and plot that they're looking for. *blushes and slowly lowers the lid back down over my dumpster* They're not going to change the story up in any way in terms of plot, although some adjustments might have to be made to adapt it to a different medium, but they've promised to keep me involved every step of the way and nothing will get published without going through me, so it will be the story we all know and love, just in graphic novel format (although considering the nature of the story, Reader is going to become her own character, sadly I've been told that that can't be helped, but what her name will be and what she'll look like is under discussion. This is NOT something that's going to happen next week, this could be _months_ from now, but I just wanted to let you know that it's in the works, there are people who are interested in doing it, and I am very, very excited!! 
> 
> And, more happy news...I'm going to make another announcement about this story itself on Saturday. Maybe in regards to the ending, perhaps? You'll find out soon enough!! Until then, cheers!! <3


	50. Chapter 50

               No matter what happened to you in your past, you could always appreciate the relaxation that a good, warm shower provided, and today was no exception. It was a little bit harder to get completely comfortable considering that this was Poe’s shower, in Poe’s room, that you were now sharing with him, but a shower was a shower, and Poe wasn’t there anyway. He had gone off to the command center to do other important things that didn’t involve looking after you, and you were grateful for that. You didn’t want to be, or need to be, looked after, and you were pleased that Poe seemed to know this implicitly. If the Resistance wanted Poe to keep an eye on you because they thought you were a threat, that was one thing, but it was quite another for him to be watching your every move as though he thought you were made of glass, about to tip over and shatter into a million pieces if he didn’t.

               Nevertheless, you made him promise not to talk to Ani about what had happened in regards to your less than stellar healing. Your clothes hid your injuries well enough, and there was no reason to alarm him until after you talked to Luke, especially since he wasn’t home when you went to visit him. Instead, Poe found out that Ani was visiting with Chewie and BB-8 and a few others in the hangar, and you decided it was best if you just let him be. If he was starting to make friends, you weren’t going to keep him from them, especially when you were concerned that the rumors surrounding your involvement with the First Order would shame him as well. Poe assured you that this was not the case, that everyone loved and missed the little Ani that had used to run around base, and no one held anything you or Kylo did against him. You considered that to be both a rare stroke of luck and a relief, and you were glad that Ani would have an opportunity to live here and make something of himself free of your and Kylo’s deleterious shadows.

               As you head out of the shower, you cautiously remove the filament plastic wrap that had surrounded your midsection to make sure that the bandages had stayed dry. To be honest, you almost liked the fact that the bandages were there, liked the sense of support that they provided. You still remembered what your abdomen had looked like on the shuttle, the strange pink and purple gobbets that fed into a sea of crimson, and you could only hope that hadn’t been permanently etched into Poe’s mind as well. The doctors had changed the bandages and reapplied the bacta, and while it had stung, you refused to look. You assumed that your intestines and the rest of your organs had remained more or less intact, and you could only hope that you had only shredded the outer layer of the muscle wall surrounding the area. At least that’s what it was there for, protection and structure, and if there was ever a time to be grateful for your strong abs, it was now.

               Regardless, there’s another surprise waiting for you when you open up the bathroom door and walk back into the room, as you look down to see your old pack lying neatly on the floor in front of you like a present just waiting to be opened. You can’t help but let out a small laugh as you look down at it, and although your first instinct is to bend over and grab it, a sharp pain that radiates out from your midsection soon reminds you why that is a terrible idea. Instead, you twist to your left side and bend over sideways, scooping the pack up in your hand as you stand up straight and carry it over to the bed. You plop down on the lower bunk and sit down cross-legged, in no mood to challenge your abdomen by trying to climb a ladder to reach the top bunk just yet.

               You open your pack and start to remove your familiar clothes, taking them out one at a time, slowly, as if removing pieces from a time capsule. They fit, you knew that they’d all still fit, and a part of you was almost afraid to put them on. You were not the same person who had lived on the Resistance base all those years ago, and you weren’t quite sure how she would feel to know that you were wearing her clothes. You couldn’t pretend to be that person anymore, but what was more, you didn’t even want to try. You had done terrible things, but you didn’t want to keep them sealed in the past where they belonged. You wanted to take responsibility for them, but you couldn’t see how that could really be done with everyone set on putting what you had done behind them.

               Nevertheless, you eventually reach the bottom of the pack to find both of Kylo’s scarves tucked away there. You had taken them with you with the intention of never forgetting him, to keep a piece of him with you at all times, but you had left them at the bottom of your pack and never once removed them. Indeed, these pieces of interwoven cloth had sat there for years and years, and you doubted that anyone had gone through your pack to notice that they were even in there. Heck, you weren’t even sure if Ladson knew that they were there, and Ani would certainly have been too young to remember. No, you had mentioned it to Kylo once, but you assumed more or less that he had probably forgotten, letting that piece of information slip away in favor of more important ones. No, you were sure that you were the only one who knew his scarves were there, and for some reason, you wanted to keep it that way. Letting anyone else see it felt wrong in a way you couldn’t describe. It was almost as though the scarves themselves were telling you that they didn’t want to be unsealed from their tomb, that Kylo and the Resistance did not mix, and they were not ready to be removed from their slumber quite yet.

               Slowly, respectfully, you begin to put your folded stacks of clothes back into the pack until only two articles of clothing are left on the bed. When you’re done, you simply secure the latch back on your pack and swing it off the side of the bed, placing it on the floor near the end of the bed as you begin to get dressed. You swing your legs out of bed and stand up, grunting slightly with the considerable effort it took from your abdomen to lift yourself up. You hadn’t remembered being in this much pain back in the medbay, but then again, they had kept you hooked up with a steady stream of narcotics and painkillers to numb your system on a pretty much constant basis. You knew that the bacta wasn’t fusing your skin together as quickly as they had hoped it would, but it was at least _working_ , wasn’t it? Any cell regeneration was better than no regeneration at all, and if the bacta wasn’t stitching your skin together, then shouldn’t they at least be able to graft skin from another part of your body in order to cover the area?

               You get dressed slowly, and it takes more than a considerable effort on your part just to slide into a pair of pants. The shirt was fine, lifting your arms above your head wasn’t really a struggle, but even the slight bend it required to pull the hem of your pants up and over your thighs caused a considerable burst of pain that unnerved you. You had been fixated on being strong, on being independent, on being able to do things for yourself, and now you couldn’t even dress yourself without seemingly requiring some sort of assistance, whether by person or narcotic. The irony of this was not lost on you as you gently lower yourself back onto the bed and kick your feet over so you engaged your abs as little as possible while you were lying down on the bed.

               Something seems to be bothering you, but you’re not quite sure what it is until you realize that Poe must have been holding onto your pack all this time, either him or Ladson. At first you considered that it must have served as a horrible testament to your memory, but at least it was only the one pack and you hoped that it wouldn’t have taken up too much space. You hadn’t really brought too many belongings with you to the Resistance base, and the same was basically true now. Besides your clothes and the stone around your neck, your pack included basically everything you owned except your light…sa…ber…

               Your mind starts to race and suddenly you feel as though you can’t catch your breath as you stumble blindly about the bed like you’re lost underwater before you finally push yourself to your feet. Your core explodes with pain, but at least that gives you something to focus on as you feel hot tears prick in the corners of your eyes. Your lightsaber, what happened to it? Ani had mentioned that he was holding onto Kylo’s for safe keeping, but he didn’t mention that he had yours. So where was it then? You vaguely remembered Poe telling you that he had taken your stone off when they submerged you in bacta so it didn’t get ruined, you remembered him slipping it back around your neck and kissing your forehead back when you were really, _really_ out of it. Could it be that someone had told you what happened to your lightsaber and you just couldn’t recall? Was Rey maybe holding onto it? Or Luke? Were they purposely keeping it from you until they felt you could control yourself again?

               No, that wasn’t fair. That wasn’t right. That was _your_ lightsaber, you built it with your own two hands and you needed it by your side, you were lost without it, empty. You can feel a quick layer of sweat gather on your palms and you quickly wipe them against your sides as your eyes dart around the room, hoping that it would miraculously make itself known to you, but it doesn’t. You consider running to the command center to confront Poe about it, but you could only imagine how _that_ would look if the upper echelons of the Resistance saw you having a panic attack over losing your primary weapon. If that was the case, they might not let you have it at all. It was more than possible that Rey had it, but where was she? Poe made it clear that they didn’t want you running around base as much as possible until things died down, but he himself wasn’t going to hold you strictly to that if you needed to get somewhere.

               No, you couldn’t go outside, and so you did the only thing you could do, which was to keep yourself busy in this room and look for it here. Without thinking, you rush over to his dresser where he had kept your stone and start digging through a vast assortment of clothes and parts and various things until you eventually find it, wrapped in a pale blue cloth. You weren’t exactly sure how you knew what it was when you had first seen the cloth, but once you had laid your eyes on it, you just knew instinctively that your lightsaber was beneath its woven surface. Immediately comforted, you close the drawer as quickly as possible, hoping you didn’t make it more of a mess than it already was. It seemed disorganized to you, but you supposed Poe had his own method to knowing where everything was, and you didn’t want to disturb that.

               Gingerly, you sit yourself back down and curl up to one side, holding your lightsaber firmly in one hand close to your chest as if it was something that needed to be protected instead of the other way around.

               You’re not sure exactly when you fall asleep, but you’re awoken to the sound of the door opening and closing, and you slowly sit up to see who it is, letting a hiss escape through your gritted teeth as you feel a jolt of pain in your side. Were you going to experience that every time you moved now? If that was the case, you were almost tempted to head back to the medbay to get your hands on as many painkillers as they would give you. You could understand needing to heal after a severe injury, but now you couldn’t even stand up to put on your own fucking pants without being in pain, and that was where you drew the line.

               “Hey, you doing okay?” Your mind was still hazy from sleep, and it took you a moment to place the direction of the voice and where it was coming from before you realized that this was Poe’s room and it only made sense to be him.

               “Sorry, I’m in your bed,” you mumble sleepily. “I just sat down here and-“

               “Don’t sweat it.” Before you can even process his words, there’s a quick scramble of Poe’s feet on the ladder before there’s a heavy sigh of the mattress as he collapses on the top bunk.

               “No,“ you say immediately. “No, this is your bed-“

               “And you’re injured,” Poe replies with finality. “I’ll take the top bunk until you’re feeling better, how about that?”

               You grunt a reply, but in all honesty, you’re too tired to argue as you plop your head back down on the pillow and fade back into sleep again. You’re not sure what you dream of, but dark shadows race across your vision and you can’t help but think that there’s someone standing directly above your bed while you’re sleeping, looking down at you. For whatever reason, you think you’re still back in your bed at the medbay, and suddenly there’s not just one but several shadows standing above you, and you can’t move. Your wrists are bound to the bed by invisible restraints, and your abdomen suddenly seems curiously exposed and vulnerable-

               You feel a sharp burst of pain from your midsection and you can’t help but cry out as you grit your teeth, grinding your back into the bed. You try to kick your legs, but this only causes more pain through your abdomen and you pant mercilessly, trying to find some reprieve from the pain as you cry out, trying to will every sensation flooding your body to cease. The pain feels so intense that your brain feels like it’s about to explode, and you’re almost sure that your lungs are going to burst from your frantic inhales and exhalations. You suddenly feel a sense of pressure against your upper arm, as if someone is trying to shake you awake, and your eyes dart open as you sit up, twisting around to face your attacker as your hand fumbles for your lightsaber, which had apparently slipped out of your grip.

               “Woah, woah, woah.” His voice is loud and it’s right in your ear as he dives forward onto the bed, holding your hand back against the opposing wall to make sure you couldn’t use your lightsaber against him. You hadn’t even extended the blades, but you could understand his concern as you draw in a shuddering breath.

               “It’s okay,” you say quickly, releasing a breath. “It’s okay, I’m okay, I’m fine.”

               “Where’d you find that?” His voice is a bit rougher than you would have liked, and the pain in your abdomen, while not as intense as it had been in your nightmare, is starting to do more than inch.

               “In your dresser,” you reply, trying not to snap at him. “It didn’t seem like you were exactly hiding it.”

               “I wasn’t,” Poe says as he collapses with a sigh beside you. “I was keeping it there for safekeeping. I was going to give it back to you later.” He holds out his hand, palm up, as he makes a grabbing gesture with his fingers, but you just look at him skeptically. “I’m just putting it down off the bed. I’m not taking it away.” You let out a sigh and rub at your forehead uncomfortably, trying to convey with your eyes how much you didn’t want it to leave your side.

_I don’t feel safe._

               “It’s okay,” Poe says quietly, and you just sigh and shake your head as you hand it over. Poe just holds it up where you can clearly see it before he puts it down beside your pack so you know exactly where it would be when you woke up.

               “I wouldn’t exactly advertise that I gave that back to you,” Poe warns you, and you just nod your head tiredly. “Now, you okay?”

               “Fine,” you reply defensively with a shrug of your shoulders. Poe is sitting too close to you, much too close, but you actually don’t really mind the closeness after the dream you just had. You wanted someone there, someone to comfort you, and you couldn’t deny that Poe had a sense of familiarity about him that drew you in.

               “Nightmare?” Poe asks, and you nod your head forward, unsure of what to really tell him when you weren’t really sure what the dream had been about yourself. “Want to talk about it?”

               “I, uh, I don’t really remember it,” you mumble sleepily, rubbing the back of your head. “I, uh, I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

               “No,” Poe says dismissively with a shake of his head. “You want me to stay?” Your eyes jerk open, suddenly wide awake, but Poe pretends not to notice as he just leans back into his pillows, extending his arm for you. You hesitate for a moment before you slowly lower yourself into the circle of his arm as carefully as you can. “That hurt?”

               “A bit,” you reply as you settle yourself down on his shoulder as slowly as you can. “But you know me, right? I’ll be fine. I always am, one way or another.” You’re almost hovering on the edge of Poe’s arm, and an awkward beat of silence passes between you for a moment.

               “You comfortable?” Poe asks lightly, and you can’t help but let out a small snort of laughter as you balance on the edge of his frame.

               “Not really,” you admit reluctantly, and Poe adjusts his arm so you literally collapse into him. The ensuing burst of pain from your middle is only offset by the awkwardness of the situation, and you can’t help but lie there awkwardly at his side.

               “Is this okay?” Poe asks after a moment, and you can tell that he’s getting ready to get up, and that is not something you want to happen. For some reason, you felt that the second you closed your eyes that you would be back in the medbay with those shadows clawing at your stomach if you went back to sleep, but at least if Poe was there, he might be able to scare them away.

               “I want it to be,” you say firmly. All at once, you roll over into him like you used to, letting your right leg drape over his while you sprawled your arm across his body, settling your face into the side of his chest near his shoulder. You could hear Poe let out a contented breath from above you as he reaches over to smooth down your hair, and you snuggle into him as you let your eyes slip closed. Even still, your mind feels strangely awake, the nightmare still tugging at the corners of your consciousness, still trying to remind you that there was still very much to be afraid of. “Do you realize how long it’s been since I’ve slept in your bed?”

               “Too long?” Poe asks, and you can’t help but consider this for a moment. You had taken a liking to Kylo’s bed back on the Starkiller Base, but then again, you had never had a room or a place that really felt distinctly _his_ , a place that you associated with him and him alone like you did with Poe. This was Poe’s bed, Poe’s room, his home, and that hadn’t changed in five years. That was a constant, and a part of you wanted that sense of stability that you hadn’t had before. It had been part of what attracted you to Poe in the first place, and you supposed that constant sense of affection you had towards him never really died down as you once thought it would. Your feelings for Kylo were stronger, yes, but the feelings that you had for Poe were something that you couldn’t quite erase, despite how much you wanted to.

               “I still like you,” you admit quietly, immediately regretting the words once they left your lips. That wasn’t a confession that you should be saying aloud, much less let anyone acknowledge, especially not Poe.

               He slides his hand down to your shoulder as he reclines his head forward to kiss the top of your head. “I still like you too,” he says quietly, and you’re pleased that he doesn’t try to kiss you or take things any further than that. He just trails his hand up and down your side and you let yourself focus on the pleasant warmth of his embrace as you drift off into a pleasant, unbroken sleep.

               If you had any nightmares, you don’t remember them when you awake, although that could have been because you were immediately made aware of the position that you had woken up in. You were lying face down on his chest, completely sprawled over him, and even though he was still wearing a shirt, you could still feel the heat from his chest against your cheek. One of his hands was resting on the top of your head, fingers buried in your hair, and the other, was, well, holding your hand, your fingers tightly locked together. You had no idea how that happened, nor did you really have any idea how to free yourself from his grip, if you even wanted to. You stayed quiet, assessing the situation, waiting for Poe to wake up and make the first move.

               But even still, your midsection started to cramp from the awkward position, and you couldn’t help but let out a hiss as you eased yourself off him. The problem was that it still _hurt_ , and you were almost sure that the injury should have at least started to feel a little better by now. If anything, it seemed to be healing in the reverse; it had felt better when you were in the medbay, but now that you were out, the pain radiating from your center was suddenly all you could think about. It consumed your thoughts, constantly in the back of your mind, as you had to make a conscious effort not to twist or bend the wrong way, lest the dull ache turn into a much sharper, acute burning that you didn’t want to experience ever, ever again. And yet, the pain seemed to return with every motion, just as fresh as the time before.

               “You doing okay?”

               Your eyes fly open as you realize you’re lying there with your hand over your stomach as if you were about to be sick, wincing as though you had been stabbed. You could tell him that you felt fine, you could make up some excuse, but he knew there was something wrong, he had seen your injury, and there was no point in denying it. “I’m trying to be,” you reply as honestly as you can. “I mean, I’m trying not to let it affect me.”

               “Affect you?” Poe repeats, and you realize immediately that it’s the wrong choice of words. “Are you still thinking about what Ren said yesterday?”

               You bite your lip as you mull over your answer. “Yes and no,” you reply at length. “I mean, it’s just concerning, you know? Like, apparently I’m taking a long time to heal for whatever reason, which means the only time it doesn’t actually hurt to move is when I’m medicated, which is not really ideal for me long-term.”

               “No,” Poe agrees. “But it really hurts that much yet? How’s it looking?” You just shrug your shoulders absent-mindedly, and Poe gives you an incredulous look. “You mean the doctors haven’t let you see it?”

               “More like I don’t want to see it,” you reply quickly. “I mean, apparently it’s getting a little better, but I don’t want to look. I saw it the first time, and I’m not exactly eager to take another look if it doesn’t look any better. I’m not exactly sure how I’ll handle that.”

               “It was pretty bad,” Poe admits, and you avoid his eyes. “Do you mind if I-?” 

               “You want to look?” you ask, the alarm palpable in your voice.

               “No,” Poe says quickly, as if he’s sorry he brought it up. “No, I-“ But you’re already leaning back into the pillows beside him, pulling the hem of your shirt up to your chest to reveal your bandaged midriff. “No, if you’re uncomfortable-“

               “I’m not uncomfortable,” you reply firmly. “Someone should probably take a look at it, and I don’t really want that person to be me. I can’t have Ani look at it because I don’t want him getting freaked out, and that’s pretty much the same reason I can’t show Kylo, either. He needs to know that I can handle myself here and I can’t risk him getting overly worried about me. That, and we’re not real big on the scar show and tell yet.”

               Poe just gnaws on his lower lip as he looks you over. “You’re sure?”

               “Positive,” you reply. “Just, you know. You saw how it looked before, so you can tell me if it looks any better.”

               “And if it doesn’t?” Poe asks, raising his eyebrows as he turns his head to the side.

               “Then I don’t know,” you say with a shrug. “But just get on with it. The more we talk about this, the more it freaks me out.”              

               “It freaks you out?” Poe asks, attempting to make conversation while he undoes the bandages around your midriff. You know he’s going to try to distract you by keeping you talking, and to be honest, you don’t mind in the least.

               “Well, you know, having a giant gaping hole in my core isn’t really something I’ve ever aspired to,” you say with a shrug of your shoulders. “Ugly scar, sure, but a hole? No thanks.”

               “I think that’s more Ren’s concern than yours,” Poe says quietly, but you just shrug it off.

               “But at least he’s _healing_ ,” you say pointedly. “I, for one, would like to find out why I’m not.”

               “As would I,” Poe mutters under his breath, and he glances up for a moment to see your expression. You’re not sure what look you’re giving him, but he quickly makes an effort to correct himself. “We all would, I mean, we all want to see you better.”

               “Yeah,” you say, letting a steady silence fall between you as he removes the last bandage. You simply tilt your chin upwards as you adjust yourself on the bed, adjusting to the feeling of the cool air on your bare skin. “So, uh, how’s it looking?”

               Poe warm fingertips trail down your sides, and you can’t deny how good that feels, especially after the compression of the bandage. “Relax,” he says softly, and you shut your eyes as you cross both arms across your face, trying to conceal the myriad of emotions that were flooding through you. There was pain, yes, but the rush of exhilaration that flooded through you at the contact almost made it worthwhile.

               He’s not saying anything, and you don’t want to look at him, but you can feel his fingertips gently probing your skin around where it hurt the worst. “Don’t _touch it._ ”

               “I’m not,” Poe replies simply, and by his tone of voice you can tell that it’s not as bad as he initially believed it to be. “It _is_ healing, a bit slowly, but it’s healing.”

               “But there’s, uh, skin there now, right?” you ask nervously, and Poe just chuckles in response.

               “Some,” Poe replies, and you can’t help but groan loudly. “It’s probably better if you don’t look at it just yet if it makes you that uncomfortable.”

               “It’s not that it makes me _uncomfortable_ ,” you correct him. “I just don’t like having to acknowledge my limitations, that’s all.”

               “There’s no shame in asking for help,” Poe tells you, but you can’t help but grit your teeth in response.

               “There are certain things I’d like to do _without_ help,” you reply bitterly. “Like, oh, I don’t know, standing up or going to the bathroom without needing someone there to hold my hand.”

               Poe, to his credit, seems completely unfazed by your bitterness. “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” he tells you gently as he starts to replace the bandages. “You’ll be back to normal in no time.”

               “I don’t think I know what normal is to even try getting back to it,” you say dryly, and even Poe realizes that he’s said the wrong thing as he replaces the final bandage. He’s silent for a moment, and you can’t help but regret your attitude towards him. He was making an effort to help you, to help Ani, to help Kylo, and you just seemed content to throw it back in his face. “Look, Poe-“

               “No,” he says immediately, shaking his head from side to side. “No apologizing, I understand. I know how important your independence is to you, and I can only imagine how you must feel in this situation.”

               “It’s not so bad,” you say quietly, more for his benefit than yours. He looks at you curiously, and now you realize that you’re the one saying the wrong thing. “Okay, you’re right, it sucks. Between Ren and the Republic and me trying to figure things out here, things aren’t _great_ , but at least Ani seems to be having a good time and fitting in, and that’s all I can really hope for, anyway.”

               “It’s going to be fine,” Poe assures you as he strokes your leg comfortingly. “Right now tensions are high and it’ll take a while for things to die down, but you have friends here, and we’re here for you.”

               “Thanks,” you reply, and although you don’t mean for it to come off as sarcastic, you fear that’s almost exactly how it had sounded. “Well, hopefully I’ll be all healed up by then.”

               “You’re really worried about that, aren’t you?” Poe asks, and you just give him a half-hearted shrug in response. “You _are_ healing-“

               “Just incredibly slowly,” you mutter under your breath. “And no one seems to have any idea as to why.”

               “Luke may be able to help,” Poe says giving your leg one final pat, and you can’t help but feel a small sense of panic come over you at the thought that he was leaving. Of course, he had things that he had to do, but for some reason every part of you just wanted him to _stay_.

               “Right,” you say with a quick nod of your head, trying to disguise that wayward thought as Poe starts to get dressed. “When, uh, when did you want me to talk to him again?”

               “Today or tomorrow,” Poe says as he shrugs on a clean tee shirt. “I figure the sooner you get answers, the sooner can stop worrying so much about it, right?”

               “Yeah,” you say quietly. There was, of course, no way to know for certain that Luke would actually have the answers that you needed, but you would never know unless you actually met with him and found out. You were a bit intimidated by his legacy, there was no denying that, and you already knew that he was an extremely powerful Force user, perhaps even stronger than Kylo. What if he wanted to get inside your head? What if he discovered certain truths about yourself that you would have preferred to be kept secret? What if he decided that you shouldn’t be welcomed on the Resistance base after all and told Leia as much? What if you had truly become something dark and dangerous, permanently changed and altered by your encounter with Snoke, and you were no longer safe to be around? You would have to spend your days locked in isolation, just like what B had planned for you back on the Starkiller Base. At the time, that punishment had seemed cruel and undeserved, especially considering the circumstances, but now that penalty seemed more than fitting.

               “I may be gone a while today,” Poe offers, as if trying to offer you some reprieve from your somber expression. “You know they don’t really want you running around the base, but I don’t want you just sitting here all day. Are you planning on visiting Ren? Ani? It’s easier for me to cover for you if I have some idea of what you want to do.”

               You just shake your head from side to side. “No, it’s fine, I’ll just stay here.”

               Poe purses his lips like he wants to challenge you, but thinks better of it. “You sure you don’t want to visit Ren?” You just nod your head in stiff little motions, and Poe studies you a moment before he gives in. “Okay, just make sure to get some food in you. I’ll try not to be gone too long.”

               You make some sound to show that you had heard him, but no further words are exchanged as you roll back over as he door shuts behind him. Go get food? Ha, right. Like you were just going to walk down to the mess hall when everyone there hated your guts. Your guts themselves seemed a little tender as of late, and you weren’t going to risk getting provoked into a situation where you would have to defend yourself, especially if that meant you being put in permanent solitary or even being thrown off base. No, that you couldn’t allow to happen, and so you just decided it was better to stay put, quiet, not heard, not seen, until the Resistance could pretend that you weren’t even on base. A part of you truly did want to see Kylo, knowing how short a time with him you truly had left, but even just rolling over felt like another stab into your side, and you just couldn’t bring yourself to go knowing how weak you truly were. Kylo would pick up on it, of course, and you didn’t want to give him anything to worry about, especially when his injuries were much more extensive than yours.

               No, you couldn’t risk being seen by anyone right now. It would only cause them to be concerned, and that was not what you wanted. You didn’t want their sympathy or their pity. You had done bad things, you had hurt them, and now you were paying the price for what you had done. You wanted to make things right, and if your suffering could be used as reparations, as catharsis, then you would accept your plight without so much as an attempt to relieve yourself of the burden that seemed to be cast upon you.

               And, to be honest, a small part of you really just wanted to be alone, eyes shut, just soaking in the quiet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, I don't know how many of you guys have experiences with chronic nightmares, but I hope none of you ever do. It sucks. It sucks so hard. Like Snoke's manipulations, they get into your head and they just sit there and fester with you until you dread going to bed at night and it slowly changes you in ways that you don't expect to be changed. The Reader's, "I still like you" is more heartbreaking than it is a confession of affection, because she knows/think she knows what's going to happen to Kylo, and if something happens to him, she doesn't want to be alone more than anything, and it's just...sad. It's just all really, really sad....but something may happen next chapter that's a wake-up call for Reader, and hopefully that gets her at least a bit back on track, even if it's just temporary, two steps forward and one step back is still progress. 
> 
> Okay, now, I know you guys are excited/dreading/curious about the ending, so I wanted to drop some news: 
> 
> 1\. I'm currently writing the last 3 chapters. I know, I know, I'm screaming too. It looks like the way it's played out is a final chapter and then a 3 part epilogue, similar to Flare-ish. And looks like? Yes. Remember, I do not write this story, this story just kind of tumbles out of my hands, it's like a river, and I just sort of let it flow. 
> 
> 2\. Please hear me when I tell you that no matter what happens between now and the ending, it will be Kylo x Reader, I feel like I just need to assure some people of that. ;) In what way, I'm not going to say. Will they both be dead and watching over Ani together in the After? Would I have told you that if it's really going to happen? Would I have said it now so you think that isn't what's going to happen and then it is and then you're like, "Damn! She told us! I should have seen that coming!" But the second to last chapter is something everyone has wanted for a while. I'm not saying what that is, but I have heard you, and it's happening. Feel free to speculate, on this, I'm keeping quiet. ;)
> 
> 3\. Right now you can see chapter 50/?. Do I know how many chapters there will be? I think at this point, pretty much, yeah, unless something else happens and I add/subtract a chapter for various reasons, we've been editing as I post now because there was a, uh, *cough* big part ahead *cough* that required everyone's full attention but that's more or less been sorted. But basically when that ? changes to an actual number, that is when you'll know that I have finished writing the story, the epilogue is done, and all that's left is the edits. I will probably be crying a lot that day/week/month...
> 
> Okay, and I think that's about it! On Tuesday, the Reader is finally going to talk to Luke and get some answers as to just what is going on with her...and I think you all have probably already guessed that it's nothing good!! xD Until then, cheers!!


	51. Chapter 51

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Not all knowledge is pure; some is touched by evil. There are secrets that must remain hidden; forbidden teachings that should remain forever buried. There is a dark side to the Force. Unchecked it brings death and destruction. The Council of First Knowledge is sworn to keep this terrible power from being unleashed, but the influence of the dark side is scattered throughout the galaxy, as are the tools it uses to spread: ancient texts of Sith sorcery; amulets imbued with malevolent energy; tainted crystals that can corrupt the minds of the innocent. Sometimes these artifacts are discovered by accident, and they fall into the hands of unsuspecting victims. They become agents of the dark side, wreaking havoc across the galaxy…unless we get to them in time. We are trained in the handling of dark side artifacts. Some can be destroyed, but others are too powerful and must be safeguarded."_   
>  _―Jedi Master Obba_

               You hadn’t expected that you would dread the next time you stepped foot in the Green Room, but you found yourself lingering outside the doorway, almost nauseous as you anticipated the humid air hitting your face. Regardless, you know you can’t hover outside the doorway for too long. If he was as powerful as you knew him to be, then he could sense your presence from behind the closed door, and you didn’t want him to mistake your trepidation for reluctance. You weren’t afraid of him, per se, only afraid of hearing something about your condition that you wouldn’t like to hear.

               Even still, waiting outside the door wouldn’t change anything and so you quickly steady yourself as you turn the knob on the door with a firm grip and swing the door open to step inside. The humid air hits you with a wave of nostalgia, but you try to remain composed as your eyes sweep the verdant expanse of the room. There’s still the familiar trickle of water, the same stones lining the path, although it looks like there are a few new flowers in the room that you had never seen before. You knew you’d have to have Rey point them out to you, but of course, that was after you finished your business here with the hooded figure sitting inside the center of the circle.

               “Hi there,” you say quietly, an unmistakable waver to your voice, and the figure sits up a bit straighter as he looks up at you and lowers his hood gracefully to his shoulders, letting the fabric collapse soundlessly behind him. His blue eyes seem to pierce straight through you, and you can’t help but shrink a little under his intense, steady gaze. Moments pass by as he studies you wordlessly, and you just stand there and allow yourself to be appraised, feeling smaller and smaller by the second. Finally, he seems to be satisfied by something as he looks down and adjusts the long sleeves on his robe as he gestures for you to sit.

               “Please, sit.”

               His voice is gentler than you would have expected, and you’re hoping that you’re not accidently broadcasting that thought as you take a seat in front of a slender white mug that sits on the stones in front of you. He has an identical mug in front of him, and you’re not sure whether he is being courteous in offering you a drink or if this is some sort of a test. You sit there quietly, waiting for instructions, but he just seems content to sit there and wait to see what you will do next. With each of you both waiting for the other to make the first move, you know this could take quite a while, and so you decide to just go ahead and ask.

               “Would you like me to drink this?” you ask, glancing down at the beverage in front of you.

               “If you would like, go ahead,” Luke replies, and you purse your lips together as you stare down at the mug. It could be poisoned, but then again, that hardly seemed like one of your chief concerns right now if it was. You had no idea why Luke would want to kill you, specifically, but if he did he probably had a good reason for it. You weren’t healing one way or the other, and it was more than just slightly possible that this was some sort of elixir meant to heal you.

If that was the case, bottoms up.

               You pick up the cup gingerly, holding it between the fingertips of both hands, as you raise it to your lips, making sure to take a quick sniff first. It didn’t smell toxic, in fact, it didn’t really smell much like anything at all. You tilt your head to the side in consideration as you raise it to your lips and drink, but it didn’t taste like anything besides heated water. Regardless, you drink it until it’s gone, setting it back down carefully on the stones when you’ve finished.

               “That was good,” you say awkwardly, and then the sudden, unbidden thought that this used to be Kylo’s _mentor_ springs to your mind, seemingly with the sole purpose of unnerving you. “What, uh, what was it?”

               “What did it smell like?” Luke asks, and for a moment you think he’s offended that you had sniffed it, as if you didn’t trust what he was serving you. Regardless, his tone remains stable, curious, and you’re not sure what kind of answer he is looking to get from you.

               “Uh, it didn’t smell like much of anything, to be honest,” you say as earnestly as you can muster.

               “Hmm.” Luke takes a sip of his own drink, and you just sit there, letting your eyes dart back and forth as you try to figure out what exactly you’re doing there. You had questions, but something told you that demanding answers was far from the best approach. Instead, you just wait patiently for Luke to continue, and eventually he does.

               “This is H’Kak bean tea,” he explains. “It’s a customary drink on Tatooine. I’ve heard you’ve been there.”

               “I have,” you reply noncommittally. If he was going to question you on what had transpired there between you and Poe, then you might actually have to start demanding answers from him. A part of you knew it would be wise to humor him, but you did _not_ want to talk about Poe or even Kylo with him at all. Considering their past history together, so much as speaking Kylo’s name to Luke almost felt like some form of betrayal.

               “Did you like it there?” Luke asks, and you suddenly wonder if he’s attempting to make pleasant conversation before you get into the more unfortunate details as to why you’re really there.

               “Not much,” you reply with a shrug of your shoulders. “I’m not a big fan of the sand, or the heat.”

               “Neither was Ben, if I recall,” Luke says, and you’re suddenly not sure if he’s talking about a memory that he plucked from Kylo’s mind, or if he had visited Tatooine with Kylo before. “I was raised there, and I still consider it to be my home world.”

               You wonder if he had added in that last part in order to provide at least some sort of an answer to your question, in which case, he was most definitely reading your thoughts. “Thank you for sharing that with me,” you say, mostly because you can’t think of anything else _to_ say. You had no idea why he had prepared that tea for you besides simple courtesy, and yet you couldn’t help but think that you were still being tested in some way, each of your reactions and responses being individually noted for private study.

               “It’s a very fragrant tea,” Luke continues. “It has a very strong smell that most can recognize before even a drop has reached their tongue.”

               You’re not exactly sure how to respond to this. You hadn’t smelled anything, and had clearly told him so. Had he been testing you to see if you’d lie? If that was the case, hadn’t you passed his test? You had told him the truth, and yet you couldn’t help but feel as though he was hinting at something else. Should you have smelled something? To tell the truth, you didn’t smell anything besides the familiar floral scent of the-

               _Wait._

You sniff the air again, and while it feels hot and humid against your face, you realize suddenly that you can’t actually smell the flowers in the room. In fact, you couldn’t really be sure you smelled…anything. You glance nervously at Luke, almost begging him to tell you something that would make this all make sense. Poe had already told you that your hearing would be affected, and while you hadn’t had any problems with that quite yet, no one seemed to notice that your sense of smell had been impaired as well. Only this didn’t seem to be impaired, this sense seemed to be completely absent.

               “What is happening to me?” you ask desperately, throwing your arms out at your sides. “Did Snoke put some kind of curse on me? Am I dying? What _is_ this?”

               “The dark side of the Force can grant you many powerful abilities,” Luke begins. “Ben himself became tantalized by the promise of power that Snoke offered him, but even he came to realize that utilizing the Force to such an extent would have detrimental effects.” He pauses as he takes another sip of his drink. “Every Force-sensitive being in the galaxy has a balance of light and dark within them, this is true, but it’s how you choose to utilize that balance is what makes the individual. I believe you’re aware of this?” You nod your head wordlessly as you silently urge him to keep going. “The Old Jedi Council-“ he pauses, as if reconsidering his words.  “The dark side of the Force is like a flame, enticing, but ultimately destructive. Imagine your body to be a candle. The more power you draw from the dark side, the faster the wax will melt.”

               “So that’s what’s happening to me right now?” you ask, fumbling around for the right words. “I’m…melting?”

               “You’re experiencing the detrimental effects that all Force users face,” Luke explains. “Drawing as much power as you did from the dark side in such an explosive attack took a heavy toll on your body, and, as a result, it won’t respond to conventional healing.”

               “Conventional?” you respond skeptically. “Does that mean you can heal me, like, through the Force?”

               Luke simply looks to one side as if in a half-hearted attempt to shake his head, and you couldn’t quite be sure if he was telling you that it _couldn’t_ be done, or if it could and he simply _wouldn’t._ You had no idea why he wouldn’t heal you if he could, maybe that would have some sort of negative repercussions for him as well, but you weren’t sure asking him directly would yield a direct answer, and so you quickly change tactics. “But my body _can_ heal, right? Like the bacta isn’t knitting my flesh together as quickly as it’s supposed to, but it’s still _working_ …right?”

               Luke just shakes his head from side to side. “You’re as impatient as Rey,” he tells you, and you quirk your brow up in confusion. You had never known Rey to be impatient, you could see her being excited and eager, but you wouldn’t consider that a fault or a flaw that the negative connotation seemed to imply. In fact, you didn’t even think you could really be considered impatient right then, either. You wanted answers, and you were sitting there and respectfully listening to all that he had to say. Although it was frustrating, you could wait for your body to heal; you just wanted some reassurance that it was, in fact, healing, and you weren’t going to walk around with a hole in your belly forever.

               “I don’t know how great the injuries you sustained were,” Luke tells you. “But if it’s just a normal injury, then it should heal in time. Your body was incredibly weakened by the force of the power you collected which explains why your body isn’t responding normally to the bacta, but it should heal eventually.”

               “That’s good to hear,” you tell him, trying to maintain an optimistic tone to appease him more than anything else. “What about my hearing? Apparently I’m not going to hear as well as before? And I didn’t notice it until now but my sense of smell is totally gone, which means I’m pretty sure that’s going to affect how I taste too, right? Do I need to worry about my vision next? Why are my senses failing me?”

               “I’ve never heard of the Force robbing you of your senses,” Luke says evenly. “But I did hear that you had a severe head wound-“

               “Snoke threw me around quite a bit,” you reply evenly. “And then when I collapsed on the ship, I don’t think Poe was close enough to catch me, and I must have fallen pretty hard.” Luke just nods his head forward, as if that explained why your sense of smell had suddenly vanished. You figured that must have been one nasty hit if it was, but then again, it wasn’t like this was the only head injury that you had ever sustained, and it could have been that this final hit had been enough to push your cumulative damage over the edge. “So, basically you’re telling me that I’ll never be able to smell ever again?”

               “Probably not,” Luke replies. “But I don’t know.” His expression softens, and he looks almost…friendly. “To be honest, I’ve only heard of it happening to one pilot who survived a crash landing in the war. He was in a bad position, and they weren’t quite sure if he’d survive. At that point, losing his sense of smell was the least of his worries.”

               “But he’s okay now, right?” you ask hesitantly. You weren’t sure why you would have cared, ordinarily you didn’t think you would have, but something about Luke made you hang onto his every word. It was just some quality that you seemed to pick up on around him that you couldn’t quite put your finger on.

               “Half cyborg, bionic legs,” Luke says idly. “But at least he can walk again.” You’re not sure how to safely respond to this. You didn’t want to say anything that would imply that was a good thing, or express pity when the man was probably no doubt grateful that he could at least still function and get by himself. Luke seems to sense your hesitance to answer, as he changes the topic again. “What happened to you is very serious, I can’t impress upon that enough. Even once you are healed, you will never be the same.”

               “How so?” you ask, pushing a nervous chuckle into your voice. “I mean, to be fair, you’re kind of making it sound like I’m going to die.”

               “Your life span has no doubt been substantially reduced,” Luke says matter-of-factly, and you can tell by his tone that he means it. He sees your expression and lets out a small sigh, as if he was disappointed you weren’t picking up on this yourself. “You embraced the power of the dark side, but you came back,” he explains. “That is what shortens your lifespan. The dark side is-“ he pauses, as if he’s not sure how to explain himself clearly. “The dark side is like a poison that slows down your regenerative functions, and it’s impossible to fully decontaminate yourself once you’ve truly allowed it to take a hold in your system.”

               “So you mean, trying to turn back towards the light side is actually making things… _worse_ for me?” you ask slowly, tilting your head to one side.

               “In a way,” Luke replies simply. “But staying on the dark side would not help you either. For those who choose to remain in the dark side, they undergo a terribly dark transformation. Given enough time, their living flesh is degraded by the raw entropic power of the dark side until they can achieve a state of equilibrium, where the decay of the Dark Side is equally matched by the raw energy feeding the user, and they become a Force _lich_ , in a sense, never eating, nor sleeping, nor drinking. They are not truly alive, but they are far from death.”

               “And that’s what would have happened to me if I decided to follow Snoke?” you ask softly, the horror evident in your voice.

               Luke shakes his head as if he’s not sure how to respond to you. “That is only possibly by truly committing to the dark side with total conviction and full loyalty,” he says at length. “The only living being I know who went further down the path of the dark side than Emperor Palpatine was a rogue witch of Dathomir. If you’re aware of the Palpatine’s extensive deformities from the holos of the archive, you can imagine that the witch’s form was much, much worse. She was more dead than alive, her skin hanging off of her like worn rags, and she no longer had need for sleep or drink. She simply existed, her corrupted body sustained only by the sheer force of the dark side keeping her together.”

               You open your mouth and then close it again. The thought that it could have happened to you, or worse, Ani, terrified you more than you could imagine. That was what Snoke had wanted for you, he had _wanted_ you to become a monstrosity like that, and you could only imagine that he had wanted that for Kylo as well. The thought makes you visibly shudder, and Luke quickly continues. “Unfortunately, there is no way you can completely come back from the dark side once you’ve been exposed to its true power. It permanently unbalances all natural processes, and while you may not be completely aware of all the changes now, your body has been irreversibly altered as a result of your encounter with Snoke.”

               “Irreversibly altered?” you repeat hesitantly. “In what way? I know you said that now I have a shorter lifespan, but what else is different? Besides the slow wound healing and my senses suddenly disappearing, I feel okay. I still feel like me, or at least, more like me than I did back on the _Propitiate_ , anyway.”

               Luke looks hesitant to speak, and you look up at him, your eyes pleading. This was your life, your body, and you wanted to know what exactly was happening to you. “Because of your experience with the caustic nature of the dark side, you wouldn’t be able to carry a child to term again,” Luke tells you quietly. “Should you ever want more children in the future, I just thought it was important for you to know this.”

               “So channeling that much dark energy made me effectively sterile?” you ask as you arch an eyebrow. You want to make a joke about it being better than your implant, but it seemed like neither the time nor the place for that sort of comment. You had barely been an effective parent to Ani, and while you knew that you didn’t want any more children, you still couldn’t help but be a little dismayed by this news. Before, it had been your _choice_ not to have children, and now? Now your body was irreparably altered by your bad decisions, and this was just one more punishment to add onto the list.

               You stay quiet for a long time, and Luke leaves you to your thoughts, letting you process everything that he had just told you. “There, on the _Propitiate,_ so much happened, and I still have so many questions about it. Do you think getting at least some small bit of understanding about what happened and what I actually went through will help me heal, at least slightly?”

               “It’s possible,” Luke admits as he sits back and gives himself some time to ponder your question. “Unlikely, but possible. The dark side can never truly be purged, but its effects can be reduced if understood.” He pauses and seems to contemplate this further for a moment before he looks back up at you again. “Tell me more about the weapon you channeled against Snoke.”

               _The weapon?_ “Do you mean the lightning thing?” Luke tilts his head to the side as if he wasn’t expecting that, and signals for you to continue. “Well, um, during the battle, Snoke used some kind of lightning storm against me, but I managed to block it with my lightsaber.”

               Luke nods his head in understanding. “Force lightning,” he explains. “It’s a signature ability of dedicated practitioners of the dark side. The Emperor would have taken my life with it if my father hadn’t saved me.”

               “Oh,” you tell him quickly as you bite your lower lip nervously. “Because, um, later on in the fight, when Snoke was about to kill me with a Force choke, I think I used it too. It just, sort of, came out of my hand. I wasn’t really expecting it.”

               Luke ponders this quietly for a moment, and you can’t help but drop your gaze, as if you were a child admitting to something troublesome. “I assume Snoke’s lightning was blue?” Luke asks, and you just nod your head forward, although in all honesty, you couldn’t quite be sure. The color really hadn’t meant as much to you as the pain. “What colors was yours?”

               “Um, amber, I think?” you ask. In truth, it had all happened so fast, you hadn’t really taken the time to take stock of anything you experienced during the battle to commit it to memory. In truth, you hadn’t planned on actually living long enough for it to matter. “I think it was amber, like my lightsaber.”

               Something changes in Luke’s eyes, and you think that for a brief moment, he looks almost pleased. “At the time, what was your motivation? What were you fighting for? Hatred? Justice?”

               “I’m not sure,” you admit with an errant shrug of your shoulders. “I guess justice? After everything Kylo sacrificed for me, I had to kill Snoke, I had to avenge him and protect Ani, even if I died in the process. That was all I thought about. I just knew Snoke had to die if I wanted to protect my son.”

               Luke just nods his head and leans back slightly as he begins to explain. “An old Jedi master once called it the Righteous Judgement; another called it the Electric Judgement. The two names seem to describe the same power, only possible in the defense of others, unlike Force lightning, which is employed through hatred. Despite the old Masters’ misgivings, I believe it is safe to assume from what you’ve told me that it is exclusively an ability associated with the light.” Luke picks up his mug and moves it beside him before continuing. “When I asked about the weapon, I meant the blast you used against Snoke. That is most responsible for your current condition, so understanding it is vital.”

               “You mean the thought bomb?” you ask, and Luke dips his head forward in a nod. “I don’t really know much about it, I just did what Kylo told me to in order to channel it, but I don’t really understand how it worked myself.”

               “Neither do I.”

               You blink and shake your head slightly, trying to process exactly what he had said. Luke seemed to know everything about everything and yet he didn’t understand…this? For a moment you can picture Snoke filling Kylo’s head with visions of power, of rituals and abilities that not even Luke knew about, and for a moment you didn’t even have to question how Kylo had been persuaded to turn against Luke in his lust to become stronger. “I don’t understand,” you begin cautiously. “I thought you, um, you knew something about it?”

               “I do,” Luke begins. “But the power you wielded was not a thought bomb. The knowledge of the ritual died out with the Brotherhood of Darkness over a thousand years ago. The only surviving detail was that the ritual required _five_ Force users to initiate, and many other details that are often more myth than fact. What you wielded seems to have touched on the edges of ancient Sith discoveries, dark powers only possible when the wielder no longer has any regard for their physical life. Due to their arrogance, greed, and quest for personal gain, few Sith were ever able to truly attain these powers that they so coveted. Their method of concentrating power into a Force-sensitive object is well known to mature Force users, but the power you used defies explanation. How did you unleash it?”

               You were still struggling to figure out how something you did _defied explanation_ , but you try to focus as you think back to what exactly had happened while you were fighting. “It wasn’t just the power of the Force,” you explain. “I also drew on my energy _and_ Snoke’s energy to fill the crystals.”

               Luke sits forward, and you don’t like the look of concern that has since taken over his features. “That explains the problems you’re having with the bacta,” Luke explains, but any relief that you have for actually getting any answers about your condition is quickly quelled by the distinct note of worry in his voice. “That act is forbidden for Jedi to practice, and was only used by Sith as a last resort. Making that sacrifice greatly amplifies the effects of dark powers, but at a terrible cost to all living things nearby, as it forms a void in the Force detrimental to life. If you had been willing to drain yourself completely, it likely would have passed right through the _Propitiate_ ’s weapon shielding and killed everyone on the ship outright.” You shudder for a moment as you try to picture it. You had thought that you had been willing to drain yourself completely, but apparently not. If you had been, the _Propitiate_ would have been destroyed, yes, but Ani, Ladson, and Poe would not have been able to make it out alive as a result. “How did you manage to unleash it?”

               “Um, I just did what Kylo told me to do,” you repeat as you shake your head, still trying to think back. “And then I just imagined the flesh being stripped from his bones, and then his bones being crushed to dust and scattered into oblivion. The lightsabers did the rest.”

               Luke nods his head as though he is beginning to understand something about what happened. At least that made one of you. “It was amplified by the power of your combined sacrifice, though costly,” he explains. “You and Ren managed to discover a powerful ability that the Jedi attempted to suppress all knowledge of. It’s a destruction field, requiring great sacrifice by its user. You must never teach it, nor speak of it to anyone but myself or Ren, and that includes Rey. You already bear in your body the grievous damage inflicted by its power, and besides its horrific nature, neither of you would survive another channel, whether by you or someone nearby. You are among the few in the galaxy’s long history to truly taste the dark side and yet survive.” He pauses for a moment as he reflects, probably pausing on the fact that you and Kylo hadn’t truly survived at all, but had died and were reborn by some miracle of the Force. “But it seems that the Force still has some use for both of you yet.”

“But I’m still dying, aren’t I?” you ask slowly after a silence that seemed to stretch on forever. You knew you were, you didn’t need the confirmation, but you wanted to hear it nonetheless. He had already explained that the dark side was like poison, and once it was in your veins, it was impossible to scrub out, no matter how much light you tried to fill yourself with. “But what you said before, the struggle between the light and dark, that’s what makes it worse, isn’t it? The struggle, the indecision, the constant sense of inner conflict, that’s what makes it worse, right?”

               “Yes,” Luke replies solemnly, and you can’t help but look away as you try to get your thoughts in order.

               You hesitate for a moment, and then decide to press the question anyway. “That’s what’s wrong with Kylo too, isn’t it?” you ask softly. “I don’t know how to explain it, but lately he just seems tired, I don’t have a better word for it, almost like he’s given up. The only way I was able to last as long as I did against Snoke was because he sacrificed more of himself channeling the dark side in a much more powerful way than I did-“ You shake your head, almost not wanting to believe the words that were passing through your own parted lips. A part of you seemed to have always known it, but you just didn’t want to admit it to yourself. Kylo was dying, knew he was dying, knew he had been afflicted with the same poison you were now infected with, but he hadn’t wanted to tell you.

               But why? Telling you to talk to Luke had been intentional. He knew what was happening to you because it was happening to him too, but if that was the case, why didn’t he just tell you right then and there what was happening? You knew he trusted you, but was he afraid that you would blame him for what had happened to you? If that was his concern, it shouldn’t have been. You knew what you had done wrong was your own doing, and you refused to blame Kylo for your own bad decisions. He had put you in the position to be corrupted by taking you away from the Resistance, yes, but there was no way of knowing that Snoke wouldn’t have been able to tempt you from afar regardless.

               You look back up at Luke, but it seems he knows what you’re thinking as he bows his head in a firm nod. You just let out a sigh as you shake your head back and forth. “What’s done is done then,” you say reluctantly. “It can’t be helped, right?”

               “I’m sorry,” Luke offers at length, but you just shake your head from side to side.

               “It’s fine,” you say quickly. “I made mistakes, I deserve this, I had it coming.” Luke fixes you with a steely gaze, but he doesn’t tell you that it’s not your fault. He doesn’t tell you that it’s going to be okay, and he doesn’t try to offer any meaningless platitudes in a vain attempt to console you. For some reason, it makes you feel oddly better. You were in a bad position that there was ultimately no escape from, and he knew it. From the moment you had bonded with Kylo, your fates had become intertwined, and there was no escaping this. You wanted to say that you didn’t realize it until now, but a part of you was forced to admit that you had known, you had always known, and simply not wanted to accept the consequences of what would inevitably happen. You were always so paranoid about the future, always wondering when the other shoe would drop, simply because you knew that your entropy was certain. And now that it was here, now that you knew there was no way to avoid your inevitable downfall, you couldn’t help but almost embrace it. Now that you knew what was wrong, this seemed as bad as it could possibly get for you. You didn’t want to exactly tempt fate by trying to imagine how it could get any worse, but-

               “How long?” you ask suddenly. “Okay, fine, reduced lifespan, but how reduced? Like, how much time do I have? A few months? A year?”

               Luke smiles. It’s a soft, gentle smile that seemed almost grandfatherly, and it almost makes you wonder what he had done for Kylo to hate him so much. You were starting to get the impression that it wasn’t anything that he had done, but what he didn’t do that vexed him so much. “Hopefully, you both should still have decades left,” Luke replies, and you let out a small sigh of relief. “Force users generally have longer life spans than most, but your life spans will probably be reduced to the average of most individuals, perhaps a little longer. There is no way to know for sure how long you both have.”

               “Good to know,” you reply. “Although with the state of the galaxy as it is, I don’t think any of us can be certain just how much time we have left.”

               “Agreed,” Luke says as he gets to his feet, and you quickly do the same, making sure not to tip over your cup. “Poe told me that your meditations with Rey will continue. Listen to her. She feels incredible guilt that Snoke chose you as a target in order to get to her, and she wants to make amends.”

               “Snoke chose me because of Kylo and Ani too,” you remind him, although you’re sure that he’s already been able to deduce this on his own. “Although…” You let your voice trail off as you hesitate, afraid to ask the words that were already on your lips. “Snoke is gone, right?”

               “I’m not sure,” Luke replies, and you can’t help but sigh. “At any rate, he seems to be incredibly weak. If it took him years just to take on a human vessel, we should have nothing to fear from him for quite some time.”

               “But Ani will,” you say, shaking your head in disbelief. “I did all I could think of to do, but-“ Luke puts his hand on your shoulder, and you quickly look up at him, surprised by the unexpected contact.

               “Don’t dwell on this,” he advises, and you can’t help but think about how much he sounds like Kylo when he says it. Or maybe that’s where Kylo got it from; you can’t be quite sure. “There is nothing more you could have done, and there is nothing more you can do now. It is never wise to dwell on things beyond our control.” You just nod your head in agreement, but you can’t help shake the somber weight that seems to have draped itself over your shoulders.

               “If you have any more questions, consider me at your disposal,” Luke tells you. “I know Ren has probably advised you against seeking my counsel-“

               “Actually, he’s the one who told me I should talk to you,” you tell him, and he looks visibly surprised by this. You hesitate as you shuffle your feet awkwardly, scratching behind your elbow with a nervous trepidation that you’re almost sure he can feel through the Force. “I don’t know what happened between you, I really don’t, he’s never talked to me about any of that and I haven’t really asked. I’m not going to speak for him when I can’t say for sure what he wants, even when the Force bond was between us I was never really great at figuring that out, but he did ask me to apologize to you for him when he thought he was going to die. I just, uh, I thought you should know that.”

               “I know,” Luke replies with a quick nod, and you decide what’s between them is better off left between them. Even still, Luke’s not quite finished with you yet. “Why did you speak about your bond in the past tense?”

               The question takes you by surprise, and you can’t help but stammer a bit before you give him your answer. “It broke,” you tell him, surprised he wasn’t able to sense it. “We both died, we- it’s gone now. It’s not, I don’t know, the same.”

               “It’s weak,” Luke admits. “But it’s still very much there.” He looks like he’s about to say more before he changes his mind, and you decide not to press the issue.

               “I’ll, uh, talk to him about it,” you say at length. “Thanks, though, for uh, all the information you’ve given me. It’s a lot to think about.” Luke just nods his head forward again, and you awkwardly turn and make your way out of the Green Room, heading back to Poe’s room. You want to walk slowly, but at the same time, you don’t really want anyone to see you or recognize you, and so you walk as fast as you can without trying to call any attention to yourself. Seeing someone sprinting through the halls was bound to turn heads your way, and of course the more you try to walk normally, the more you had no idea what counted for a normal pace.

               Regardless, your heart is beating rapidly in your chest and your abdomen is _aching_ as you finally reach Poe’s room. You pause outside the door for a few moments to catch your breath, trying to seem as inconspicuous as possible in case Poe happened to be inside. And, fortunately or unfortunately, he is, although you couldn’t quite be sure how to feel about it. You wanted to be alone to mull over everything that Luke had said to you, but at the same time, you were glad that there was someone else there to talk to about it, and Poe had always been a good listener before.

               He was lying stretched out on the lower bunk, reading something off of a datapad. He tosses it aside casually as you close the door behind you, pulling himself into a seated position as he crosses his arms behind his head to create a makeshift headrest. “Hey, how’d it go?”

               “Uh, well,” you reply. “I guess, I mean, he’s, you know.” You shake your head from side to side as Poe raises his eyebrows expectantly. “I don’t know.” Luke had told you so much that you didn’t even really understand yourself, and you didn’t know how to explain any of what he had just told you to Poe. You didn’t think you really wanted to talk to him about this at all, and yet there you were, in his room, leaning against the wall with your arms crossed over your chest and one foot planted squarely against the wall behind you. You had so many conversations with Poe this way, you slumped against the wall in a position that could vaguely be described as brooding, and him lying or sitting on the bed, just listening to you talk, and now that you were once again in your signature conversational positions, you supposed the rest of the conversation was simply inevitable.

               “You’re going to make me explain everything, aren’t you?” you ask with a sigh, and Poe gives his head a quick shake from side to side.

               “Not if you don’t want to,” he responds immediately, and you hesitate for a few moments, trying to figure out where to begin.

               You open your mouth to speak, but no words come out. How were you going to tell Poe that you had been irreparably damaged by your experiences with the dark side of the Force, that you had been, for all intents and purposes, poisoned, that years had been shaved off your life, that you were now-

               “Did you ever want kids?” you ask suddenly, and the question surprises even you. Nevertheless, it’s nothing compared to the look on Poe’s face.

               “I, uh-“ Poe looks taken aback, and not quite sure how to answer, but you don’t try to take back what you said. If this had been a subconscious distraction to get the topic off of you, then you were doing a pretty decent job at it. “Why does that matter?”

               “Just making conversation,” you reply casually, but Poe doesn’t look convinced.

               “You’re not-“

               “No,” you say quickly, suddenly understanding the miscommunication. “No, no, I’m not. It’s just a question.”

               Poe looks like he’s thinking things over, and it’s a while before he finally speaks. “I don’t know,” he finally admits. “You remember what I told you about my parents, right? When I was just a baby, they left me with my grandmother and went off to continue their role in the war. When the war ended, they survived, they came back, but I’d hate to think about what would have happened if they didn’t.” Poe shakes his head, as if it wasn’t worth thinking about. “Right now, things are still too tense with the First Order. There’s a lot to rebuild, and a lot that still needs to be done. Maybe when this is all over, maybe when things calm down a bit more, I don’t know, but my father always told me when you’re ready it just feels _right_ , and I don’t feel like that yet. Will I someday? Maybe, but I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.” He stays silent for another moment before he looks up at you, silently asking if he answered your question.

               He did, and then some. After hearing his pensive response, you weren’t quite sure why you had even asked the question to begin with. It had nothing to do with you. Poe had nothing to do with you. A part of you had always seemed to hang onto the maybe, but perhaps that was only because the maybe provided a pleasant respite from actually dealing with the things that you had honestly preferred not to deal with. The only reason you asked that question aloud was because it was a distraction from what you had recently discovered about yourself, and both that knowledge and his answer only served to confirm what you supposed you had both always known to be true: that there was never going to be any future with him. You could like him just fine, but you no longer fit into each other’s lives as well as you once could have. Could you again? It was _possible_ , but if Poe really wanted his own family, his own children, you couldn’t provide that to him. You were going to die, maybe not soon, but possibly sooner than he would.

               This was a mistake. You standing here, talking to him, trying to figure out what it all meant, it was a mistake. Poe was something more than a friend, but no matter what happened, he was not your family, and what was more, you suddenly didn’t want him to be. When you thought about the future, _really_ thought about it, there was only one person you envisioned beside you, and it wasn’t him.  

               “I need to go,” you say suddenly and you rush out the door before Poe can say anything more. You knew Poe had stuck his neck out for you, knew you weren’t exactly supposed to be running around the base without letting him know where you were going, but you figured a part of him could probably guess who you were headed to see.

               After everything that happened, after everything you had been through, there was only one person you could talk to about what was happening. You needed someone who understood the situation, and the Force, and you, for better or worse, you needed someone who you could trust implicitly with your fears and your doubts and your weaknesses, and let them love you for them regardless.

               And there was only one person in the whole of the galaxy who you trusted enough to do that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So she's probably off to see Ladson, am I right? xD As Anakin Skywalker once said, _I know there are things about the Force that they're not telling me_ and I think Reader is starting to get a taste of what that feels like, although, had she existed in an earlier time, the Reader probably totally would have become a Sith. I mean, look at their motto: 
> 
> _Peace is a lie, there is only passion._   
>  _Through passion, I gain strength._   
>  _Through strength, I gain power._   
>  _Through power, I gain victory.  
>  _Through victory, my chains are broken.  
>  _The Force shall free me.___
> 
> __Definitely sounds like something Reader would have jumped on board with, and we should all probably just silently thank Kylo for sending Reader away when he did before she became Darth Moonstaff or something. xD Fortunately or unfortunately, we may never know, but as Reader herself knows, she can't change the past and she has to keep moving forward, although how pleasant a place the future will be is anyone's guess. Until Thursday, cheers!! <3_ _
> 
> __PS: If you haven't seen it yet, you totally need to. I can't stop laughing about[this](http://streetsolo.tumblr.com/post/148670467392/the-awkward-moment-when-you-have-an-entire-600k). All my little squigglys disappeared for the entire document and nothing I do will bring them back. Alas. xD_ _


	52. Chapter 52

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW Content Ahead

               “I felt you coming.”

               You’re not sure if this makes you feel any better or worse, standing in front of Kylo’s bed, your hands on your knees as you rake in shuttering breaths. You had gotten down to his cell as fast as you could, and although your abdomen was aching, you had pushed through the pain and kept up your rapid pace. Now, though, you felt as though your stomach was literally falling apart at the seams, and the pain made you almost delirious. Nevertheless, Kylo seems to pretend he doesn’t notice as you take the time to collect yourself.

               “You seemed distressed, upset.” He turns to you and raises an eyebrow. “You’ve talked to Luke.”

               “I have,” you say with finality as you push off your knees into a standing position. “And we should talk about it.” Kylo just nods as he gestures for you to sit down on his bed, and you do so, sitting on the edge near the end as you pull your knees into your chest as you turn your head to the side to get a better look at him. “Why didn’t you tell me the Force bond had repaired itself already? I thought it was gone completely, but Luke seemed to be able to sense it.”

               “It’s coming back faster than I had anticipated,” Kylo admits as he glances away from you. “You’ve been thinking about me.”

               “And you haven’t been?” you ask teasingly as Kylo looks away, and you can’t help but grin. “It’s fine, Kylo, I know why you’re somewhat against it, but I like being connected to you. I like that you can tell what I’m thinking without needing me to explain it, and I like being able to just, I don’t know, sense you.”

               “It won’t take much to reestablish the connection,” Kylo warns you, but that only makes you feel better as you let out an incredulous laugh, shaking your head back and forth. “But we can talk about the bond later. What else did Luke talk to you about?”

               “Uh, a lot of stuff,” you tell him, trying to think back. “We talked about tea and the dark side and some witch of Dathomir and poison and apparently I’m-“

               “Dathomir?” Kylo demands, sitting up, and although he doesn’t wince, you can tell that it still takes him considerable effort to do so. You’re momentarily pleased that you realize that this really was a sign that your connection was opening up again, but you’re too distracted by his reaction to dwell on it for more than a brief moment. “He told you about what happened on Dathomir?”

               “Uh, he mentioned a witch that was _from_ Dathomir,” you say slowly, trying to recall, before your tone turns suspicious. “Why? What happened on Dathomir?”

               “Nothing,” Kylo snaps at you indignantly as he throws himself back into the pillows, and you just purse your lips as you study him. Considering what you knew about Dathomir, there was probably a story there, back from when Ren was still Ben, Luke’s padawan, and you could probably understand why he wouldn’t want Luke mentioning it.

               “You don’t have to tell me,” you say with a quick shake of your head. Whatever happened to him had happened to Ben Solo, and that was a person that you had never met. “But he mentioned a witch who had lost all of her skin and stuff because she gave herself completely over to the dark side. Luke said she didn’t need to eat or sleep, that she relied on just the Force alone to survive. Is that really true?”

               “It’s true,” Kylo confirms. “There is a high price to pay for delving so deeply into the dark side, but of course Luke failed to mention the incredible amount of power that she must have possessed.”

               You pause for a moment, thinking it over. “But what does it matter if you have power if you don’t have any _skin_ left?” You shake your head. “I don’t know; it doesn’t seem worth it to me.”

               “But it’s worth it to others,” Kylo insists, and you think you can hear a hint of agitation in his tone. Was he annoyed simply because it was Luke telling you all this, or was this a matter that he and Luke fundamentally disagreed upon?

               “But you once went to the dark side,” you say quietly. “Even after knowing all that? Even after knowing what it would do to you?” Kylo looks away, and you can feel your heart sink in your chest. “Why would you risk all that?”

               “Is that what you and Luke talked about?” Kylo demands. “Is he trying to turn you against me?”

               “No,” you say loudly, reaching out to take his hand in yours, but he pulls it away. “Seriously, Kylo, don’t be such a child.” You cross your arms over your chest and square your shoulders as you face him. “He told me why I’m not healing right. You knew all along, didn’t you? That I’m not healing because I tried to finish what you started, attacking Snoke with some kind of legendary ability that was far beyond my control?”

               “I had some idea,” Kylo mutters, and this time he reaches out for your hand, which you gratefully give him.

               “So then you know,” you say quietly. “Luke went through the whole speech about the effects that the dark side can cause, and apparently I’m pretty screwed up now. My life span’s been cut short, I can never have children again-“

               “He’s being dramatic,” Kylo says dismissively, the annoyance palpable in his voice. “It was one attack. There’s no reason for you to be affected so terribly.”

               “Oh no?” you ask, lifting up your shirt to reveal the bandages. “Because this thing still isn’t healing well, and there has to be some explanation.”

               “It will heal in time,” Kylo replies. “And then you’ll be fine.”

               You open your mouth and close it again, trying to figure out why Kylo was being so dismissive. Was it because he had been affected in a much greater way than you had? You assumed so, but he had never discussed it with you. He had never told you about it, and now he was dismissing all of the concerns you had. “Is the same thing happening to you?” you ask quietly, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it seemed Kylo was unintentionally set to push every last nerve.

               “Yes,” Kylo replies. “Which is how I know that you will be fine. You will heal slower, but after that wound heals, you should return to normal.”

               “Normal?” you echo, immediately hating the words. “But Luke said I’ll probably never be able to have kids again, and-“

               “Did you truly want another child?” Kylo asks, raising an eyebrow. “Considering what is about to happen?” You open your mouth and shut it again, not sure whether you felt like you were about to cry from anger or sadness. It takes Kylo a second to pick up on your shift of emotion, but it’s one second too late as you’re already on your feet.

               “Do you really not get it?” you demand. “What is _wrong_ with you? Why are you not taking this seriously? You’re the one who wanted me to talk to Luke in the first place, and now you’re acting like he was just being melodramatic, and yet everything he told me is true, I can read it off you. And, okay, maybe I don’t want any more children besides Ani, that’s why I got the implant installed in the first place, but I liked at least having the option and knowing that it was _my_ choice and not something that the dark side did to me.” Kylo looks like he’s about to say something more, but you shake your head. “No, and what do you even know about normal, anyway? What do you even know about me? You’re trying to reassure me that I’ll be fine, but is it really for my sake, or do you just need to convince yourself that I’m fine so that you don’t have to worry about me when you’re gone?”

               This gets Kylo’s attention, and he sits up a little straighter as he appraises you. “What else has happened?”

               “Not too much,” you say with an idle shrug, doubting how much you even wanted to tell him now. For a moment, you almost wish you were back in Poe’s room, knowing that he wouldn’t simply brush off your concerns simply for the sake of optimism. “I almost got completely blown up and I can’t hear as well as I used to after the explosion, although I haven’t really had any problems with that yet. Oh, and I banged my head pretty hard, and now I can’t smell anymore, apparently, so I bet you can guess how much fun I’m having trying to deal with that.”

               Kylo tilts his head to the side in confusion, as if he almost doesn’t believe you. “At all?”

               “Luke gave me some tea thing,” you tell him. “I don’t remember the name of it, but apparently it’s a staple back on Tatooine?”

               “H’Kak?” Kylo asks, and you nod your head forward in a series of quick, short bursts.

               “Yeah, that one,” you tell him. “What’s that supposed to smell like?”

               Kylo just shrugs, as if he never really bothered to discern the aroma. “Like spiced sugar?” he offers after a moment. “But it does have a pretty strong smell, if I remember correctly.”

               “Just tasted like hot water to me,” you reply petulantly. “So this is going to be fun. I haven’t been all that hungry lately either. I just thought it was because of the stabbing pains shooting through my stomach every five minutes, but maybe there’s something else to this.”

               “Come here,” Kylo says quietly, holding out his hand for you, and you just meander forward slowly as you plop down on the side of his bed. He brushes your hair behind your ear as he leans forward to kiss your cheek, and you let him place a row of slow, gentle kisses down your jawline until he reaches your lips. You kiss him back now, turning towards him so you can run your hands through his hair, and you can’t help but let a small moan escape you as you press into him with more need than before. It was a distraction, to be sure, but wasn’t that why you had come here to begin with? If you wanted verbal support, you turned to Poe, but right now you wanted release, and that was something you only felt right getting from Kylo right now.

               Without breaking the kiss, you shift your position so that you’re straddling him with your hands and knees on each side of him and your lips locked with his. It’s not the most comfortable of positons, and the wound in your abdomen is crying out to be noticed, but you ignore it as Kylo plants his hand around the nape of your neck to keep you in place, occasionally caressing your cheek and the side of your neck as he kisses you. His other hand skims the length of your body, starting with your shoulder, trailing down your chest over the swell of your breast, down over the bump of the bandages around your abdomen, until he runs his hand over the bump in the fabric below your waist. You make a noise of contentment against his parted lips, and Kylo decides to obey as he obediently slips his fingers into your waistband.

               He begins to massage your clit with his thumb as he sticks two fingers inside of you, and you break the kiss for a moment as you bow your head, letting the pleasure mix with the pain. It’s an interesting combination as they both fight for dominance of your attention, and you press your forehead into his shoulder as you grit your teeth, silently willing pleasure to be the one that would prevail. Kylo helps your struggle by jutting his tongue into the sensitive hollow where your jaw bone met your neck, and you can’t help but let out a breathy moan as Kylo continues to kiss and suck at your neck, kneading your breast in his free hand while his other hand continues to thrust in and out of you from inside your pants.

               “Can we do this?” you ask breathlessly, almost dreading to hear the answer. You wanted him, you more than wanted him, but you weren’t sure what the extent of his injuries were. He wanted you too, but you didn’t want him pushing himself through something that would end up hurting him worse later. You, yourself, weren’t quite sure how you would manage with your own injury, but you at least wanted to try.

               “Do you think you can?” Kylo asks, and although at first you want to tease him and ask him the same question, you understand what he was really asking. He wanted to, but he was not going to be able to flip you over and take you like he usually did. If you wanted this, you were going to have to be on top.

               “Definitely,” you say with a cocky grin, and your lips meet his again as you place your hands on either side of his face, pulling him into a long, deep kiss. You can feel Kylo shuffling the blankets around beneath you, and while you’re glance down, Kylo puts a finger underneath your chin, urging your eyes back up. You supposed he didn’t want you to get a glimpse of his injury, and so you quickly obey him, kissing his neck and his jaw until you feel his hands on either side of your hips, guiding your pants off and away from your body before you push down onto him.

               You had almost forgotten how good it felt as Kylo pushes his full length inside of you, and for a moment even the burst of pain in your abdomen feels faint and far away until it comes back, stronger than ever. You wince, but Kylo fortunately doesn’t ask if you’re okay, just waits for you to get through it on your own terms, and you’re silently thankful for that. If it hurt you too much, you would stop, you would tell him, but you didn’t want to stop, and neither did he.

               Using your legs for support, you put your hands on both shoulders and slowly move yourself up and down his length in slow motions. Your thighs protest beneath you and you want to go faster in order to give yourself more of a reprieve from the pain, but that only causes the pain in your abdomen to feel sharper than ever with every pulse and contraction. “If this doesn’t work, you can always sit on my face,” Kylo offers, and you can’t help but laugh audibly at that.

               “Maybe,” you reply. “But I know you need this as much as I do.” Kylo mutters some acknowledgement that you don’t quite catch as he bends up to nip at your earlobe, whispering your name in your ear before he pulls away, planting another series of sensitive kisses against your jawline. You can’t help but whimper, throwing your head back to allow him better access as you begin to move at a much faster pace than before, grinding your hips into his as you begin to build. You’re honestly not sure if you’ll be able to come this way, the pain in your abdomen is too great, but if you could at least give Kylo his release-              

               Kylo suddenly presses his fingertips against your temple and you get a burst of sensation that you’re not able to describe until you realize that he was linking your minds as he had done in the past, letting you feel his euphoria as well as your own. You can feel your wet juices sliding up and down along his pulsing length, and you can’t help but shiver as you feel him climax inside of you. You increase your pace and push yourself down onto him harder and faster until you find your own release, screwing up your face as you release a cry that was half from pleasure, half from relief.

               You collapse back down against his shoulder, trying to place the myriad of sensations running through your body. You _hurt_ , there was no question about that. Your thighs ached, your abdomen was pulsing with fresh pain, and you had a strange tingling in the back of your neck that ran down and through your left shoulder blade that you couldn’t quite place. You didn’t want to get off of him, weren’t sure you’d be able to, but you somehow find the strength to as you collapse beside him on the bed, pulling up your pants as Kylo covers himself again.

               “That was good,” you breathe, making a conscious effort to smile despite the pain. “I missed that.” Kylo says nothing as he leans over to kiss you again, but as he does, you can taste a spark off his lips, and you pull away momentarily, finding yourself breathless as you look into his dark eyes. There was a connection pulling you closer to him, you could feel it now, a certain charge that seemed to connect you to him in every sense of the word. “I think it’s back.”

               “It’ll take some time to become as strong as it once was,” Kylo warns you, as if you would be disappointed to hear it, but you are far from disappointed right now. Even still, as you cuddle up beside him, you are keenly aware that you are in a cell, and you can’t help yourself from dwelling on the present reality of your unfortunate circumstances that you could do absolutely nothing to control. “I don’t know what to do, Kylo,” you say softly, cuddling further into his chest as if you could simply hide there forever.

               “Is this about what Luke told you?” Kylo asks, and you shrug your shoulders absent-mindedly.

               “Yes and no,” you tell him at length. “I mean, I don’t know, it just suddenly feels like I don’t have a future. When you’ve healed up a bit more, you’re going to be sent to the Republic, and I don’t want to think about what’s going to happen to you there. I doubt I’m going to heal right because of all this, some of my senses have been taken away, and it’s just hard to-“ You shake your head, trying to figure out how to describe it. “I just feel like I’m half a person. I’m going to lose you, my body is failing, and I haven’t even talked to Ani-“

               You shake your head from side to side, and Kylo strokes back your hair away from your face, as if trying to decide what topic to address first. “You’re not going to lose me,” Kylo says softly. “You will never lose me. I will be by your side however I can for as long as I can, but I will never change how I feel about you.” You just nod your head, but his profession of love is bittersweet when you know he won’t be able to remain by your side forever. “Your injures will heal, eventually. I know it’s slow right now and you’re impatient-“ You can’t help but laugh as you smack his arm as gently as you can manage. “-but it _will_ heal. As for the other things you mentioned, I’m sure you’ll be able to make it benefit you in some way. The way you have always been able to take your disadvantages and find some way to channel them into a source of strength has always been something that I loved about you, and that hasn’t changed.” You smile in earnest now, a heat rising in your cheeks. You could tell that wasn’t easy for Kylo to say, but that was something he truly believed, you could feel it.

               “And as for Ani-“ Kylo begins, his voice taking on a more somber tone. “What is happening between you? He came by to visit me earlier and he says that you two have not spoken, but doesn’t want to say why. Did something happen?”

               “I don’t know,” you say with a sigh. “I thought things were okay, but I just, I don’t know. When he was a kid here, everyone loved him, and now is no exception, apparently. I went by to see him when I got out of the medbay, but he was in the hangar with everyone and I didn’t want to interrupt them. It just wasn’t the place.”

               Kylo lets out a small hum of agreement as he strokes back your hair. “I’ll make sure he speaks with you,” he says at length, but you only shake your head as you sit up.         

               “Not if he doesn’t want to,” you insist. “I don’t exactly have the best reputation with the Resistance, and if he wants to stay away from me in order to keep the friends that he’s made here, then that’s fine with me.” Kylo looks like he’s about to argue, but you only shake your head. “If he wants to talk to me, then I’ll be there, but I don’t know how to explain any of this to him. I mean, I’ve been poisoned by the dark side, and so much has happened-“ You shake your head from side to side. “I’ve been a terrible mother, and if he wants nothing more to do with me, I can understand that. He has safety here at the Resistance, and there’s people who will look out for him here.”

               “He loves you,” Kylo says firmly as he cups your chin in one hand, forcing you to meet his eyes. “I don’t think he knows how to process the situation any more than you do, but you need to rely on each other. I know things are difficult now, but I need to know that once I’m gone that you two will rely on each other. Wasn’t it you who said that family always comes first?”

               “If that’s the case, we should be fighting harder to keep you here,” you mutter under your breath, and Kylo just kisses you softly as you lay back down and snuggle into him again. “I’ll figure things out with Ani. Has he told you anything about why he’s not talking to me?”

               “He hasn’t,” Kylo admits. “But I don’t think you’ve done anything to upset him. He’s enamored with the opportunities that the Resistance is giving him and he has been spending a lot of time with my mother recently. I think she wants to keep him distracted to keep him from thinking about what’s happening to me.”

               “Well, that’s one way to explain it,” you murmur under your breath. “I don’t know, it’s just hard for me to think that he doesn’t hate me after everything I’ve done.”

               “He doesn’t hate you,” Kylo says firmly. “You saved him from Snoke’s influence. If we both had fallen, he would have been left vulnerable with no one to defend him. You saved him from that.”

               “I hope he sees it that way,” you say quietly. “I mean, I know he doesn’t, but a part of me thinks he still holds it against me, leaving him there with your body while I went off to fight Snoke. He could have lost two parents in one day, and I don’t know how he would have coped with that.”

               “He would have found a way,” Kylo says resolutely. “He’s strong. He knows you were only doing what you had to do to protect him, trust me on that.”

               “I trust you,” you mutter into his chest as you let your eyes slip closed. It was true, you did trust him, but you didn’t want to think much more on this matter right then either. Whatever happened with Ani would work itself out, or at least, you hoped it would, and you had come to the uncomfortable conclusion that no matter how powerful you were or desired to be, that you were not going to shape your destiny the way you wanted to. Bad things were going to happen to you whether you wanted them to or not, and the only thing you could do was control how you reacted to them. It sounded simple, but managing how you responded to things, you had quickly come to learn, was not.

               You don’t know how long it is until you drift off to sleep, but you’re awoken by the sound of the door closing in the room, and you immediately jump awake as you try to roll over to face the intruder. Unfortunately, Kylo’s arm is draped over you, and you immediately flinch as you try to adjust to the new burst of pain that radiated from your core. You were honestly getting a little sick and tired of your pain being the first thing on your mind when you woke up and the last thing on your mind when you went to sleep, but there wasn’t much you could do but wait for the wound to heal.

               “I’m sorry to wake you,” Ani says quietly, and you can’t help but let out a sigh. Kylo stirs sleepily from beside you, and you can’t help but smile as he buries his face into your neck. “Poe just wanted me to check on things, make sure you were okay.”

               “I’m fine,” you reply as you sit up slightly, smoothing down Kylo’s hair. You don’t want to leave him, but now seems like a good of an opportunity to talk to Ani as any. Besides, you were getting a cramp from trying to keep yourself from falling off the end of the bed, and that was _not_ helping with the pain in your stomach. “I should probably be heading back soon. Walk with me?”

               Ani nods his head, and you gently bend down to plant a kiss on Kylo’s forehead as you ease yourself out of his grasp. He stays on his side, arm still draped across the one thin blanket they had given him as though it was draped over you, and you know that although he’ll be disappointed to wake up in the morning to find you gone, you know that it’ll only be worse trying to leave if he’s awake. You can feel a sinking feeling in your chest, and you know at once that the Force bond really and truly has awakened itself again, as suddenly you can’t help but think that you have to save him from the Republic at all costs.

               “We’ll figure something out,” Ani says quietly from beside you, and you look over at him and press a quick smile to your lips before you put your hand on his shoulder and guide him out of the room.

               “We will,” you agree once you reach the safety of the hallway where you can talk a little louder. “How are you feeling, Ani? I haven’t seen you in a while. Are you doing okay?”

               “I’m fine,” Ani replies, as if he was surprised you were asking. “I’ve been keeping busy with stuff. I want to be a pilot, and Leia is letting Asher and Ladson fly me around D’Qar. They still don’t trust me to go into space yet since I almost crashed into one of blockades they had set up, but I should be able to go soon if I don’t screw up again.”

               Hearing that Ani almost crashed the ship he was piloting does uncomfortable things to your insides, but you don’t feel as though you’re in any position to refuse him. “As long as you keep yourself safe, that’s the important thing.”

               Ani seems almost disappointed by your safe answer, but doesn’t indulge it. “What about you? How are you feeling?”

               “I’m fine,” you reply quickly. “I mean, still healing up a bit, but I’m okay.”

               Ani looks at you skeptically, as if he knows more than he’s letting on, but doesn’t push it. “And you’re out of the medbay?” he asks slowly, and you just nod your head as you continue to walk along. “And you’re staying with Poe?”

               You catch something in his tone, and inwardly cringe. “Does that bother you?” you ask softly, and Ani shrugs uncomfortably, as if he doesn’t want to say anything. “Ani, if you don’t want me around Poe, then-“

               “No, it’s not that,” Ani says quickly. “I like Poe, I really do, it’s just-“ He pauses, inwardly wrestling with himself before he glances at you. “Poe likes you. I see the way he looks at you when he thinks no one else is looking. He-“ Ani pauses and stops before he looks up and down the empty hallway, making sure the coast was clear. _He perjured himself at your trial to protect you._

“He what?” you demand, and Ani shakes his head as if he wasn’t sure what to say.

               _There were certain things that happened that he said he couldn’t remember_ , Ani explains. _Or other things he lied about. He said that he went_ with _us onto our shuttle on Tatooine because he thought the First Order was nearby. He told them that we protected him and Ladson from being captured by making it look like we had captured them instead._

               You tilt your head to the side in consideration. _To be fair, that may not have exactly been a lie. Remember, before we were taken back aboard the_ Propitiate _by Snoke, Kylo told me that the First Order_ was _conducting operations nearby-_

 _But that’s not what happened._ Ani seems visibly distressed, and you instinctively put your hand on his arm to try to comfort him. _He is protecting us, and Father, but I’m concerned-_

 _About what Ani?_ You brush his hair back off his forehead like you used to do when he was younger. _What are you worried about?_

 _Father thinks Poe’s better for you than he is,_ Ani admits. _I don’t know if you can sense it, but he’s given up. He doesn’t think he’ll come back from the Republic and he wants us both to make a new life for ourselves here._

This was painfully obvious to you, but there was a much bigger question that you needed an answer to right now. _And how do you feel about that?_

Ani’s eyes go wide, as if he hadn’t been expecting this question either. “I don’t know,” he admits out loud, as if the words just suddenly escaped him. _I like Poe, I really do. He’s nice, and-_ He hesitates like he had been caught thinking something he shouldn’t have. _He can provide more stability for us here. He can also protect us, keep us safe, give us certain advantages that we wouldn’t have elsewhere because of his position._ He glances aside, as if trying to justify himself in some way. _I know you’ve thought about it too._

“I have,” you admit quietly. _Nothing will ever replace Kylo, ever, but he wants us to think about what we’ll do if things with the Republic don’t, you know, work out in our favor._ You shake your head from side to side. _I don’t know what I’d do without him, I really and truly don’t, but what about you, Ani? It seems you’re making friends. It looks like you’re building a life for yourself here._

“I’m trying,” Ani offers. “Most of the people here remember me from when I was small. Some people here don’t-“ he hesitates and sighs before the words come out in a rush. “They don’t seem to like you or Father very much, but it doesn’t appear they hold any ill will towards me. I almost wish they did, because it feels like I am being torn in two, being forced to choose between the Resistance and my family and I don’t want to ever make that choice.” He looks up at you suddenly with pleading eyes, as if he’s begging you to understand. “Is this how you feel? About Poe?”

               “In a way,” you reply, mostly because you’re not sure you’re ready to have that conversation yet when even you weren’t quite sure of where you stood with Poe. “All I know is there is no way to plan for the future, Ani. Remember, when we were here last, you were just a small boy thinking that you were meeting your father for the first and last time, and he surprised both of us when he brought us to Naboo. All I’m saying is, you may decide to make a choice, and the Force may decide to sweep you along in an entirely different direction. A few years ago, I would have chosen Poe and the Resistance, I would have, I did make that choice, and then Kylo brought us to Naboo, and I realized there was nothing I wanted more, so don’t worry too much about the decisions you make now, Ani. You may make a choice only to be steered away from it entirely. If you want to take any advice from me, and you probably shouldn’t, just try to be flexible and take things as they come, don’t try to control everything like I once did.” Ani looks down, and you put a hand on his shoulder. “I know things look bad now, but I wouldn’t count Kylo out just yet. I don’t think he's going to lose his life to the Republic, I really don’t, but then again, that may just be wishful thinking.”

               “I feel the same,” Ani agrees with a slight nod of his head. “But you’re wrong. I always take my advice from you, or at least, I try to, it’s why I took up pilot training with Asher when he and Ladson offered. Father has always told me to be more like you; you’re brave and independent and resourceful and I know if I am to survive in this galaxy then I need to adopt those qualities as well. You try to do the best in whatever situation you’re in-“

               “Not on the _Propitiate_ ,” you remind him glumly.

               “That was Snoke,” Ani says firmly. “Father explained the attack that you and he were trying to use against him outside the hangar while you tried to protect me. You and Father gave your lives for me, and there is no way I can repay that debt.”

               “Don’t hate me for almost dying?” you offer with a slight chuckle, but Ani shakes his head.

               “You would have given your lives to protect mine,” Ani says firmly. “I want to do the same for you, if I can.”

               “No,” you say quickly, shaking your head from side to side. “No, no, no, Ani, it’s the duty of every parent to protect their children. You don’t need to protect us-“

               “But Father-“

               “Kylo can take care of himself,” you reply firmly. _And truth be told if the Republic does try to execute him, you can bet that I’m going to commandeer the first shuttle out of here to break him out. But you can’t be a part of that, Ani. You’re too young yet, and you’ve seen the toll it’s taken on Kylo and I being on the run all the time. I want you to have a stable place to live, a home, and if you want that to be here then you need to fight for it, and sometimes a part of fighting is just sitting back and letting things take its course. I know how incredibly hard that can be, that it can be even harder than fighting itself, but sometimes it’s necessary, and right now, it’s necessary. We won’t know how things turn out with the Republic until Kylo gets better, so just keep on with your pilot lessons and doing things that make you happy, okay? Talk to me, talk to Ladson, talk to Poe and Luke and Finn and Rey and whatever other friends you have here._

 _BB-8?_ Ani offers, and you can’t hide your face of disgust.

               “I hate that fucking droid,” you mutter under your breath, and Ani laughs in earnest at that.

               _You shouldn’t tell Poe that if you want a future with him,_ Ani advises, and you can’t help but blush. You didn’t want to take advice from him, especially not on your romantic entanglements, but he seemed prepared to give it all the same. _Father says you need someone if something happens to him, and I agree with him._

“I don’t need someone to take care of me,” you snort, but Ani shakes his head quickly.

               “No, you don’t need someone to take care of you,” Ani agrees. “You need someone to take care _of_. You like to feel, I don’t know, not needed, but like you’re doing something good. Like teaching. You liked teaching, helping other people become stronger and better. We don’t know how things will work out with Father, and you need _something_.”

               “Poe doesn’t need me,” you say with a laugh as you shake your head. “He’s the Commander of the Starfighter Corps, Captain of whatever department he’s captain of now, he’s probably in line to be the next General of the Resistance when Leia is ready to officially step down, he’s friends with probably literally everyone on this base and probably on all of the surrounding planets, and I am pretty sure he’s probably the nicest person in the galaxy that I’ve ever met.” You shake your head from side to side. “Trust me when I say he doesn’t need me.”

               “Maybe he does,” Ani offers. “Not in the way that you’re thinking, but he never forgot about us.”

               He sounds so hopeful when he says this, and it pulls at your heartstrings. You weren’t sure what Ani was hoping for, exactly, but you had a vague idea of where his thoughts were headed. _Look Ani,_ you begin. _This is hard to say, but there’s not going to be a future for me and Poe._

“He said that?” Ani asks as if he’s confused, and you quickly shake your head in response.

               _No,_ you admit. _But uh_ \- You fumble with your words, trying to figure out the best way to say it. _I was hurt, pretty badly, well, you know, you saw me, but uh, I can’t give you any brothers or sisters anymore. Which means if things did go south with Kylo and I found myself…_ relying _on Poe more, I could never give him a family, and he kind of strikes me as the kind of guy that wants one._

“Is that what he told you?” Ani asks, but doesn’t give you time to reply. “You haven’t even talked to him about it yet.”

               “No,” you say with a blush, immediately on the defensive. “Look, Ani, why is this bothering you so much, anyway? For all you know the Republic may pardon your father too, and then everything will be just fine.”

               “Maybe,” Ani admits, but the tone of his voice implies that he doubted it. “But what if it’s not? You like Poe and Poe likes you, Ladson and Asher talk about it all the time. They even have a running bet to see if you’ll end up together if something happens to Father.”

               You can’t help but sigh as you rub your temple dramatically. Leave it to Ladson to be running puerile bets on how soon it would be until you fucked Poe. It was completely in his nature, and yet, somehow you couldn’t almost bring yourself to believe he would talk about it so openly in front of your son. “It’s complicated,” you admit at length. “Yes, I do like Poe, but there’s a lot of history there and a lot of, _complications_ to the situation that I’m sure you can appreciate. Remember, you can love someone and not be with them, Ani.”

               “True,” Ani admits with a slight shrug. “But if you love someone and you _could_ be with them, why wouldn’t you be?”

               You open your mouth and then shut it again, unable to form the words that you wanted to say. It suddenly felt as though all the words had suddenly disappeared from your brain, and you couldn’t help but stare down at your child and believe those words had come from his mouth. “I don’t think Kylo would appreciate your boldness,” you say at length, trying to keep your tone light, but Ani just shakes his head.

               “He said I’m probably going to have to be the one that has to convince you to move on,” Ani says, his voice turning serious again. “He doesn’t think he’s going to make it, and he wants you to be happy.”

               “Which is not something I aspire to be,” you say with a sigh. “But safe? That I’ll accept.”

               “Me too,” Ani says quietly, and you can’t help but smile as you sling an arm around Ani’s shoulder as you walk back down the hall again.

               “We’ve both got some friends here, and as for right now, we still have Kylo, but we’ll always have each other,” you remind him. “Remember, when it was just you and me? Ladson and Sadie may have helped a bit-“

               “More than a bit,” Ani mutters light-heartedly, and it’s all you can do not to swat him on the back of the head.

               “But we have each other,” you finish firmly. “We take care of each other, we watch out for each other, we keep each other safe. I know I wasn’t the best to you while we were on the _Propitiate_ -“

               “Because you were trying to keep me safe,” Ani reminds you. “Snoke may have manipulated your thinking, but your heart was in the right place.”

               You shake your head as you let out a sigh. “You know what, we may have to leave. You’re starting to sound too nice; the Resistance is clearly having a terrible influence on you.”

               Ani laughs, but you can tell it’s more for your sake than anything. “Just promise me that you’ll talk to Poe?” Ani asks. “Apparently he and Ladson had some _long_ talks about you back on that shuttle when we were keeping them prisoner. Ladson doesn’t know Poe expects from you, considering your loyalty to Father, but-“ Ani just shakes his head. “He just wants you to be happy. We all do.”

               You’re not exactly sure who he’s referring to, but you’re almost at Poe’s room now, and you decide to just agree with him to keep the conversation short. There were more people in the halls now, and you didn’t want someone to overhear a snippet of your conversation and start the rumor mill churning with all sorts of new allegations against you and Poe. To you they were just an inconvenience, but you didn’t want to get Poe into any sort of trouble on your account. You had essentially kidnapped him, and then he had lied to protect you, and Kylo, and Ani, from facing any sort of harsher penalties with the Resistance. You wanted to believe it was something he would do simply because he was a good, selfless person, but you were starting to think that he wouldn’t do what he had done for you for just anyone, and that was a mistake you couldn’t let him make. You liked him, and you cared about him enough to make sure he didn’t ruin his life sticking his neck out for you.

               “I’ll talk to him,” you tell Ani as you square yourself in front of the door to Poe’s room. “I just don’t know what I’m going to say.”

               “Just tell him the truth,” Ani advises. “It should be easy. You always told me that the truth is always the first thing that pops into your head, remember?”

               “Yeah,” you reply, but the words are no more than a whisper as they leave your lips. The only problem was that you knew the truth, your truth, and that was something that you could never allow yourself to say.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Because I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing._
> 
> Sorry this chapter is late, I'm super duper sick right now....headache, achey all over, I think it's a combination of heat stroke and dehydration, because when you walk over 10 miles in the sun, of course the next reasonable thing is to go to CrossFit....I am the living embodiment of the *knows I shouldn't do the thing but does the thing anyway* meme. 
> 
> But enough about me. What the heck is Ani up to? Is he just doing what he's being told to? If so, who's orders are he following? Is he trying to reverse psychology the Reader? Or does he really just want things to be done with his crazy parents for good and start a new, safer life at the Resistance? (Considering the hell they've both dragged him through, I could hardly blame him for that!) But I guess you'll find out soon enough...
> 
> Until Saturday, cheers!! <3


	53. Chapter 53

               You open the door quietly, almost afraid of what you will find inside. It’s just Poe, and you had nothing to fear from him, but you would be lying if you said you weren’t afraid of how the situation was going to turn out. You had no idea what to say to Poe, and you meant that in every literal possible way that you could. Ani seemed sure that he liked you as something more than a friend, and he knew you felt the same, but you weren’t sure exactly what that was supposed to mean. Kylo was still in the picture, and you couldn’t give Poe the kind of future you were sure he wanted. For all intents and purposes, Poe had been right on Tatooine when he had said that it just wouldn’t work. Your pride hadn’t allowed you to believe him then, but you were starting to think he was right now.

               The only thing that hadn’t changed between then and now, however, was how you felt, and that was something that you honestly could not understand. You didn’t really see a future with him, but you found his presence beside you oddly comforting. You liked sleeping on him at night and waking up on his chest in the morning, feeling his slow, soft exhalations beneath you while your hands gripped each other tight, as if one of you was afraid to let the other go. You weren’t sure what had caused that to happen, but then again, you weren’t sure why Poe liked you so much either, and you supposed that was part of the problem.

               You weren’t being modest, either. You legitimately had no idea why Poe Dameron liked you, why his affections for you would linger on upwards of over five years when he should have just moved on. You knew why you hadn’t moved on from Kylo; you had been bonded together through the Force and you had a child together, but there were no such commitments that bound you to Poe. You hadn’t even known each other that long or been together in any real official way. Was it his guilt over letting Kylo take you away that had fueled his drive to get to you so deeply to the point where he couldn’t allow himself to be disappointed by turning you away now?

               Not to mention, you couldn’t be entirely sure of what you wanted. You wanted Kylo, you knew that with absolute certainty, but what if you couldn’t save him from the Republic and you were alone? What would happen then? It seemed almost selfish to think about, that you would at least have Poe if you lost Kylo so you wouldn’t be entirely alone, but Kylo had made it clear more than once that he wanted that for you, that he wanted you to have the future you could have had with Poe if he hadn’t taken you away to Naboo. Unfortunately, the sort of future that you had anticipated with Poe and the Resistance was no longer in the cards, and it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to say that you were playing with a stacked deck. The Republic hated you, some key members of the Resistance probably still thought you were a traitor, and there was no way that Poe could be General of the Resistance and still be with you at the same time; it just couldn’t be done. People would talk and the things they would say…no, it wasn’t worth it. Moreover, _you_ weren’t worth it. You couldn’t give him your full, undivided affection, and while he had never said that was what he wanted, he didn’t deserve anything less.

               “We need to talk,” you say immediately as you push the door all the way open. Poe was still lying on his bed, but his brow is furrowed as he reads through something on a datapad. He doesn’t look up at you right away, and you just stand there for a moment, feeling more like an idiot than before, if that was possible. Your eyes search the room for something to do while you wait, but nothing seems out of place, and if you were being honest with yourself, it almost looked as though Poe had cleaned while you were out. You tilted your head to the side as you studied his dresser, trying to remember if the spare parts that were gathered there always were neatly arranged in tight little rows when Poe sits up and puts his datapad to the side.

               “Sorry about that,” he says with a casual voice, but his expression soon sobers when he sees the look you give him. “What did you want to talk about? Are you okay?”

               “I-“ You swallow hard, trying to figure out what it was you wanted to say. Ani had encouraged you to be honest with him, to say the first thing that came to your mind, and you had no trouble doing that right at this moment. “I have no idea where to even begin.”

               “Well, why don’t you start with what Luke told you,” Poe offers, using that soft, gentle understanding voice that he used whenever he could tell that you were really upset about something. “Whatever he said seemed to really get under your skin.”

               “Yeah,” you echo with a breathless laugh. “Yeah, I guess I could do that.” Luke had given you a lot of information, though, and you still weren’t quite sure where to begin. You could tell him that Luke had sensed the Force bond repairing itself between you and Kylo again, but you didn’t want to talk about Kylo right now. This was something that rested solely between you and Poe, and you wanted your conversation to reflect that. If it wasn’t going to work out between you two, you wanted it to be because of incompatibilities between you and Poe, with nothing to do with Kylo. “Apparently I’m really messed up,” you tell him, before you realize how that sounded to your own ears as you begin to stammer over your words. “I mean, in the physical sense.”

               Well, this conversation was going just about as well as you were expecting.

               Poe, however, seems completely unfazed by it. “Did Luke know why you aren’t healing?” he asks, and you quickly nod your head forward, grateful for any straw that you could grasp onto.

               “Yes, uh, yeah,” you say quickly. “When I was taking down Snoke, I used a weapon that required a lot of dark side energy and a lot of energy from me, physically. It sort of sapped my body in a way that there’s no coming back from, like, _this_ wound may heal in time, but I’ve been sort of permanently damaged by this.”

               Poe says nothing for a long while, as if waiting for you to continue, until you shift your body awkwardly, twisting your frame to one side in a gentle stretch that actually didn’t hurt as badly as you had almost expected it to. “You don’t have to tell me anything you’re not comfortable with,” Poe says finally, but you can tell that he wants to know what’s wrong so he can comfort you. Besides that, he’s the one who’s supposed to be looking after you and reporting things back to the Resistance for review. It felt more appropriate to get whatever information he needed out of you rather than running to Luke and asking him for answers, but you supposed he was going to find out one way or another.

               “No, it’s fine,” you telling him quickly. “It’s just, hard to explain, that’s all. Um, you know about the hearing damage, right?” You wait until Poe nods his head forward before you continue. “Well, it’s not just that. I can’t smell either. Like, it’s just gone, completely and totally gone. Luke gave me this strong tea that just tasted like hot water to me, but apparently it was supposed to be really strong, and I couldn’t really smell any of the flowers in the Green Room either. The weirdest part was I wasn’t like, aware that I couldn’t smell anything, like I didn’t realize that I couldn’t until he pointed it out to me.”

               “It’s okay,” Poe says gently. “I’m sure-“

               But you’re not ready for his signature placating responses quite yet. “It’s not just that,” you say quickly, cutting him off. You felt a flash of irritation shoot through you, more at yourself and the situation than at him, but you let yourself use it as fuel to push through the rest of the confession. “The loss of my senses seems to be more because of a head injury than anything directly related to the Force, but I’m not going to heal right anymore, and when I do, it’s going to be painfully slow, so I have honestly no idea how long this will take to heal, but it could take _months_ , and I don’t really want to be in pain for that long but it doesn’t seem like I have any other choice. Besides that, apparently my lifespan is shortened, part of this whole struggle between the light side and the dark side struggle that I’m always going to have to deal with now, because apparently once you’ve been that dark, you don’t leave it behind. You carry it with you, and the only way to fix yourself is to delve _deeper_ into the dark side but apparently then you can’t eat or drink and you lose all your skin and you become really powerful but you’re basically a zombie, so there really isn’t a point in that.” You pause, considering what else you missed. “Also, uh, yeah, apparently I can’t have kids anymore because of this. Not that I wanted another kid, mind you, but I just, uh, yeah.” You’re starting to stammer again, all previous conviction in your voice lost. “So, uh, yeah, that’s kind of where I am right now.”

               Poe just dips his head forward in a nod, as if confirming something for himself. “Well, that explains the question from earlier,” he says, and although you can tell he’s trying to lighten the mood, it doesn’t really help you feel any better, especially considering what you talked about with Ani. “How did Ren feel about it?”

               You can feel heat rise to your cheeks as your jaw clicks shut. “How did you know I went to see him?” you ask suddenly. Poe had sent Ani to fetch you from there, but you hadn’t explicitly told him exactly where you were heading, if your memory served you correctly. You hoped it did. Memory loss was one thing you were hoping that your immersion in the dark side had at least spared you from.

               “Because he can understand what you’re going through,” Poe replies, and your shoulder slump as your head drops forward. You wanted to have this conversation without having to drag it through a verbal quagmire, and while you thought you would have appreciated the subtlety of it, this was a conversation you wanted to have out in the open, where you couldn’t misconstrue his meaning.

               “I mean, he has some idea,” you reply. “But I think this is something I’m really going to have to go through myself. He may not be there for me for much longer, anyway, so I’m going to need to figure out how to support myself.”

               Poe just nods his head slowly, taking in your words. “Have you talked to Ani about this?”

               “Not about that,” you reply with a shake of your head. “We talked about other things.”

               “His flying lessons?” Poe asks, and you nod your head. “I would never have pegged Asher for a patient person, but I guess with Ladson there he’s making it work. I hear Ani’s really enjoying it.”

               “He is,” you reply quickly. “He really appreciates the opportunity to get around out of the base. He trained a little back on the _Propitiate,_ but he never really had the benefit of just flying openly before.”

               “You sound almost nostalgic,” Poe says with a light laugh, and you shrug your shoulders. “If you want to, I could maybe take you out flying again, you know, like we used to.”

               You knew you would have to answer this carefully. Pointing out too much had changed would not serve you right now, no, you had to be direct with what you wanted above all else. “I think too much has happened to go back to the way that we used to,” you say quietly, almost holding your breath as you wait for his answer.

               Poe just shakes his head from side to side as if that didn’t really matter to him. “We can still go, if you want to.”

               You laugh, pressing the toe of your boot into the floor. “I don’t know,” you admit. “I mean, what if we crash or something? Me, okay, no one really likes me here, but you’re too important to risk me getting you killed or something.”

               “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Poe says evenly. “People here will come around, and if I remember correctly, you never crashed us before.”

               “First time for everything,” you reply, your voice a bit firmer than you mean it to be. “I just, I don’t know, I’ll think about it. It feels like my brain has been cut in two lately; I’m just having a hard time figuring what to do.”

               “With the trial?” Poe asks, and you shrug your shoulders.

               “I guess so,” you reply evenly. “I guess I’m just worried about what’s going to happen, you know, _after_.”

               “I’m always here if you need someone to talk to,” Poe tells you lightly. “You know that.”

               You can’t help but laugh as you shake your head. “Honestly, I don’t think talking is going to help things much.”

               “I’m here to support you then,” Poe amends. “In whatever way that means.”

               “Why?” you ask suddenly, as if you really didn’t know the answer. Honestly, a part of you didn’t. “I mean, why does it matter to you if I need someone to talk to?”

               Poe shakes his head, as if he wasn’t sure he had a satisfactory answer to your question. “I just want to make sure you’re safe, that’s all.”

               “You don’t need to worry about me,” you say quietly. “If anything, I should be the one that’s worried about you. You’ve stuck your neck out for me so many times lately, I can’t even keep track of all the ways you’ve probably saved my skin. How am I even supposed to thank you for that?”

               “I don’t need to be thanked,” Poe says as he shakes his head. “I-“

               “Did it because you’re such a good person?” The question is practically bursting out of your seams. “Would you have done that for anyone else?”

               Poe just shrugs his shoulders absent-mindedly. “I don’t know anyone else who’s been in your position in order to-“

               “But if you did,” you insist, making it clear this was a question that you _needed_ to have answered. “Would you have done that for anyone else?”

               Poe’s silent for a long time before he speaks again. “I like to think I would,” he offers, but his answer is far too safe and you just shake your head in disappointment.

               “You shouldn’t have stuck your neck out for me,” you say after a brief pause. “I’m not worth it, honestly, I’m not. Everything around me seems to just go to shit, seriously, I seem to screw up everything I touch. Why would you want to be around a person like that?”

               “Maybe I’m a big believer in second chances,” Poe offers, but you just shake your head.

               “For you or for me?” you ask suddenly, abandoning all subtleties. “Are you just doing this because you were unable to stop Kylo from taking me away from here and you still feel bad about it? Is that why?”

               “Not the only reason,” Poe responds, and you can’t help but laugh as you run a hand through your hair, pushing it back out of your face.

               “But it is a reason,” you insist, the note of disappointment evident in your voice.

               “Maybe I tend to dwell on the hypotheticals as much as you do,” Poe offers, but he seems to be for a loss as to what to say as well. You both stay in awkward silence, him sitting, you standing, unsure of where to go from here.

               “You don’t have to pretend to like me,” you say quietly. “I know what’s happened. I know what I’ve done. Forget the hypotheticals, there are some things that just are unforgiveable. I know you spent years hoping for me to come back, and I’m sorry I disappointed you. I’m sorry I’m not the same person that left D’Qar a few years ago. I don’t know what happened to her, whether she got lost back on Naboo or what, but she’s gone now.”

               “I don’t think so,” Poe replies. “Although I could see why you’d think it would be easier for you to think that she was.”

               That was as blunt a comment as you ever heard, and your jaw drops open a little ways as you study him. He was sitting still, too still, as if this conversation was taking all of his physical and mental focus on what to say next. Although, truth be told, you could hardly say that you were in a different position. “No more skirting,” you tell him finally. “Can’t you understand that I’m trying to do the right thing? Associating yourself with me is only going to bring you down. Kylo is only in this position because of me, and if you hang around me, I’m just going to end up hurting you too. I just wish you could see that.”

               “And I wish you could see yourself the way I do,” Poe says with a shake of his head. “Although considering all that’s happened, I can see why you’re so hard on yourself, but you need to know it’s not your fault.”

               “Not my fault?” you practically explode. “You don’t know everything. You don’t know the whole story, you weren’t there, you only know what I told you. You know what everyone else has said, but you didn’t live it. I made bad choices, fuck, I locked you up. You almost got killed because of me, and if you’re hoping I’ll forgive myself for that, I can’t.” You cross your arms over your chest in an effort to look as insistent as you felt. “I won’t. And you shouldn’t either. I’m bad, you’re good, end of story.”

               “No,” Poe says as he gets to his feet, and you can tell that you’ve struck a nerve with him. He hated that line of thinking, you _knew_ he hated that line of thinking, and yet it was the most damning thing you could think of to say to push him away from you forever. “No, you know I don’t like it when you say things like that, because you are not as bad as you think you are. You made some bad decisions, we both know you have, but you don’t know what I’ve done in the past few years either. I’ve made some bad calls, I’ve been reckless, and it’s cost some people their lives. We have _all_ done things that we’re regretted, and we’ve all done things we wish we could take back. I know I can’t use the Force, but if I could have, I probably would have been tempted by the dark side if it meant helping the people I cared about, same as you.”

               “You wanted to help people,” you say quietly. “I just wanted to help myself. That’s the difference.”

               “I can be selfish,” Poe says as he takes a few steps forward, meeting your eyes. “Believe me, I can be selfish.”

               “Don’t skirt around this,” you say as you shake your head. “Just tell me what you want, please, just tell me exactly, directly, what you want. How you feel.”

               Poe takes another few steps closer, until he’s standing directly in front of you now. Your back is against the wall, and you can feel his hot breath on your face, making you weak, making you vulnerable, making you human. “I know this is complicated,” he admits quietly, and as the backs of his fingers stroke your cheek, you can’t help but hear your breath hitch in your throat. “Between you and Ren and the Resistance and everything that’s happened, it should be too much to look past, but I still care about you.”

               His lips press against yours, slowly but firmly, and his hand moves to cup your cheek as he kisses you. You kiss him back, letting one hand trail through his dark hair, pushing it back out of his face before you pull away again. Desire was starting to pool hot and thick inside you, but for the life of you, you just couldn’t decide how to feel about it. It felt like the entire galaxy was pushing you together, even Kylo seemed to determined that you should just give up on him and move on, so much so that he had to drag Ani into it, but you just couldn’t be sure you knew what you wanted. “We don’t have to do this,” you say quietly, your lips moving against his while you talk. “I don’t want there to be any bad blood between us. We can just let this go and then we never have to worry about this ending as badly as it did the last time…or worse.”

               “Right,” Poe says with a light chuckle. “But then we’ll always wonder if things could have worked out differently, if we could have worked.”

               “That’s how it is sometimes,” you say quietly, almost as though you’re afraid of your own voice.

               “That’s not how I want it to be,” Poe replies. He looks searchingly into your eyes for a moment and seems to sense something there before he pulls away. “Do you want me to stop?”

               “No,” you say quickly, shaking your head from side to side. “No, no, I just-“ You let your voice trail off as what Ani says comes back to you. “If you love someone and you could be with them, why wouldn’t you be?”

               This was it. You were putting it entirely in Poe’s hands now. There were so many things that he could say, so many reasons he could list or excuses he could name, but he just shakes his head from side to side as he looks back at you. “I can’t think of a reason,” he says softly, and you push against the wall as you kiss him, fisting both of your hands in his hair. He kisses you back wrapping his one arm around you while the other massages the nape of your neck.

               “This doesn’t hurt you?” Poe asks as he holds you tighter, and you can’t help but snort as you break the kiss.

               “Don’t insult me,” you mutter under your breath as you slowly stumble back towards the bed. “You couldn’t hurt me if you _tried_.”

               “Do you want me to try?” Poe asks as he sits on the bed so that you can straddle him, throwing your legs around his waist as you grind yourself against him. You can’t help but laugh as you shake your head, biting your lower lip as you do so.

               “No please,” you say teasingly, and Poe lets out a light laugh as he leans forward to kiss your neck.

               “Oh I like it when you’re cute,” Poe murmurs into your tingling skin, and you can’t help but let out an affronted gasp as he starts to kiss along your neckline.

               “I’m not _cute_ ,” you insist. “I can cut a man’s spleen in half with my bare hands. I am not cute, I’m…deadly.”

               “Is this the part where I’m supposed to ask you to prove it?” Poe asks, and you couldn’t grin any wider as you push Poe back onto the bed, letting a hungry growl escape your throat as you start to attack his neck with your lips. You know that you’re going to have to be careful not to raise anyone’s suspicions, but you make a mental note to talk about that later as you move your lips down to his collarbone. Poe’s hand reaches into your pants and squeezes your ass roughly, and you can’t help but moan into his parted lips as you press yourself against his hardened length.

               As you run a hand over the hard bulge in the fabric of his pants, you can’t help but let a memory come unbidden to your mind of the first time that you had been with Poe, of the first time you had been so nervous that you had pushed him away, and as much as you realized you were probably going to do it again later, you had to do it again now. “Wait, wait,” you pant, and Poe stops immediately, his hand going to your side as if he thought you were in pain. You weren’t, but for a moment you almost wished that you were so that you could use it as an easy excuse.

               “We shouldn’t do this,” you say suddenly, regretting the words even as you said them.

               “Am I-?” Poe starts, but you can’t let him even finish that sentence.

               “No,” you exclaim quickly. “No, no, you’re not doing anything wrong. I just, what are we doing, you know? Like, I just, I don’t know, I can’t help but think that this is too much too soon. Okay, people here may get over what I’ve done with the First Order, but they haven’t forgiven me _yet_. And Kylo’s not even gone yet, he’s still here, he’s still okay. A part of me wants to prepare myself for what things could be like when he’s gone, but we’re rushing this, and I can understand why we would want to after what happened the last time, but I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves.”

               “I understand,” Poe replies, trying to make his face look as sincere as possible. “No you’re right, this is too much, too fast, and we shouldn’t jump into things right away with everything so…”

               “Yeah,” you say quickly as you scoot off of him, and Poe stands up as you lie there awkwardly on your back, propped up on your elbows. It’s an uncomfortable position, but you’re not going to call attention to yourself by moving, and so you just lie there nervously as Poe rubs his lower lip with his thumb, leaning against the side of the bed looking away from you. You’re just about to say something, or think you are, at any rate, before he suddenly bounds up the ladder in two quick movements and collapses onto the top bunk with a heavy grunt of exertion.

               You want to tell him that he can come back, that he can still sleep with you, that you didn’t mind _that_ , but now you’re afraid that he wouldn’t even want to. Had you disappointed him? Were you disappointed yourself? Honestly, you couldn’t be sure, you really couldn’t be. You want to tell him something that would comfort him, or defuse the tension between you at the very least, but you truly and honestly cannot think of anything to say, and those feelings of both confusion and despair eventually follow you down into an uneasy sleep.

               When you wake up again, Poe is shaking your shoulder, trying to rouse you from whatever you had been dreaming about. You felt oddly dizzy for some reason, a bit lightheaded, and you held the inside of your wrist to your temple in a weak attempt to calm yourself. Your skin felt _cold_ for some reason, not just cool, and through your hazy vision you can see Poe frown as he holds the backs of his fingers to your forehead. “You doing okay?”

               “Fine,” you say quickly, shaking your head back and forth. “I’m uh, guessing I had another nightmare then?”

               “Yeah,” Poe says with a light chuckle as he sits down beside you. “It sounds like you’re starting to make a habit of it.”

               “Sorry,” you offer, although you know your words doesn’t really do much when your nightmares had roused him from sleep once again. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t really remember what it was about.”

               “You don’t?” Poe asks, and as he frowns, suddenly everything that had happened before you went to sleep comes back into your mind at once as you remember how you had pushed him away. You didn’t remember your dream, but you were starting to realize with sudden clarity that your trepidation to get involved with Poe was more than just due to Kylo and the rest of the Resistance. If people did start to accept you again, and Kylo was put down at the hands of the Republic and you could eventually move past it, which a part of you honestly doubted you ever would. How could you be with Poe again, truly? You couldn’t give him a family that he might want someday, and besides that, you had to admit that a part of you was afraid.

               It seemed too cliché to be true, but a part of you was honestly afraid to be happy, especially after losing Kylo, how could you be sure that something bad wasn’t going to happen to Poe, and then you’d have to deal with losing him too. You’d have to deal with that regardless, whether he was shot down or failed to come back from a mission or _something_ , but you didn’t want to make that loss more painful than it already would be. Beyond that, considering all the terrible things you had done, a part of you felt that you didn’t deserve to be happy. You didn’t know if that was something you would eventually get over or not, or how you would even go about doing it if you could, but between that and your fear of losing yet another person you cared for meant that you had to keep Poe at arm’s length.

               “Do I talk in my sleep?” you ask eventually, hoping to gain at least some clarity as to why you were having these nightmares so you could figure out how you could put a stop to them.

               “Uh, yeah, yeah, you do,” Poe tells you quietly, and a blush rises to your cheeks as he sits down beside you. “You were calling out my name again.”

               “Again?” you ask with sudden alarm in your voice. You shake your head as if to clear it. “I’m sorry, I mean I, I don’t know why, maybe it had to do with our conversation earlier.” Poe says nothing, and it allows a sudden, new, more horrifying thought to occur to you. “That’s not the first time I’ve done it, either.”

               “You’ve always been very vocal in your sleep,” Poe starts, and you can feel an actual heat in your cheeks now as your heart starts to beat a little faster.

               “Kylo’s never told me that,” you say with sudden alarm, wondering how many times Kylo ever heard you mutter things in your sleep. Were they damning? Just how many times over the years had he heard you mutter Poe’s name in your sleep? Zero? A thousand? You couldn’t be sure, but the fact that he never said anything to you alarmed you more than a bit.

               “Yeah,” Poe says with a chuckle. “You were calling out for him a lot back in the medbay when we first brought you here.”

               “Oh,” you say quietly, dropping your gaze, but Poe just shrugs as if it doesn’t really make a difference to him. You had to admit, this was a pretty strange situation yourself, and you had no idea how he was dealing with it when you couldn’t even start to understand it.

               “I had a few interesting talks with Ladson about it,” Poe offers, and now you’re sure that your face is a new color of crimson. “I mean, you two have lived together for years. He’s heard you talking in your sleep on more than one occasion.”

               “Great,” you mutter under your breath, but Poe just shakes his head.

               “Back on the shuttle,” Poe starts, and that’s all he needs to say for you to decide that you don’t want to hear what he has to say. Regardless, you need to know, a part of you just _needs_ to know, and so you keep silent. “You fell asleep on the bench and Ladson made some joke about how uncomfortable you looked-“

               “Figures.”

               “-and how you deserved it-“

               You tilt your head to the side in consideration, in a silent, resigned form of acceptance.

               “-when you started calling my name in your sleep,” Poe continues. “You started saying some things, and Ladson thought you were faking to try to, I don’t know, unnerve me or something, but you were _really_ out of it, and then when you woke up-“ Poe shakes his head, as if it only confirmed his suspicions that you had had no idea about what you had said.

               “What did I say?” you ask quietly, almost afraid to hear the answer for yourself.

               “A few things,” Poe says with an uncomfortable shrug, and you’re almost afraid to hear what’s coming. “You were talking about how you missed me, about how you loved me…”

               You thought your wrists had felt cold before, but now you were distinctly aware that your hands were so cold that they were freezing, your fingertips numb as you pressed them into the bed. “I-“ you start, but Poe quickly shakes his head.

               “It was a dream,” he tells you. “You-“

               “I do love you,” you say quickly, before you can take the words back, and Poe’s eyes snap up to meet your own. “I mean, I think I do. It’s all _very_ complicated, but I do love you, or I have love for you, I’m not sure if it’s the same thing, but through everything that happened a part of me didn’t want to move on, and a part of me, a really dark, selfish part of me, didn’t want you to move on either.”

               Poe just shakes his head from side to side. “It’s not that selfish,” Poe replies. “We never really got a chance and you never got to make that choice for yourself as to who you really wanted to be with.”

               “I still don’t think I’m getting that choice,” you say quietly to yourself. “Although I don’t think I want to. We both know if I had to choose-“

               “It’d be Ren,” Poe says firmly, and you shift uncomfortably. “Because he needs you, because he doesn’t have anyone else, and you couldn’t think of abandoning him. You’d feel too guilty.”

               A smile tugs at the corners of your lips, but it’s a nervous smile more than anything else, trying to disguise your discomfort. Poe had obviously been paying more information to the situation then you had given him credit for. “But knowing all that, why would you still want to even try to be involved with me?”

               “Believe me, I’ve asked myself that many times,” Poe replies with a quick shake of his head. “But it’s not that simple. Ren _needs_ you, in a way that I don’t and never will, and yet you’re bonded to him in a way that I couldn’t begin to even understand if I tried. I don’t think I need to tell you that we have a completely different type of relationship than you have with him, right?” You nod your head, not trusting yourself to speak. “Basically what I’m saying is, do what feels right and don’t overthink it. Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen anyway, right?”

               You just let out a small snort of laughter. “I wish I could be that cavalier about things; I’d probably have a lot less problems if I did.”

               “Just let me know what you need from me,” Poe says as he cups your cheek, and you hesitate for a moment before you reach forward and kiss him, putting a hand on his shoulder as you support yourself.

               “You know,” you tell him as you sit back down beside him, taking one of his hands in yours. “I don’t regret anything with Kylo. I don’t regret going off to Naboo with him, but I did miss you, I missed you so much, and I guess a part of me is always going to wonder how things would have worked out if he didn’t take me away, and a part of me is always going to want, well, _that_.” You shake your head from side to side. “I’m sorry, it just, I don’t know, none of it feels fair to you.”

               “Don’t be sorry,” Poe insists. “I feel the same way; you know I do. I’ve played it back a thousand times in my head what I could have done differently, and I can tell myself that none of that matters now, but it doesn’t exactly help, does it?”

               “No,” you agree. “But that’s life, right? People are always going to wonder how certain things could have played out. I mean, what if Kylo had agreed with Snoke and started to train me to be a dark Jedi on the Starkiller Base? What if he hadn’t sent me away, and I died when you blew up the Starkiller Base?” Poe makes a face, and you can’t help but shrug. “I know it’s not something I want to think about either, but that’s life, right? If Kylo cared about me a little more or a little less, he may never have sent me away and then I wouldn’t have met you.”

               “He cares about you,” Poe admits. “I mean, I knew he _cared_ before, but he asked me to watch over you no matter what happened, and that was something I would never have expected him to say.” You look down, unable to conceal the color on your cheeks now. “He made me give my word, he made me _promise_ , and we both know how seriously you take your promises.”

               You can’t help but laugh at that as you shake your head. “You promised?” you ask, your voice lightly teasing. “Well, now I know you’re too good for me.”

               “Nah,” Poe replies good-naturedly. “I’m just trying to protect the people I care about.” He turns to you as he raises an eyebrow. “You know what that’s like?”

               A myriad of emotions cross your face as you struggle to get it under control. “If we play pretend for a second,” you say slowly. “And pretend that the Resistance accepted me again, and Kylo… _left_ but I was somehow able to move on from it, would we have a future together, do you think?” Poe hesitates for a moment, and you quickly continue. “I mean, I can’t have kids now, and if that’s something you want…” You let your voice trail off. “For the record, I think you’d make a good dad.”

               “You’re still really hung up on that, huh?” Poe asks, and you just shake your head.

               “I cause my own problems,” you say, the self-defeat evident in your voice. “I deserve it. Sometimes you make mistakes that you wish you could take back, but there’s no way to make things right no matter how sorry you are. Things just, I don’t know, things just don’t work like that.”

               “I know,” Poe says quietly as he kisses your temple. “And for the record, I don’t have an answer to your question. I try not to think out that far. We’re here in the now, and I want to live in the now. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, and we can’t control it, so it’s not worth thinking about it until it comes, right?”

               In that moment, you were reminded, and not for the first time, that you weren’t sure whether you wanted to be _with_ Poe or _be_ Poe, but deep down you knew the answer was both. You wanted to be with him, because your affection for him had been built on admiration that he had the skills that you lacked, the advice he gave that honestly could have probably made your life a heck of a lot better if you had heeded his words. You yourself had tried to control the future, tried to manipulate it to your every whim, but Poe simply sat back and let the future come to his doorstep before he chose to step outside, and that was exactly what you wanted to do. You had no idea how to go about and start doing it, but being around Poe seemed to be as good a way to start as any.

               Poe puts his arm around you and you snuggle into him, remembering how he had once told you that communication was the key to everything. “I like this,” you tell him. “I like sleeping with you. I think I do better sleeping with someone than alone.”

               “You’re certainly quieter,” Poe remarks, and you can’t help but laugh as you reach up to kiss his cheek. Poe turns his head towards you at the last second, and you kiss the corners of his lips, letting your lower lip gently graze the corner of his cheek before you settle back into his shoulder and wrap an arm around his middle, holding him to you.

               You liked this. This felt good, this felt right. You didn’t need sex, or the familiar release that Kylo gave you, no, right now you just needed to be cuddled and comforted. You needed to talk to someone and be heard. Right now Kylo was going through enough of his own, and while you knew he would support you when you wanted to talk, you couldn’t help but feel like you couldn’t be honest with him. He wanted to know that you would be okay if something did happen to him, that you would be safe and you would take care of yourself, and you didn’t know how to express that you wouldn’t be without concerning him and take his focus off of his impending trial.

               Not to mention, you had always communicated with Kylo inside of each other’s heads, and now that the Force bond was back you could do that again, but a part of you needed to actually _talk_ to someone, to vocalize your concerns to them, to force you to be accountable for how you felt, and Poe was definitely going to be accountable for you. He had to be. He didn’t have a choice, although it comforted you a little to know that he had already made his. He wanted to look out for you. This wasn’t solely a role that the Resistance had thrust upon him, it was one that he had apparently embraced.

               And as he embraced you, you couldn’t deny that it felt warm, and comfortable, and familiar. You liked it. You liked the way he cuddled you, and although you tried to tell yourself that you shouldn’t, that you shouldn’t enjoy this, because the Resistance hated you and Kylo was locked up and was about to be sentenced to death and you were a terrible person, something about being curled up in Poe’s arms and listening to the steady sound of his heartbeat made that all go away, at least for a while. It made you feel _better_ , and even though you couldn’t deny that you felt guilty, you had to take solace where you could find it if you were ever going to start to heal. A part of you felt that you shouldn’t get better, that you should suffer for what you had done, but you couldn’t go on that way. You had to be strong now, and strong meant that you had to force yourself to heal even in spite of yourself. Now you weren’t fighting Snoke anymore, you were fighting a much harder battle, one against yourself, and you would need to rely on people around you if this was a struggle you planned to survive.

               You weren’t sure if you could, but you were ready to try. You weren’t sure what Luke had meant at the time, but now you felt as though you were finally starting to understand what Luke had said about the struggle between the light side and the dark taking over your life. A part of you wanted your life to be better, as good as it could be, but there was another part of you that told you that you didn’t deserve it, that you didn’t deserve to be happy, that you didn’t deserve anything. You weren’t sure how to reconcile those two parts of yourself, but you supposed you would have to.

               It was a fight that would either last the rest of your life, or would take it. You wanted to tell yourself that you would win, that you would be fine, but you just couldn’t be sure.

               “You’re here for me, right?” you ask quietly, just needing the smallest bit of reassurance that you knew Poe would provide.

               “Of course,” he responds immediately as he kisses your temple and rubs your shoulder reassuringly. “Everything will be okay. Whatever you need, I’m here for you.”

               You can’t help but smile and let your eyes slip closed as you snuggle into his chest, letting sleepiness take hold once more. “Because you’re a good person?”

               Poe lets out a snort of good of humor as he reaches down to kiss your temple again.

               “Something like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Krae may or may not be in the hospital again so I'm updating the chapter again. We know some people really do not like Poe but I have read the story and I have seen the ending and her and Kylo do get their happy ending but it can only happen with Poe kinda? I can't say more but it's really good and it all makes sense and the epilogue has a really big twist that goes back to A Flare in the Dark that I never saw coming but it makes so much sense. Just trust her. She knows what she is doing. I don't know if I should do this but here is an excerpt for next chapter to help you feel better:
> 
> _You wipe your fingertips across your palms, not at all surprised when they come away slick with sweat. You focus your gaze dead ahead, your words low in your throat. “I’m going to kill you.”_
> 
> _“No you’re not,” Poe replies, although his voice betrays him, sounding just a little bit more troubled than he probably intended. “Just relax, okay? Just breathe.”_
> 
> _“No, I’m going to do it,” you insist. “I’m going to kill you, and then myself, and then probably everyone on this base when I destroy this hangar and send it collapsing down around us.”_
> 
> _“You’re not going to do that,” Poe says with a firm shake of his head. “You know I’m not going to let that happen.”_
> 
> _“Then it’ll be your fault if I do,” you scoff. “I just want you to remember that before you die. That this was your fault.”_


	54. Chapter 54

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 1/2 
> 
> Hi my name is Tara and I am taking over posting for now. I wish I did not have to tell you but Krae is in bad shape. What happened is she was getting sick and we thought it was from resin fumes (remember that she was born with no smell so can't smell them tho she is good at wearing her mask when making her bb-8) but she kept getting sick and it turns out it was much worse. Also she told you in A Candle in the Night that she hurt her neck in parkour incident a few years ago? It was very bad and she had partial paralysis and couldn't lift hands over her head or sit up. She was told she couldn't run or sign or fight anymore but she had lots of physical therapy and worked really hard and she could again but now it happened again and last night something bad happened and doctors said it was very close. I didn't see her at all on yesterday because of testing but she seemed clearer today and said I can post and keep to schedule so I will do! Chapter 62 is very big so she will be back for that but she needs a lot of time to recover.

               You wipe your fingertips across your palms, not at all surprised when they come away slick with sweat. You focus your gaze dead ahead, your words low in your throat. “I’m going to kill you.”

               “No you’re not,” Poe replies, although his voice betrays him, sounding just a little bit more troubled than he probably intended. “Just relax, okay? Just breathe.”

               “No, I’m going to do it,” you insist as you square your jaw. “I’m going to kill you, and then myself, and then probably everyone on this base when I destroy this hangar and send it collapsing down around us.”

               “You’re not going to do that,” Poe says with a firm shake of his head. “You know I’m not going to let that happen.”

               “Then it’ll be your fault if I do,” you scoff as you cross your arms over your chest. “I just want you to remember that before you die. That this was your fault.”

               “ _Moonstaff_ -“

               You cut him off with an abrupt little laugh. How dare he call you Moonstaff when your blood was practically itching in your veins? “You’re only making this worse on yourself.”

               “How so?”

               “Because we’re going to crash, and die, and-“

               “We haven’t even made it out of the hangar yet,” Poe says with a light chuckle, and you drop back into your chair with a groan, letting your hands drop off the controls in front of you. Poe had gone to great lengths to get you clearance to fly, even if it was just around the atmosphere of D’Qar, just in case you decided to try anything. You didn’t know what they expected you to _try_ , exactly, considering that Kylo and your son were both still on base, and even if you did kidnap Poe, where would you go with him? No, Poe knew implicitly that he had nothing to fear from you, and he took the extra step of managing to convince the Resistance that your old routine would be beneficial for you, helping you feel more welcomed on base again. You would have pilot training with Poe in the morning, help Finn with his new obstacle course that he had built in the afternoon, and then meditation with Rey afterwards, just like you had before. You were honestly a bit afraid of falling into your old schedule again and what that would mean, but you tried to follow the advice Poe gave you and take things once step at a time, and right now, that meant remembering how to fly this shuttle out of the Resistance’s upgraded hangar.

               “Have you really forgotten everything you learned?” Poe asks, and you can feel your jaw go slack as you study the knobs and buttons all around you. It wasn’t as though you had _completely_ forgotten everything you learned, a part of you knew what to do, but with Poe deciding to sit back and watch you do everything yourself, you couldn’t help but be nervous about the situation. You wanted to make a good first, well, second impression on the Resistance and not make them regret giving you this opportunity.

               In other words, you didn’t want to completely obliterate this shuttle or their hangar on takeoff.

               “If you could talk me through it, just this once, it would be most appreciated,” you tell him quietly as he taps something on the console, flipping through the screens. He presses a red button on one of the panels, and all around you the panels on the shuttle come to life. You can tell what most of the panels do, though their layout is unfamiliar to you, and the absence of a few key systems is immediately obvious. Apparently, this shuttle had no life support systems, no shield generator, no hyperdrive, and no weapons.

               “So I guess we’re not going to leave the atmosphere, then?” you ask sarcastically as you point to a sheet of metal where the life support monitor would normally have been placed.

               To his credit, Poe just laughs as he shakes his head, but he seems almost a bit ashamed by this, as if he was embarrassed that you had to fly a crippled ship. “It took a lot of convincing on my part just for Command to even allow you to fly this trainer. Eventually even Colonel Garruk had to stop making excuses after I dug up your old flight logs and disproved his _concerns_ that you didn’t have the skills to fly it.” You give Poe an uneasy look, concerned that he was once again sticking his neck out too far for you, and he seems to sense your concerns. “Anyway, Command politics are a story for another day, today is for you to forget about all of this, not obsess about it all over again.”

               “Easier said than done,” you mutter under your breath, but you quickly shake your head as you take Poe’s advice and try not to dwell on it. “Okay, so first question about this shuttle, then. Who made it? I don’t recognize any designs, there’s a bunch of unlabeled switches and it doesn’t look like any of the old Sienar stuff from when I was flying here last, so I want to be sure I’m not going to break something if I try to employ the usual startup sequence.”

               “Well, nothing should break,” Poe offers, but you don’t like the way the word _should_ passes through his lips. “It’s one of the FreiTek S-9 Hoppers the Republic is supplying for student training. The guy who designed it once worked for Sienar, so everything works the same underneath, though the panels can be a bit, uh, frustrating. He really must have known _someone_ , because these designs-“ He shakes his head, as if it wasn’t worth getting into. “Do you remember where the reactor start button was on the other ships?”

               “Uh, usually right here?” you ask as you point to another blank sheet of metal.

               “Exactly,” Poe agrees as he nods his head forward in quick agreement. “Normally this is where I’d pull out the manual and have you look it up, but that thing was a mess. Captain Kun and I had to sit down and go over it for three weeks and rewrite it from scratch just so we could start training recruits with something readable. My proudest improvement to it…” He flips through the windows on the console until he reaches one titled _Startup Procedure Guide,_ with a large button labeled _Begin._ You press it, and a simplified picture of the cockpit appears with a large switch in the center of the console highlighted in yellow to confirm this. You look over at Poe for comfirmation before you slowly close it, waiting for him to stop you if you were doing something wrong. The switch finally closes, and there’s a loud hiss and a _thunk_ from underneath you as you hear the unmistakeable low hum of a Sienar reactor starting.

               “So, as you can see, frustrating doesn’t even begin to describe it, so that’s why we had to rewrite the guide,” Poe explains. “It’ll advance on its own whenever you’ve done what it says.” As you look back at the console, you can see that the screen has now changed, and two switches are now highlighted in yellow, for the forward and aft repulsor banks. You flip the switches, and as you do, the screen changes to large red letters in Aurebesh: _3: HOLD FOR STUDENT FLIGHT CLEARANCE._

               You turn to Poe and quirk an eyebrow as you wait for him to explain exactly what that meant. “Standard flight procedure we had to implement after one of our lieutenants shot out without clearance for the third time. I don’t believe you’ve met him yet, but that’s a story for another day. Now, it’s impossible to start the S-9 engines without central clearance, and since I’m the _Instructor_ on this flight, I have to do the whole briefing thing for clearance, so…” He picks up the center comlink and begins. “Hangar Control, Black Leader here.”

               “Go ahead, Black Leader.”

               “Control, _Raft Seven_ preflight checks have been completed satisfactory, and all indications conform to operational restrictions. As filed on training flight plan Aurek-three-five-two-eight-four, itinerary is as follows: departure via lift Echo-Four-Seven, proceeding to atmospheric maneuvers in grid three-two-seven, operating ceiling seven thousand meters, student pilot is Moonstaff, under instruction. Advise on return course.”

               “Black Leader, return course will be via Echo-Four-Seven with no time restrictions. Command has cleared your flight plan, and Blue Leader and Blue Two are on station for contingency escort.”

               Poe immediately makes a face, and your cheeks flush with embarrassment as you drop your gaze. The Resistance was making it more than clear that they had absolutely no trust in you, and while you could hardly blame them, you weren’t really ever going to get a chance to prove that you could be trusted if they kept constricting you every step of the way. “Control, escort is _not_ necessary, have Blue Leader and Two return to standby status.”

               “That’s a negative, Black Leader. Due to the latest report from Tracking, the base has been upgraded to alert level three and all Command staff are to be escorted at all times outside the base. Details to follow at tonight’s staff briefing.”

               Poe sighs with resignation, but you just stare determinedly at the floor as you try to think. Was it something you had done? Was it something Kylo did? Or Ani? No, if it had been, they most likely would have considered the threat controlled. If anything, this had to be coming from something that they witnessed _outside_ the planet’s atmosphere. Was Phasma planning on trying to break Kylo out again? Was she close by? If she was, then you really were going to have to figure out where your loyalties lied, but you knew implicitly that you wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. You would be the first one to break down that door and pull Kylo out of there, even if it meant you had to carry him to the hangar as he had once carried you.

               “Copy that, Control,” Poe says into the comlink, and you decide that this was hardly the time or place to think about hypothetical escape plans. If anything, though, the information about the new lifts in the hangar was certainly useful if you ever wanted to make a quick getaway. “Send them up, we’re departing once we have clearance.”

               “Roger, Black Leader, you’re cleared for departure. You may begin your taxi to lift Echo-Four-Seven.”

               The screen changes again, displaying _4: TAXI._ You look up and find the line for the lift, slowly edging the shuttle towards the gateway and stopping third in line behind something that looked Neimodian in construction. “So did Colonel what’s-his-name specifically pick this shuttle to belittle me? I know how to start a shuttle without all these interlocks, so what gives?”

               “I know,” Poe agrees with a small sigh. “I hate it too, but they insisted any flight plan would only be approved in this shuttle since it can be overridden from Central should any _unauthorized_ maneuvers occur.”

               “Oh,” you reply, your voice bright yet sarcastic after being weighed down by restriction after restriction. “I get it. None of you trust me. Kylo’s locked in a physical cage, and I’m locked in a procedural one.” Poe looks like he’s about to say something to refute this, but you just shake your head. “As long as these restraints aren’t being placed on Ani, I can live with it.”

               “They’re not,” Poe tells you firmly, and you just nod your head. You didn’t want to argue with Poe about the limitations that were being placed upon you on base and whether or not they were warranted, and so you quickly turned the conversation back towards the shuttle. “So the last time I took a ship out of here, I thought we were supposed to start the engines _before_ taxiing for takeoff. What changed?”

               “Well, two things, mainly,” Poe explains, and if you’re not mistaken, he’s a bit relieved that you’ve steered the topic of the conversation back into neutral grounds. “First, with the increased hangar traffic, there’s lines to leave now, since we can only keep track of so many at a time, and I don’t think you’d want Mak up here to roast us by using his engines to move, would you?” You shake your head from side to side, humoring him as if this was a serious question, and Poe can’t help but grin. “Exactly. And second, with an underground hangar like this, if everyone used high power repulsors and engines for their departure like before, the air would get very toxic very quickly, so we installed the lifts for final startup outside to keep venting to a minimum.”

               Ahead, the egg-like Neimodian ship coasts forward into the lift, then rises out of sight. Over the comlink, Control speaks again. “Black Leader, Moonstaff, hold for automatic lift sequence. Manual controls will be briefly inoperative.” In front of you, the console screen changes again. _5: AUTOMATIC ASCENT._

               As the shuttle creeps forward into the lift and begins its slow rise to the surface, you look over at Poe. “Please tell me I’m actually going to get to fly this thing instead of going on the Grand Tour of D’Qar courtesy of Central Command.” You wanted to actually get to _fly_ the shuttle, not just sit tight while Control programmed the shuttle to fly you through the atmosphere like this was some sort of ride in a festival attraction.

               Poe just laughs as he shakes his head. “Don’t worry, I have much more important things to do than be your tour guide, and Central knows better than to waste my time.” It pleased you a bit that Poe didn’t seem to like these restrictions anymore than you did, but you supposed he knew that he could trust you. After all, where were you really going to go? Kylo and Ani were both still on base, and aside from kidnapping Poe and trying to play a hostage exchange, you knew it would never work. Luke and Rey would easily overpower you, and that would be that.

               The stone tube of the lift quickly gives way to a large plateau overlooking D’Qar’s verdant scenery outside the cockpit windows, but a steady beeping on the console interrupts the moment. On the console, the screen has changed to _6: Main Engine Start,_ highlighting the reactor control lever. You roll your eyes, frustrated with this system’s inadequate design, but there’s not much else you can really do as you rack the lever all the way. As you do so, you’re immediately greeted by the hum of the reactor winding up to its usual high-power whine, only this time, it doesn’t cut out like before. Looking over at Poe, he seems confused at your discomfort, showing no sign of noticing the piercing whine of the reactor. He says something, and while you can see his lips moving, all you can hear is the constant whine. In desperation, you try signing to him in Tortuarune, hoping he still remembered at least enough to understand you.

               You point downwards twice with both hands, indicating the ship that you were on, before you point to your ear and then make the sign for _can’t_ by placing your two index fingers out in front of you and striking one down against the other before pointing to your ear again. _I can’t hear you over the reactor._

               He raises an eyebrow, then starts to say something again before he catches himself, realizing that talking louder was not going to help your situation. He roughly tries to sign back, _Reactor sound none, hear sure?_ And while his grammar is spot-on, he’s fumbling with his hands and the signs are all jerky and awkward. His prosidy upsets you more than it should, as it takes considerable effort for you to discern what he’s saying, and in the back of your mind you’re hoping he’s using the signs that he means to use.

               Regardless, you dip your head forward, hoping that he was actually understanding the conversation that you were having and wasn’t interpreting something completely different. You put your hands over your ears to try to block out the whine, but it’s clearly not helping, and Poe hesitates for a moment, as if he’s thinking about something, before he opens a panel in the floor and pulls out two headsets that you reconized as the type TIE Fighter pilots used. He hands one to you, and as you put it on, he points to the comlink then makes the sign for _deaf_ , holding his index finger to his lips and than to his ear. You don’t understand what he’s trying to say, but Poe just shakes his head as he places a small box on the console with a jacket for you to plug in your headset, connected to a similar one on his own, and the sound of the reactor dies away instantly as soon as you do.

               “Better?”

               “Much,” you sigh as you collapse back in your seat. You weren’t sure if it was a problem with just this shuttle or all shuttles, but it was definitely something that you were going to have to be wary of in the future, one more thing to tack onto the list of things to remember, of ways that you were now physically limited, not by the Resistance but by your own failing body. “How did you get ahold of these? I haven’t seen one since I was on the _Propitiate_.”

               “Let’s just say there were a few things I managed to hide away from that shuttle,” Poe says with a cocky smirk. “Considering the circumstances, it’s definitely paid off, though my modification to the reactor acoustic damper shouldn’t have affected you like that.”

               “You’re asking the wrong person,” you say as you point to your ears again. “I don’t question it; I just live with it.”

               “Hearing damage can be unpredictable,” Poe agrees with a shrug of his shoulders, but that is not something you want to actively have a conversation about, and so you very quickly change the topic, again.

               “Anyway, talk to me about the modifications,” you say, eager to get your mind on something else. As far as distracting you from everything that was going on around the base, this was quickly beginning to have the opposite effect.

               “Last night, Colonel Garruk ordered a _safety inspection_ of the student shuttles, then specifically insisted that you use this one in particular,” Poe explains. “Just a little tweak of the reactor damper, and suddenly everything you say is washed out on any _nonstandard_ equiptment they installed last night, and we can just blame in on a reactor damper malfunction, since they happen all the time on these shuttles.”

               Your mouth opens and closes suddenly as you let what he just explained really sink in. You can feel a definite heat on your cheeks, and you’re not sure how to respond to this. The Resistance had bugged your shuttle, but what were they hoping to learn? What were they hoping you’d say that they couldn’t get by asking you directly? Was Poe supposed to be interrogating you yet again? And yet, Poe had tampered with it so that you could speak freely. Or was that a lie too? Maybe he just wanted you to _think_ that you could speak freely, to put you at ease in case he felt that you were wary of the shuttle being bugged as well. Was he honestly trying to trick you?

               Poe presses a button on his box and the sound of the reactor fades off completely, before he presses the comlink button and prepares for takeoff. “Control, Black Leader. _Raft Seven_ is prepared for takeoff.”

               “Hold a moment, Black Leader, we’re getting indications of intermittent comms on your end, is everything all right?”

               Poe just grins and shoots a wink in your direction as he presses the button on his box a few times, making the sound of the reactor cut in and out twice. “Control, I can hear you fine. If Colonel Garruk is still concerned, I’ll have Asher take a look at it when we get back; the EM shielding on the damper probably failed again. Flight capabilities are unaffected, and _Raft Seven_ is prepared for takeoff.”

_Asher? Was he in on this too? How much was going on that you weren’t aware of?_

               There’s a short pause, and for a moment you allow yourself to wonder if this had been totally rehearsed, if he had planned this whole dialogue with Control beforehand. You had no idea why you would think that Poe was out to betray you, nothing he ever said or did gave you any indication that he would, and so you quickly try to push these thoughts to the back of your mind. Paranoid did not suit you, and while you had the right to be wary, you had to admit that your thoughts were going just a bit overboard. Not that it wasn’t really warranted under the circumstances, but being suspicious of everyone that crossed your path would not serve you well now.

               “Understood, Black Leader, you’re cleared for takeoff. Manual control restored.”

               Poe quickly pulls out on the flight stick, raising the shuttle into the air, then pushes the engine lever to race away from the base, accompanied by the voice of a different controller. “Strike Operations Command, departing.” You shoot Poe an inquisitive look, but he just shrugs in response, focusing on getting the shuttle out to where you could fly before motioning for you to take control.

                “So how does it feel to be back in the air again?” Poe asks as you take over the manual controls.

               “I mean,” you reply with a shrug of your shoulders, making a visible attempt to keep your hands steady on the controls. “It’s not so bad.” Off to the left you can just make out the rocky cliff where you and Poe had watched the sunset on one of your last nights on D’Qar before you went off on your mission. You can see Poe glance at it too, and for just a moment the silence in the cabin turns almost uncomfortable. You want to ask him what things would have been like if you had never had left, but you can’t ask him that question when he doesn’t know the answer. You weren’t quite sure you wanted to hear it even if you did.

               “One thing at a time,” Poe reminds you, and you can’t help but laugh as you shake your head.

               “I know _that_ ,” you say pointedly with a quick shake of your head.

               “So, uh, we okay after last night?” Poe asks, and you can’t help but quirk one eyebrow in confusion. You had woken up that morning in his arms, you remember him planting a row of kisses down your neck in an attempt to wake you, and then you finally remembered him grabbing your ankle in both hands as he forcibly dragged you out of bed, forcing you to wake up as he pushed your flight suit into your arms and pushed your sleepy self all the way out towards the hangar.

               “Of course,” you reply casually. You’re silent for a moment as you think things over. “I’ll let you know if you’re overstepping your bounds, if that’s what you’re asking.”

               “I just want to make sure you’re okay,” Poe repeats, and you shrug your shoulders errantly as you look straight ahead of you again.

               “I don’t know,” you admit. “This is a pretty strange situation, as far as strange situations go.”

               “Would you believe I’ve had weirder?” Poe asks with a light chuckle, and you can’t help but shake your head. You knew Poe had had other romantic entanglements besides you, but that didn’t mean you cared to dwell on them. Maybe some people at the Resistance had more reason to hate you than others.  

               “Believe me when I say I don’t want to know,” you tell him, and Poe nods his head in understanding. “Like, it just seems weird to even try to talk about moving on when Kylo’s still here. He’s not gone yet, and there may be a chance-“

               Poe shoots you a concerned look, and you immediately shut your mouth as you shake your head from side to side. No, you knew what was going to happen whether you liked it or not…and you really didn’t like it. You wanted to save Kylo, but short of breaking him out of prison and ending up on the run again, there wasn’t much you could do.

               “He just wants to make sure you’re prepared,” Poe assures you. “He just wants to know you can handle it.”

               “I don’t think I can,” you admit openly. “I mean, I know that you and everyone else are going to want to be there for me, but I honestly don’t know what you can do. I care about Kylo more than anything, and knowing he’s just going to die without trying to do anything to stop it, I don’t know, if there was ever a time when I felt more unlike me, it’s now.”

               “Which is why you’re staying here and not going to the trial,” Poe says firmly, and you immediately open your mouth to protest. “Among other reasons. Believe it or not, you _are_ safe here. We can’t guarantee your safety if you land on a Republic world. Keep in mind that Deso still hates you-“

“Your fault.”

“-and we don’t want to take any chances that you’ll succumb to an _accident_ while you’re there. Even Leia is only going into low orbit around the planet so she can be close by.”

               “Why can’t I do that too?” you ask as you cross your arms over your chest, fully aware of how petulant you sound. “I don’t want to just _sit_ -“

               “Because,” Poe cuts you off with a sigh. “Because like it or not, you’re a lot more dangerous, and a lot more reckless as of late, and we don’t want to take any chances. We also don’t know if Ren is going to try to pull anything either, and we don’t need to risk a combined assault from the both of you.”

               “You think I’d attack you?” you ask as you quirk an eyebrow. “After everything that we talked about last night?”

               “Well, you’ve knocked me out once,” Poe says as he tilts his head to the side in consideration. “Actually, twice, if you count the first time we met.”

               “You still remember that?” you ask, dumbfounded. “Well, at least now we can be sure I definitely didn’t give you any brain damage. How long are you going to hold that against me?”

               “Possibly forever,” Poe replies good-naturedly, and you can’t help but shake your head.

               “So you want me to stay here,” you say, not liking the taste of the words off your tongue any more than you did when you had heard them. “And what about Ani? Have you given any thought as to whether he should accompany Kylo there?”

               “Ani wants to go,” Poe says, and you just nod your head. Of course Ani would want to go, but you can’t help but pick up on Poe’s sour tone.

               “You don’t think he should go,” you say, but it’s definitely more of a question than a statement.

               “No,” Poe tells you. “He’s still just a child, and I don’t want him being put in harm’s way.”

               “He’s been put in plenty of harm’s way lately,” you remind him. “And don’t you want him to be part of the Resistance? Isn’t that the literal definition of putting him in harm’s way?”

               “When he’s older,” Poe insists. “When he can make that choice for himself. Right now he’s still got a lot of training to do-“

               “What, with a blaster?” you ask dryly. “He’s been learning how to use a blaster since he was five. Plus he’s strong in the Force so he’s naturally a good shot. He’s going to be a good pilot, and he’s probably more powerful than any single person on the base right now, Rey and Luke excluded.”

               “And present company?” Poe asks, raising an eyebrow as he looks at you, but you just let out an indignant snort as you shake your head.

               “The difference is, Ani and I aren’t going to fight each other,” you tell him. “We’re on the same sides of this. We both want Kylo to escape-“

               “Tell me that and I’ll pretty much have to make sure he doesn’t come,” Poe mutters under his breath, and you can’t help but narrow your eyes at him.

               “Ani’s not going to do anything,” you tell him firmly. “Seriously, is that what you think he’d do? You think he’d be willing to blow a hole in the side of a transport to help Kylo escape and ruin the rest of his life? He’s seen how miserable being on the run can be, and you’ve seen how happy he is here. Why would he jeopardize that?”

               “I don’t know,” Poe admits openly. “Remember, I didn’t get to watch him grow up like you did. I’m just meeting him again, and he was being trained by Ren all that time. I have no idea what to really expect from him yet.”

               “And from me,” you say firmly, your tone still incensed. “I mean, seriously, I know Kylo tortured you, I am _not_ telling you to just ignore that and forget it ever happened, but he’s mellowed out a lot since then. He’s learned to control his anger-“

               “Because of you,” Poe says simply, and you purse your lips together.

               “And Ani,” you remind him. “There’s only a handful of times when Ani has ever seen Kylo lose his temper, and Ani has never done anything to display such violence, except making Hux punch himself in the face, once.” Poe laughs openly and loudly at this, and you have to smirk a bit yourself as you recall the memory. “And then even after that, he felt _really_ bad about it, like, that kid has more of a guilty conscience than I do and he hasn’t even done anything to deserve it.”

               “I’ll keep that in mind,” Poe says as he looks over at you. “I’m sorry, okay, if it sounded like I was doubting him. I’m not, but I need you to appreciate how delicate this situation is. I’m responsible for coordinating the security at this trial. We have to be on the lookout for an attack from a reformed First Order, from an undercover First Order sympathizer who may perhaps be in the Republic, from someone who actively wants to kill him out of revenge, or some other unknown threat that we haven’t considered yet.” Poe shakes his head. “Luke and Rey will be there to make sure Ren stays in check and to minimize any harm anyone tries to inflict on him, but I have to watch out for my men, and I can’t risk worrying about an escape attempt from inside the Resistance too.”

               “I understand,” you say softly. “Look, you have a job to do, and I get that, okay? I do. I want you to come back to base safe too, but I don’t want anything happening to Kylo.”

               “Well, if it makes you feel any better, Luke isn’t going to siphon his Force powers after all,” Poe tells you, and you can’t help but let out a sigh of relief. “He was severely weakened by what happened, and he’s strong enough to take me out, but he’s no match for Rey and Luke combined.”

               “So what you’re saying is, if they’re going to execute him, they’re at least going to let him go out with some dignity?” You snort in spite of yourself. “How nice of them.”

               “Ren has valuable information about the First Order,” Poe reminds you. “Just like you do, but his relationship with them has stretched on far longer and is far more public than yours was. Our objective here is to keep him alive, to convince the Republic Senate that we don’t need to take another life, that he can help us wipe the First Order from the galaxy once and for all so we can end this war and stop the fighting.” He looks over at you again. “And that’s what you want for Ani, isn’t it? To grow up in a life where he doesn’t have to worry about whose side he’s on?”

               “Obviously,” you reply as you roll your eyes. “But call me jaded, but I don’t see it happening. Not in our lifetime.”

               “Pessimistic,” Poe concludes with an idle shrug. “But I understand where you’re coming from. There’s always some new threat to be eliminated, some new group vying for power. The war may end but the fighting is never going to stop, not really. All we can do is try our best to eliminate it once and for all.”

               “And you want to convince the Republic that you can make Kylo fight on your side?” you ask as you arch an eyebrow. “I don’t know how well that’s going to go over.”

               “Well, the first step is convincing Ren to actually play ball,” Poe admits. “I may need your help on that. Ani’s been _trying_ to convince him to work with us, but so far he doesn’t seem all that inclined to agree.”

               “That’s just because that’s who he is,” you say with an uncomfortable shrug of your shoulders. “He’s uncomfortable around other people, and this whole trial thing is going to be a lot for him. Remember, a part of him was ready to sacrifice himself for us back on the _Propitiate_. Part of him honestly believes that he’d rather just give up than keep going, especially if it meant having the Force taken away or being locked up for the rest of his life.”

               “And how do you feel about that?” Poe asks, and you can’t help but grit your teeth as you stare straight ahead of you.

               “Honestly?” you ask calmly. “It makes me feel like tracking down each of the Senators and killing them off one by one so there’s no one left. You can’t have a trial if there’s no one there to vote on it, and then Kylo gets to stay here in at least relative safety where me and Ani can watch over him.”

               “Yeah,” Poe says quietly. “Yeah, that’s exactly why you’re not coming.”

               You were just about ready to return after that. You didn’t hold anything against Poe, and he didn’t hold anything against you, but it was clear you both had very different perspectives on how to handle this problem. Granted, the situations were a bit different, but that was to be expected considering where you were both coming from. It was fun to pretend, but the truth was obvious to both of you that if Kylo lived, you would go off with him, and if Kylo died, well, you’d never be able to forgive yourself for not doing more and would resign yourself to an isolation you doubted you would ever part from. Even still, that didn’t stop Poe from kissing you as you landed, or you from kissing him back. Like you had told him earlier, it was a strange situation that you didn’t see how Poe was benefiting from, but he seemed to want this, and you were tired of questioning things and decided to just take his advice of accepting the things that came your way. You didn’t know what would happen, couldn’t know, and you had to trust in the Force that everything would work itself out for the highest good.

               Even still, you needed a sense of stability in your life, you needed to feel safe, and you supposed Poe provided that for you. However, you would soon discover that safety had many different forms as you neared the blasting range that day. Poe had other things to attend to, but he told you to _trust your instincts_ before he tapped you on the side of your head with an outstretched index finger, leaving you thoroughly confused and a bit apprehensive about what Finn had in store for you. You knew that everyone on base was buzzing with word of the obstacle courses he’d invented, but you weren’t really sure what that meant for you. You had a taste of the obstacle courses Finn had created before, and you were pretty sure you still had a scar from the welt on the back of your neck to prove it.

               “Hey there,” Finn says, greeting you just inside the doors of the training room. It had changed a lot since you were there last, it looked bigger somehow, and more open; the shelves and stacks of boxes had been all but cleared away to make room for more training stations, and there were even more targets lining the back wall. Before, the blasting range had always seemed somewhat rudimentary compared to the facilities the First Order surely possessed, even though you had never actually seen it yourself, but this looked like a blasting range fit for a proper sized army.

               “You’ve been busy,” you say as you glance around the area, clearly impressed with what he had created. “Although all the boxes are gone now. And where’s Pete?”

               “You remember Pete,” Finn exclaims with a laugh, as if this was the funniest thing he had heard all day. “He’s actually back in the mechanic shop just off the hangar, he spends most of his time there now.”

               “Good to know,” you reply, a bit uncertainly. You weren’t sure what to _say_ to Finn, whether to apologize to him or what, but Finn doesn’t seem to notice your trepidation as he starts walking towards one corner of the room, and you follow along behind him.

               “So how are you adjusting to life on base?” Finn asks good-naturedly, as if you were simply returning from a lengthy sojourn. “Poe treating you okay?”

               “Oh, he’s-“ you hesitate, searching for the right words. “He’s been more than hospitable, considering the circumstances.”

               Finn’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise as he turns around to face you while he walks. “That,” he said pointedly. “Is a very good answer. Remember that.” Finn and Poe had always been the best of friends, considering how they met, and so it was no surprise to you that Finn knew about how things were going between you and Poe. That didn’t stop him, however, from subtly reminding you that other people didn’t know, that other people _couldn’t_ know, and to keep your cards close to your chest.

               “So how’ve you been?” you ask. “Besides busy.”

               “Never feels like I’m anything but,” Finn responds with good humor in his voice as he leads you through a door you hadn’t noticed before into a sort of secondary warehouse.

               “Yeah,” you say idly as you glance around at the familiar stacks of boxes all around you. “Yeah, I heard about your new obstacle course. That what you wanted to show me today?”

               “One of them,” Finn replies simply, and you can’t help but make a small noise in the back of your throat. _One of them?_ How many obstacle courses had he created? Where would he even have the space to build them?

               Finn leads you to a corner of the room where there are numerous consoles across the walls and a large, roomy chair in the middle. “Here, have a seat while I get this set up,” he says as he points to it while you gently lower yourself into it by the arm rests. It goes back a little ways so that you’re lying back at an incline, forcing your perspective up ahead to a point in the ceiling above you.

               You can hear a console click on and the typing of keys, but the positioning of the chair makes it seem almost impossible to turn around and see what he’s doing. “So, um, what’s the deal with this obstacle course?”

               “You’ll see,” Finn responds simply, and you can tell by his curt reply that he was busy doing something, and trying to consider what it was put your nerves on edge.

               “Poe, uh, Poe told me to trust my instincts,” you offer, hoping that even light, one-sided conversation would help to quell your shaking nerves.

               “Oh, man, I said no hints,” Finn exclaims, and you can’t help but laugh a little bit, comforted a bit to see his familiar, friendly demeanor return just as quickly as it had seemed to vanish. “Okay, now, I’m going to need you to sit absolutely still for this, okay?”

               “Okay,” you reply timidly, glancing from left to right nervously.

               “Do you trust me?” Finn asks, and you’re trying to figure out how to say _not really_ as politely as you can when suddenly you feel his one large hand along the side of your neck. Your first instinct tells you to sit up, but before you can even move, you feel the slender tip of a needle plunge into the side of your neck. You gasp on instinct, but don’t move as Finn pushes down on a syringe and then slowly extracts the needle.

               “I usually like to explain things first and tell you how I usually set this up,” Finn tells you as your head lulls backwards onto the headrest behind you. “But in your case I was told that I should just go ahead and start the procedure and answer any questions you have later.”

               “What did you do to me?” you mumble incoherently. Your words sounded slurred, even to your own ears, although you couldn’t tell if your voice actually came out distorted or if that was merely your perception.

               “Hmm,” Finn frowns, visibly troubled. “It should have taken effect by now. I may need to give you another dose, but-“

               Suddenly the world seems to roll backwards like a spinning globe, and the last thing you see are the overhead lights swinging as your vision fades to blackness.

* * *

 

               You glance all around you to find yourself standing in the middle of a room with stone walls and a dirt floor. There was nothing particularly extraordinary about this room; it wasn’t exceptionally large, or exceptionally tall, it was just an average looking room with a door in the center of one of the walls. Was this the way to the obstacle course? Was _this_ the obstacle course? Daunted, but with nowhere else to turn, you walk forward and let the door open for you, stepping out onto the other side where you’re greeted with another dirt floor and more stone walls. This seems to be more like a hallway, however, and you walk forward another few paces before you see that the halls have split in two, one going off to your right and one continuing straight ahead. The one off to the right looked like it curved immediately, and the one straight ahead looked like there was something there, and you decided to take a few steps forward in order to view it more closely.

Indeed, there was something, or rather, there was something by way of nothing. The floor opened up to reveal a bottomless pit, and you cast your eyes down into the swirling blackness that didn’t reveal a bottom. In fact, it was impossible to see how far the abyss went down, but it looked like there was some sort of a path that continued on across the gap. You glanced around to see if there was any easy way across, and in the dim lighting you spotted that some of the stones in the wall were impressed while others seemed to jut out, making a variety of stones that you supposed it was _possible_ to scale if you really wanted to.

        As you leaned closer to the wall to get a better look, your foot accidently nudged a small pile of rocks that seemed to be piled there. Were you supposed to do something with those? Curiously, you pick one of them up in your hand, weighing it as though its heaviness would help you determine its purpose. You pick another one up so you’re holding one small stone in your left hand and one in your right hand before you toss one of them into the abyss beneath you.

        You don’t hear anything.

        There’s no sound of it hitting some sort of bottom, which only led you to conclude that perhaps there was no bottom, and you were definitely not one who wanted to risk falling forever and ever in infinite blackness. Instead, you take a step back, making sure to pay careful to where the edge of the abyss was so you wouldn’t fall in, as you take another step back and chuck the stone forward as hard as you can. You can hear it skitter across the other side, and you were glad that at least that seemed to be a legitimate path there instead of an illusion.

But how to get there? You didn’t want to pick your way across the stones in case you slipped and fell, and so you decided to take the safe bet and turn back, heading down the alternate path that lead off to your right. It turned a corner almost immediately, but as you took a few steps forward through the gloom you carefully picked your way around a large log in the middle of the floor before you came face to face with another solid stone wall. This one seemed to be a definite dead end, and so you turned around, staring back at the log.

        _Did they expect you to drag it across…?_

You tilt your head into the side in consideration before you throw out one hand, watching the log levitate into the air. Slowly you begin to walk forward, keeping the log about two feet in front of you, and guide it carefully around the corner as you walk towards the abyss, positioning it over the pit so that the two ends look to have some leverage on either side.

        Still unsure, but at least slightly more confident that you were doing more or less what was required of you to pass this test, you hopped onto the end of the log and immediately jumped backwards as it rolled to the side. It wasn’t steady by any means, and you didn’t really want to risk what would happen should you fall into the pit. Instead, you quickly used the Force to hover yourself just so that your feet were even with the log as you took one quick hop across, pushing off the center with your toes as you bounced towards the opposite end. The log rolled again, but luckily you were close enough to the other side that you were able to jump again with more height, and twisted your body into a somersault before you landed deftly on the other side of the abyss as the log slipped backwards and tumbled down into the void.

        “Let’s hope I don’t need to come back this way,” you mutter under your breath before an ache in your abdomen calls your attention back to the throbbing wound that was still festering in your side. In all fairness, you probably made that test a lot harder than it had to be, but you didn’t know quite what to expect from this. When everyone had said _obstacle course_ , you had more or less expected what you had seen from Finn before. This was something on a whole different level.

        Regardless, you took a few steps forward until this hallway also came to an end, only this time there was another door directly in front of you. It opened as you approached, and you stepped inside what you could only describe as a large labyrinth. The walls stretched out in all directions in front of you, and straight ahead you could see that the path continued straight while branching off both to the left and to the right, sharp corners of stone dissecting the shape of the room into a series of sharp edges.

        “Okay,” you mutter to yourself glancing both to the right and to the left. “Where to go, where to go.” You glance behind you momentarily only to see that the door has vanished, replaced with a neat series of stones that gave no indication that a door was ever there to begin with, and you can’t help but let out a sharp breath. “Not cool, Finn. Not cool.” But there’s no reply and you take a few steps forward to the center of the maze, trying to decide which course to take. You go straight and take a left, slowly working yourself to the outside of the maze and decide to walk along the wall in order to reduce your chances of getting lost.

        As you walk, you can’t help but see messages carved into the stone, like, _Virginia was here_ or _Grabby sucks_. You had no idea who _Grabby_ was, but you ignored it as you continued walking, until you realized that you had passed that stone twice now. The center of the maze seemed to be just that, a middle, but there wasn’t anything special about it. The room wasn’t as big as it had looked at first glance, and there didn’t seem to be any doorway or trapdoor or any secret way out of the room, at least not one that you could see.

        You begin to pace the room at a bit more of a frantic pace now, concerned what would happen if you couldn’t figure this out. Were you on a timer? Would Finn just leave you there, wherever you were, to rot until you _did_ figure it out? You search the wall for clues, hoping beyond hope that someone might have written a hint on one of the stones that Finn either hadn’t noticed or had decided not to erase. You close your eyes and let out a deep breath as you start to walk towards one of the walls, hoping that the Force would not steer you wrong.

        _Trust the Force, trust the Force._ You walk with one hand in front of you, palm out, walking forward with your arm outstretched until you can feel it hit the cold, hard wall in front of you. You open your eyes and pull your hand away from the stone that you had touched only to see a few strange words written there in Aurebesh. _Use track scent._

        “What the fuck does that mean?” you ask yourself as you stare at the stone, tilting your head to the side as if waiting for the stone to speak to you. Track scent? What the hell was track scent? Was it something that one of the alien species used to communicate? To sense each other? Did they communicate based on smell, or-?

        _Oh._ The realization hit you suddenly, and you felt a stone drop in your stomach as you slumped yourself forwards, ignoring the groan in your abdomen. Duh. Of course. Fake wall, and there was probably something on the other side that gave away _which_ wall was fake, like a scent, encouraging whoever came through this maze to use _all_ of their senses, encouraging them to pick up on the little things in battle, like the sudden smell of gas, which could help save their life.

        But that didn’t exactly help you much right now. “I can’t smell anymore, Finn,” you say as you spread your arms and glance up at the ceiling, turning in a slow circle. “So, that’s kind of not fair.” You let your arms drop to your side, unable to hide your annoyance and your frustration. Instead of waiting for Finn to answer you, if he even could, you decide to do this _your_ way. Mentally, you walk along, using the Force to push at every stone in front of you, waiting to see which ones would give way. It probably would have been faster to use the Force, but you were annoyed now, the muscles in your upper arms twitching with aggravation at how miserably your body was failing you, and you went through each section of stone until there was an area where the stones finally gave way, revealing a short path beyond them that led straight to another door.

        “Exit?” you ask yourself hopefully, speaking aloud to try to quell the deafening pulse of silence in your ears before you head through the newly opening doorway. You’re immediately facing a wall as you go through the next doorway, forcing you to turn to your left, and as you walk forward you can see a break in the wall with a pathway leading to the left, and at the far end of the corridor, another pathway leading to the left. Remembering how the log served you well the last time, you decide to take the far corridor first, disappointed to see that it turned into an abrupt dead end.

        “Well, so much for that,” you mutter under your breath as you turn around and head down the middle isle. You walk forward for what seems like minutes before you hear a loud grunt, and you can tell by the puff of air that strikes your face that there’s something massive in front of you. Out of the gloom of the narrow corridor, something big suddenly looms into view, and you look up to see a giant Reek standing at the ready in front of you. It’s over two meters tall, easily, and your mouth opens and closes as you stare straight ahead at the giant husks on either side of his snout before your eyes drift up to the large horn atop its head, at the pinnacle of its scaled, bumpy back.

        That horn looks sharp enough to cut clean through you, and the ache in your abdomen itches in response, as if expecting the blow before it even came. The creature grunts again as it bows its head towards you, the horn so close to you that you could see the scratches and striations in its surface, and you immediately reach down for your lightsaber before you realize that you had left it in Poe’s room, underneath his pillow. He didn’t want you walking around base with it, and although you didn’t want to leave it behind, you had accepted, for no other reason than you didn’t want Poe to get in trouble for it, when there was probably something else you would accidently do that he would have to cover for as well. You didn’t know why you had immediately assumed that you were going to do something wrong that the Resistance wouldn’t like, but that did seem to be your luck lately.

        You thought you were supposed to be lucky, considering your relationship with the Force, but that didn’t explain why you were in a very narrow corridor, face to face with a Reek that was now showing you its horn as if it was showing you the instrument he was going to use to dissect your torso from the rest of your body. “Easy,” you say gently, but the Reek lets out another grunt and as he starts to move forward, you don’t wait. You take off back down the corridor that you came from, as fast as you can, and immediately you can hear the Reek charging from behind you. Arms pumping at your sides, core aching, you run back into the dead end before you make a right, hoping that you could lose the Reek in the maze and circle back around to get past him.

        Unfortunately for you, the door has vanished, yet again. “ _Fuck!_ ” you cry out harshly, and you can hear the Reek lumbering down the corridor after you. “Okay,” you say loudly. “Okay, um, think, think…” You remembered how you had used the Force in order to mind trick the guard back on the _Resolute_ into doing what you wanted, could the same be said for an animal?

        You can hear it getting closer, and you put your back up against the wall, palms out in front of you as you close your eyes. _You don’t want to hurt me_ , you tell the creature, not sure if Reeks could even understand Basic. _You don’t want to hurt me, you don’t want to hurt me, you don’t want to_ kill me, _you-_

Suddenly you can feel a wet grunt right in your face, and you cautiously peek open one eye to see it standing in front of you, its head dipped low again. “Hey there, fella,” you say gently, reaching out to stroke its snout, and it buckles down on its front legs as you move your hand up and down along its bumpy flesh. It seems to enjoy it, and you can’t help but let a smile tug at the corners of your mouth as you pet and caress its rough hide. “There ya go, you’re not a mean old fella after all, are you? You’re just a big misunderstood- _woah_.”

        Without warning, it moves its horn up towards you in a swooping motion, and before you can react you’ve jumped up and onto its back. You’re not quite sure how the Reek would like you in this position, but it seems to know what it’s doing as it backs down the corridor, too big to turn around, so that it can head back the way it came. You just ride along on its back, lying low to avoid being crushed by the low ceiling, as the Reek continues down the long tunnel until it comes to the stop in the middle of an open room. It kneels down on its front legs to let you off, and you gingerly pat its head one more time before you turn your attention to the door in front of you.

        A part of you knew you shouldn’t turn your back on a Reek, but you could hear it bumbling back down the corridor behind you, and you supposed that was the point of this exercise: that not all foreign scary-looking creatures wanted to kill you. Some definitely could, and would, given the chance, and you were secretly glad that Finn had put a Reek in this exercise with you instead of something like a Nexu. Horns you could deal with, but sharp claws? A mouthful of sharper teeth? That was not something you wanted to have to experience, especially when you doubted that Nexus could be reasoned with as easily. At least Reeks were mostly herbivores, but a Nexu would just see you as _un repas_.

        As you walk through the final door, all you can see in front of you is a room no bigger than a closet, with a panel against the far wall with an outline for your hand print. You walk up to it slowly, almost waiting for some sort of trap to reveal itself, before you stretch your arm forward and place your right hand in the outline on the panel. There’s a small red light on the bottom right corner that suddenly flashes yellow, then green, and immediately you can feel something kick into life behind the panel. You’re confused, but you don’t pull your hand away as the panel starts to move slightly, and the vibrations underneath your hand feel almost pleasant before it suddenly gives off a charge of voltage. You try to pull your hand away but it seems to be pinned in place by some unknown force, and you grit your teeth as you can feel exposed nerve endings in your brain starting to implode, as if it was crushing your brain from the outside in. You squeeze your eyes shut as you try to will away the pain when it stops almost as suddenly as it had started.

        You open your eyes with a gasp to see Finn standing in front of you, smiling, but with his hands raised in surrender as if he wasn’t sure how you were going to react. “What the fuck was that?” you demand as you wipe the corner of your mouth, embarrassed with yourself when it comes away slick with a large spot of drool. “What was that for?”

        “I didn’t explain everything beforehand,” Finn admits. “But I mean, part of that was done on purpose too, to see if you’d be able to navigate your way through it without knowing what you were supposed to do. I probably should have mentioned that the panel was going to give you a bit of a shock to take you out of it. We, uh, we haven’t worked out all the kinks yet to make the transition smoother, but we’re working on it.” He lowers his arms by his sides. “Remember, you only _think_ you’re being electrocuted. Anything in there isn’t real. Your brain can feel it, but it’s not happening to your actual body.”

        “I don’t even know what to say to that,” you admit, putting your hand to your temple as you shake your head, trying to come back to yourself.

        “Oh, um, here.” Finn walks over to the console and hands you a purple cup filled with some kind of thick pink fluid that looks almost like nectar. “Drink up, it’ll make you feel better.”

        “Actually?” you ask suspiciously, but down it anyway. You weren’t quite sure why, but Finn was one of those people you just trusted implicitly not to poison you when you least suspected it. In fact, there were only a handful of people you could say that for with any real certainty, and you at least had enough sense to admit that that bothered you at least just a bit. You gulp down the sweet concoction and strangely enough, you feel better almost immediately, more awake, more alert, as if he had just shot a syringe of caf straight into your bloodstream.

        “Better?” Finn asks as you hand him back the empty cup.

        “Better,” you confirm with a quick nod of your head. “So when I kept hearing _obstacle course_ , I pictured a lot more running and jumping and _action_ , and less…that.”

        “Oh, there’s plenty more where that came from,” Finn assures you. “I know you were injured pretty bad, so I wanted to keep things light for you and introduce you to one of the beginner levels so you could get a sense for how the whole thing worked.”

        “Yeah, that would have been nice to know beforehand,” you tell him. “But so like, explain this to me. What exactly happened in there? Is this a simulation that you’re using with soldiers to help them think on their feet?”

        “Exactly that,” Finn replies with a quick nod. “We’ve basically invented a simulator to help soldiers develop their critical thinking skills before they step foot on the ground. We had these all the time at the First Order, but it took some time to get the tools to help build the technology here.”

        “That’s cool,” you tell him, because it is. It was cool, and it was impressive, and you were honestly a bit overwhelmed by the potential of what he had created. “So are there different levels for different things? Active combat simulations? Aerial battle simulations?”

        “Yes and yes,” Finn replies with a grin. “I gave you one of the basic courses, learning how to use your surroundings to your advantage, using your senses to help you navigate, and realizing that not every creature in the galaxy is out to kill you, which is important for troops that haven’t really had much experience with the galaxy beyond their home planets.”

               “That actually seems insanely useful,” you say, and Finn nods his head forward in quick agreement.

“The more advanced ones are a bit harder to program, and that’s not exactly my area, but we help design new simulations all the time. Rey even programmed a bunch with her lightsaber, so you can duel with her in real life or in practice.”

        “Oh yeah?” you ask, unable to help yourself as you grin widely. “Did you try dueling with her? In the simulation, I mean?”

        “She cut off my _hand_ ,” Finn wails dramatically, and you can’t help but laugh at this. “In the simulation, your brain still thinks it’s happening to you, so you can still feel pain, and I don’t think I need to tell you that it _hurt_.”

        “Yeah,” you echo, suddenly remembering how you had cut off Hux’s hand in the quick moment before you had beheaded him. Or Snoke’s hand. You weren’t quite sure how to separate the two in your head, although it wasn’t really something you wanted to dwell on. Finn hesitates for a brief moment as he sees the look on your face, trying to figure out how to best respond to it.

        “Uh, we have these probes,” he offers, pulling a small plastic circle from out of the sides of one of the chairs that you hadn’t noticed previously. “It sounds invasive, but it basically lets me see and hear everything you do on the monitors, so that the generals and the like can watch the simulations back later and see how certain people perform under specific stressors.”

        “Huh,” you say, because you’re still too affected by your thoughts of Hux and Snoke to form a much more coherent thought at the moment.

        “I heard what you said in the second room,” Finn offers. “Is it really true? Can you really not smell? I mean, I know your hearing-“

        “Hearing’s shot but passable, smell is gone, taste is so-so,” you reply immediately, as if you were simply reciting a line from a well-rehearsed speech. “Was there something in there that I was supposed to smell?”

        “Yeah,” Finn says quickly. “Yeah, some of the walls had traps behind them. You were supposed to pick the wall that smelled like fresh air.”

        “Oh,” you say quietly. To be honest, you couldn’t quite remember what fresh air was supposed to even smell like. You couldn’t picture it in your head, couldn’t fathom it, and the thought depresses you more than anything.

        “You just started smashing down random walls,” Finn teases. “If you picked the right door, you would have just come right out of the simulation. There’s different situations depending on what wall you knock down, and to be honest, you’re lucky you got the Reek.”

        “Good to know,” you reply, but your eyes are trained on a spot of floor by Finn’s feet. _Snoke did this to you. Snoke destroyed you. Snoke made you weak. He-_

“Do you want to see the others?” Finn offers, but you just shake your head glumly from side to side. Suddenly, you didn’t want to be here, with anyone. You wanted to be _alone_ , more than anything you’ve ever wanted in your entire life, although you couldn’t tell if the feeling was actually coming from you. It felt distant in a way that was hard to describe, and you momentarily wondered if it was actually coming from Kylo.

        “You want to know your time?” Finn asks, and you force your head up to look at him. “Ani and Rey both beat your time, but you did better than Poe at least.”

        “Really?” you ask, arching an eyebrow. That shouldn’t have been the thing that finally snapped you out of your gloom, but you couldn’t help yourself. “What tripped him up?”

        “He stopped to play fetch with the Reek,” Finn tells you, and you can’t help but laugh audibly as the mental picture comes into your head quite vividly. “I know I’m not supposed to ask this, but uh, you two, uh, you two doing okay?”

        “All things considered,” you reply with a shrug of your shoulders. “I mean, with Kylo here, things are weird, like really weird, but, uh, yeah.” You don’t really know how to phrase it any better than that, and to his credit, Finn seems to understand.

        “The Resistance has gotten a bit more official since the last time you were here,” he explains. “There’s a lot more hierarchy, a lot more of an attempt to step out from under the Republic’s shadow. A lot of that had to do with you, and Ren, but there was always the talk of what should happen should you return, and Poe was always fighting for you. You just, uh, you should know that.”

        “Wouldn’t have expected anything less of him,” you say with a brief nod. “But then again, I guess you all were, right?”

        “Yeah,” Finn says as he glances away, and there’s something about his tone that you don’t really like.

        “I don’t even want to know,” you murmur petulantly. “I know a lot of people hate me here, and honestly, if they want me to go, I’ll go, seriously, I have no problems with that, but-“

        “No one wants you to _go_ ,” Finn says quickly. “Remember, I was raised by the First Order. I’ve seen how they get under people’s skin and mess with their heads, first hand. I know you’re strong, but after so long, I don’t doubt that they could break you too. After Rey took out, well, thought she took out, Snoke, she was in a really bad place for a while, and it took a lot to snap her out of it. Luke said being around that much dark energy can really mess with a person, and seeing as how you were around Ren for _years-“_

        “Kylo had nothing to do with it,” you say, quickly, immediately, a flare of anger bubbling in your chest that you try your very best to suppress. “This was me, Finn, all me. These were my bad decisions, my bad choices, and maybe Snoke prompted me, maybe _Snoke_ messed with my head, but Kylo was the one who helped pull me back from it.” Finn opens his mouth to speak, but you just shake your head. “You don’t like him, and I get that. Believe me, I _really_ get that. He could have killed you and you shouldn’t forget or forgive anything he did to you, but he didn’t bring any of this on me or on Ani.”

        “He took you out of here,” Finn says quietly. “I don’t want to argue this with you, but if you had stayed-“

        “He wanted his family back,” you tell him firmly, immediately regretting how harsh your tone sounded. “Sorry, I just, the past is the past, right? Can’t change it, so there’s no point dwelling on what could have happened differently. It’s just there, it just _is_ , so-“

        “Yeah,” Finn agrees with a quick nod of his head. “Yeah, I get you. But, look, if you ever need to talk, about anything-“

        “I can count on you,” you say, forcing a smile to your face. “And thanks, I appreciate that. I mean, I do. I _really_ appreciate that. I don’t know how many friends I’ve got left right now, so I want to keep the few that I have close.”

        “It’ll get easier,” Finn offers, but you’re not sure how and he doesn’t seem eager to explain either. “You did good today, though. Once you heal up, we can start you on some of the tougher stuff.”

        “Exciting,” you tell him, trying to muster as much genuine excitement in your voice as you can manage. It’s not much, but Finn seems to understand as he extends a hand to help you out of the chair.

        “Rey’s looking forward to today,” he tells you. “How do you feel? Ready to get back to meditating again?”

        “Honestly?” you reply as you arch an eyebrow. “Yeah, I think I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Her notes:  
> -662 - “Just a little tweak of the reactor damper, and suddenly everything you say is washed out on any nonstandard equipment they installed last night, and we can just blame in on a reactor damper malfunction, since they happen all the time on these shuttles.”  
> (The use of the word nonstandard here is important, because over electronic equipment, it's tough to isolate through intervening background noise since it's all soft consonants and diphthongs. Recorder/recording, however, is easy to make out, since it has two distinct hard consonants and a long vowel. The reactor is still winding up at this point, so not everything is washed out, so later when Poe is questioned about it, he can mention that "damper failure is pretty standard for the equipment in these 'vote crates.' [I've got a whole manual on specific words that are prohibited over the PA circuit and engineering phones since they're full of indistinct soft consonants/diphthongs and easy to mistake for other words that mean the opposite; e.g. increase/decrease are substituted with raise/lower.])
> 
> My notes:  
> -I like this chapter alot but I really like Poe and the flying chapters too. This was supposed to be like a throwback to A Candle in the Night.   
> -Sorry for the tease last chapter, Krae still doesn't know I did that! Woops..  
> -I begged Krae to crossover with my favorite game ever so if Finn's thing seemed familiar that might be why although not a lot of people know that game. Still good tho!  
> -Sorry for any formatting problems. We had to take some from Google Docs and some from Word and the spacing got all wonky.
> 
> Working through the next chapter now and will post tomorrow or Saturday when I get done. Sorry for wait! 
> 
> Also, today is birthday of her friend Muzik_is_Lifex23 who started the Spotify playlist and is a good friend of Krae. Please wish her happy birthday! (She hopes you are having fun birthday celebration but if you are reading this check your phone her roommate sent you Facebook message from her but worried you did not get it!)


	55. Chapter 55

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2/2

        You didn’t need Finn to escort you down to the Green Room, but he insisted on doing so all the same. You weren’t sure if it was because you weren’t supposed to be walking around the base by yourself, but you didn’t know who had put that rule in place or who would actually enforce it. Anyone who wanted it enforced was probably too weak to stop you on their own, but then again, they were also probably the same people who doubted you and assumed you to be just as prone to violent fits as Kylo had once been. Not that you knew anyone from the upper echelons well, but Wedge Antilles seemed to like you, as did Admiral Ackbar. Still, you had been gone for years, and there were probably new generals and lieutenants that didn’t know you, who knew only what they had heard from the Republic, and only knew what you were capable of from the holo they had seen of your duel with Rey.

        Considering just how recently you had been afraid of your own self, you didn’t really hold it against them. They didn’t know what you were capable of, and it only made sense that they wanted to keep you on a short leash to see where your loyalties lay. If all they knew of you was that you had strong loyalties to Kylo Ren, were in the First Order, and could kill someone from across the room just by blinking, you’d be wary of trusting yourself too.

        “Here you go,” Finn says as you reach the door to the Green Room, and you nod your head forward as you bid him a quick word of thanks. “See you at dinner tonight, okay?”

        “Dinner?” you repeat stupidly, and Finn just laughs.

        “You haven’t been eating,” Finn offers, but you just shrug your shoulders. In truth, you hadn’t exactly been all that hungry lately, not with everything else that was going on. Besides that, you weren’t exactly eager to make your way down to the mess hall, remembering just how crowded it usually was. People did not like you here, and you preferred to hide away and make yourself as inconspicuous as possible. “Going to have to come out some time,” Finn says, as if he had been reading your thoughts, but you just shake your head. There were only four people, maybe five, who could do that, and you didn’t want to add to that list.

        “Well, I’m sure Rey’s going to drag me down there,” you say with a sigh, and Finn grins and claps you on the shoulder as he senses your resignation.

        “Don’t worry,” he tells you. “It’ll be just like old times.”

        A part of you was afraid to tell him that that was _exactly_ what you were afraid of.

        As he makes his way back down the hall, you push the door open and make your way into the Green Room. The warm, humid air was pleasant against your face, but now you were keenly aware that you weren’t smelling… _anything_ , not the lush foliage or the exotic flowers that took up the expanse of the room. You try to force a smile to your lips as you look down at Rey sitting on her familiar circle on the floor in the center of the room, but you know even without her saying anything that she can read your emotions from where she sat.

        “I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now,” she offers, but you just shake your head. Comforting platitudes weren’t really what you wanted to hear right now, or, ever, if you were being honest.

        “I hope you never have to,” you reply as you fumble down into a cross-legged position across from her, trying not to bend at the waist too much while you sat. “At least I think I can safely say that you’ll never be tempted by the dark side; you’re too good to go as far down as I went.”

        “I don’t know about that,” Rey says with a light chuckle. “Things got pretty dark for a while. Remember back on Tatooine? I swore, I almost thought I was going to really kill you.”

        “You wouldn’t have gone through with it,” you say with an idle shrug of your shoulders. “If Kylo was able to overcome Snoke’s programming to save my life, then you definitely would have been able to.”

        She shakes her head, and you can tell by the distant look in her eyes that she’s focusing on a far-off memory, but you’re not quite sure you want to see it. “I did plenty of things that I regret too,” Rey says as she finally looks back towards you. “Plenty of times when I didn’t feel quite like myself and I didn’t know how to fully control what I was going through or how to explain it to anyone, so I just kept pushing them all away.” She shakes her head from side to side. “But they were here to help me, Luke and everyone was able to get through to me. You, you were alone. I can’t imagine how difficult that was for you.”

        “I wasn’t alone,” you insist, although you know she doesn’t really mean anything by it. “Ani and Kylo were there with me. I know no one here likes him, but he saved me from Snoke, he really did. I knew something was wrong with me, but it’s not until he really pushed me to try to take control of myself that I actually tried to fight it.”

        “I know,” Rey says with a firm nod of her head. “No one can deny how important he is to you. Your bond was strong before, but the closer you two have gotten over the years, that bond has only grown stronger.”

        “We thought it broke though,” you remind her. “We both died, and I was always told that Force bonds were broken by death though, aren’t they?”

        “In some situations they might be,” Rey tells you tentatively, and you can’t help but arch an eyebrow in suspicion. “We don’t really know for sure, but we think it depends on the connection. For example, when you were here before, you wanted the connection to be broken, you wanted him out of your life, and with his death the Force bond would have been severed. But now things are different. You both died, but a bond still exists between you.” She can’t help but offer a smile. “Unfortunately, we don’t quite know all the specifics of it. We don’t generally tend to see a lot of bond mates dying and coming back in order to study this quite as extensively as we’d maybe like to.”

        You can’t help but snort as you shake your head. “I should apologize for that, by the way,” you offer, and Rey tilts her head to the side in confusion. “Well, when I woke up after seeing Kylo on the _Resolute,_ I attacked you-“

        “Stop,” Rey says, her voice firm and gentle. “You weren’t in control of yourself, and besides, I think we’ve both done much worse things since then, wouldn’t you agree?”

        You can’t help but let out a little laugh as you roll your eyes. “I helped the First Order build a superweapon that could have taken out this entire system,” you tell her. “What could you have possibly done that’s on that scale?”

        “I’d rather not talk about it,” Rey says without even blinking, and you just nod your head forward in quick acceptance.

        “Understood,” you reply. “So, let’s agree to leave the past in the past and move forward from there, right?”

        “Right,” Rey says with a new flicker of cheerfulness. “How have you been feeling lately?”

        “Stressed,” you reply immediately. “Like I’m being held underwater and I can’t catch my breath. I don’t know what to do about this, about any of this. Kylo’s being sent off to die, and while I know at least some people here are trying to prevent it, I know other people want him to die and it doesn’t make it _worse_ , he’s given a lot of people many reasons not to like him, but he seems to have almost given up on himself and I think that hurts me worst of all.”

        “He hasn’t given up,” Rey tells you with a quick shake of her head. “He’s just doubtful that the Republic is going to let him live. He still puts you and Ani above all else.” She can’t help but laugh. “I’m sure you can feel my hatred for him from here, but he was willing to give his life for you, and Poe, which I still don’t quite understand-“

        “Believe me, I don’t either,” you say firmly. “He’s practically pushing us together, and I still don’t understand that.”

        “I’m not sure either,” Rey admits. “You know him much, much better than I ever will, or even hope to, but I can only think he’s doing it so that you will turn around and choose him in the end.”

        “You think he’s toying with Poe’s feelings?” you ask incredulously. “Come on, like, I know he’s done some pretty awful stuff, but he wouldn’t do that, and he wouldn’t drag me into it. He knows how I feel about him-“

        “Isn’t that the point?” Rey asks, and you can’t help but sigh.

        “Okay, I’m not sure,” you admit. “And I hate that I’m not sure, but one thing I do know is Kylo, and I don’t think he’d do that. I think he’s completely given up on himself, and he wants me to give things with Poe a chance because he knows he’s not coming back and he wants to make sure I’m happy.”

        “That sounds-“ Rey hesitates as her eyebrows knit together in confusion, and you can’t help but laugh in agreement.

        “Not like something he would do?” you ask, and Rey nods her head forward rapidly, unable to disguise the disbelief that was written across her features. “Yeah, I know. I just-“ You bite your lip as you look down. “He really does feel guilty, about a lot of things. He knows he took me away from here, away from you and Finn and Poe, and I never took the amulet off. In fact, the very first night I woke up there, I was in hysterics because I wanted to come back to Poe.” Rey shoots you a sympathetic look as she reaches forward to put a hand on your knee, and you force a reassuring smile in her direction. “Anyway, he feels bad about it; he feels bad about what happened to me _because_ of it. He took Ani and me away from here, and there was a very real chance he could have died and Ani and I would have been lost to Snoke, just as he was. I think he sees this as a second chance for me to start over-“

        “And he’s hoping you won’t hold what happened against him?” Rey asks with a light smirk.

        “Something like that?” you ask as you spread your hands, rolling your shoulders upwards. “I don’t know, it just really seems like he thinks the Republic is going to put him down and he wants to make sure my life has some sort of foundation beforehand so he’s not too worried about me. Even when we were fleeing the _Propitiate,_ he told me to go back, not just to D’Qar, but with Poe, specifically. I think he wants to make sure someone’s looking out for me, and he knows Poe will do that, seeing as how he’s put a lot on the line to protect me before.”

        “That could make sense,” Rey says, tilting her head to the side. “Or is it possible that he’s going to try to escape and thinks it’s safer for you to stay here? I heard Poe say that they still haven’t been able to locate Captain Phasma. What if he wants you to stay so he can go back to the First Order?”

        “No,” you say immediately, fiercely, and Rey looks a bit taken aback by the firmness in your voice. “No way that would _ever_ happen. Kylo and the First Order exist in two separate spheres now. He doesn’t want to go back to them. He wants nothing to do with them. He just wants to live out a quiet life with me and Ani, I _know_ that.”

        “I’m sorry,” Rey says gently. “I don’t understand him-“

        “That’s because you don’t want to understand him,” you argue. “Not that I really blame you for it. He’s done terrible things to you, to Finn, to everyone here. I’ve spent the last five years with him, and he hasn’t changed, he’s just come back to himself, to the person that he was _without_ Snoke’s constant influence on him. He did _everything_ under Snoke’s orders, he was practically brainwashed by him, and I know he’s still an adult and he’s still responsible for his own choices as much as I am, but it’s not…it’s not fair. The same thing started to happen to me, and he took me away from it. If anything, it’s my fault. I couldn’t save him from it in time.”

        “This is in no way your fault,” Rey says firmly, leaning forward to impress upon you the full strength of her words. “What happened to him started before you ever met him. And if it means anything, I think you did save him from this, if he ever could be saved. Remember how easily he came with us back from his flagship?”

        “Yeah,” you say with a nod. “He came to kidnap me-“

        “-because he valued you and his son above his commitment to the First Order,” Rey finishes for you. “I don’t want to look into his thoughts, I don’t want to know how he thinks, but Luke told me that he harbors a lot of shame and guilt for what he’s done. You know I don’t like him, but he’s Leia’s son, and she wants to keep him alive no matter what the cost.” She settles back into her cross-legged position, putting her hands on her knees again. “So that’s what we’re going to try to do.”

        “Even you?” you ask, arching an eyebrow. “But you _hate_ him.”

        “But Leia took me in,” Rey tells you. “She took me in, she gave me a home here when I had nowhere else to go. If she wants me to help try to save the life of her son, I at least owe her that much. I know you see goodness in him, you both do, and if you can, it must mean it’s there. I’m too blinded by my own judgement of him. I’m trying to look past it, although I doubt I’ll be able to see him as anything more than just a monster.”

        “That’s how a lot of people see him,” you agree with a shrug. “I don’t know, that used to bother me a lot but after what I’ve done it doesn’t really faze me anymore.” You shake your head, as if to clear it. “So you’ve talked to Luke about this, then? Where does he stand? I mean, he went into exile because of what Kylo did, right?”

        “We’ve never discussed it,” Rey tells you. “But among his many crimes, he’s committed patricide, and to the Republic that is no venal sin. Besides the destruction of the Hosnian system and the number of villages he’s singlehandedly wiped off the map, he murdered Han Solo, and not in self-defense. Han Solo is still considered a war hero among the Republic, and that isn’t going to be overlooked, not to mention that I was there for that, both Finn and I were, we witnessed that, along with Chewie. Leia lost her husband and her son that day, and Luke lost his best friend. Even from Ahch-To, he was able to feel that loss.” She shakes her head sadly. “Ren has taken so much from him, so much from a lot of people, and _we_ know that Snoke played a large part in this, but the Republic doesn’t understand the Force like we do.”

        “I know,” you say softly. “And I mean, the destruction of the Hosnian system? That was all Hux’s idea, Hux’s plan, but Hux isn’t around anymore.”

        “And the Republic is looking for someone to blame,” Rey finishes for you, her eyes meeting your own to impress upon you how serious this was. “Leia used to be a Senator in the New Republic, and she _knows_ they want someone to take the blame for everything that’s happened since both Snoke and Hux are gone. They want the planets under their rule to feel safe again, and they want to see someone take responsibility for the atrocities that occurred. The only person they have is Ren.”

        “I want to go in his place,” you say softly. “Isn’t there some way to do that, some way to convince the Republic that this is my fault, to let Kylo go?”

        “They don’t know anything about you beyond that holo,” Rey repeats in her same soft tone. “They know who Ren is, though, and what he’s done. They’re not going to overlook that. Remember, he’s done terrible things, years before you even met him.” You just nod your head slowly, letting your eyes slip closed momentarily. “Please don’t do anything brash. Poe really did his best to guarantee that you were not implicated by the Republic in any way-“

        “So I keep hearing,” you mutter petulantly. “But I can’t help feeling like I don’t deserve it. I feel like-“ You hesitate for a moment, trying to find the right words. “I feel like this is a curse, for all that I’ve done, how selfish I’ve been. Now I get to watch Kylo die and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

        “You’re still here for a reason,” Rey reminds you. “You almost died yourself, but you came back. You can’t leave Ani alone. He needs his mother, and the Force is not done with you yet. There is more on your path; I know you may not be able to feel it now, but there is more for you to do yet. If you truly think that what you have done has been so wicked as to warrant reparations, then work to make amends. You are still here. You can still do that, it’s still a choice that’s available to you.”

        “But what about Kylo?” you ask her. “I’m ready to give the Resistance whatever intel about the First Order that they need, but that’s supposed to be Kylo’s bargaining chip. He can still do things for the Resistance, he can still _help_.”

        “I don’t know,” Rey replies with a quick shake of her head. “I’m not really involved in the planning of it, but talk to Poe. Maybe if you’re more involved it will help you feel better about things.”

        “I’m not so sure about that,” you say with an idle snort. “He seems to think it’s better if I stayed out of this. He’s not even going to let me go to the trial.”

        “For your own safety,” Rey says abruptly, so abruptly, that you quickly glance up to meet her eyes. “I’m not saying that everyone at the Republic is terrible, but there are people there that have made it clear that they _do_ intend to cause you harm.”

        “Okay, that’s vaguely scary,” you tell her, unsettled but not exactly afraid. “Besides the stuff I’ve done with the First Order that Poe told me they don’t even really know about, what else do they think I’ve done?”

        “I’m not sure,” Rey says with a shake of her head. “Poe would know, but he doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.”

        “Are these people, the ones that hate me, firmly situated in Deso’s camp?” you ask as you raise your eyebrows, and Rey lets out a small laugh that you quickly return. “Okay, well, that answers that question. And also means I don’t really have much to fear from them. They’re fanatics; they talk loudly enough, but when it comes right down to it, they’re not going to do anything.”

        “The Resistance is still taking their threats seriously,” Rey explains. “All the Republic knows is that your involvement with the First Order hasn’t been entirely excused, that you are doing things here for us in order to make amends.” She shifts nervously. “Some wanted to blame your involvement in the First Order on Ren, but that would only hurt his case-“

        “And it wouldn’t be true,” you remind her, not that you really imagined much truth would be heard in the walls of his tribunal chamber anyway. “I was the one who encouraged Kylo to get back into the First Order for our safety, and I was the one who stepped up to the plate and did everything Hux bade me to do, and then some.”

        “Because it was really Snoke,” Rey reminds you. “And we understand the power he had; it’s not something we could ever explain to the Republic.” You glance away, but Rey waits for you to look back at her before she continues speaking. “Right now, the Republic sees you as under Poe’s charge, and for the most part, they trust him. They trust _us_. If we tell them that you’re not a threat to the Resistance, they believe us, even though some of them may not be happy about it, we _know_ you. Even at your own trial, Sadie and Ladson convinced them that you had never and would never hurt anyone.” She can’t help but stifle a laugh. “They also reminded them that you were only drawn into this conflict because of the Resistance’s terrible handling of the situation on the Starkiller Base. As far as they see it, the Resistance owes you for everything.”

        You can’t help but let out a brief snort of laughter, and in the back of your mind you can almost picture Ladson telling them as much. “They really are too good to me,” you tell her. “I don’t deserve friends like them. They helped me out so much with Ani, and-“

        “And you saved their lives,” Rey counters, but you don’t want to hear it.

        “On the Starkiller Base,” you remind her. “Years ago. Back on Naboo, I was nothing short of terrible to them, Sadie, especially.”

        “They want to forget it ever happened,” Rey reminds you. “You’re back now, you’re back to being _you_ , and they want to put the rest of this behind them.”

        “I guess,” you relent. “Although, I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. I just don’t know where to go from here, I don’t know what to _do_ with myself now. It’s like the war’s almost over once the Resistance can crush the First Order, and then what will happen? How long will it be until some new evil takes hold?  How long until the fighting starts again? Will I be part of it? Will Ani be part of it? And if there is no fighting, if there is a time of peace, what will I do then?”

        “I don’t think there’s an easy answer to that question,” Rey admits. “And I think that’s something that we all are wondering as well. After the New Republic signed the Galactic Concordance with the Empire, I’m sure they expected the peace to go on a lot longer than it had.” She lets out a sigh. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t know what else I’m going to do either. Luke is considering restarting his work of finding and training Force sensitives, and I want to help with that, but he is understandably wary of the idea, especially considering what happened the last time.”

        “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” you quip. “I don’t know, maybe he had the right idea, wrong approach? Maybe taking on one or two padawans and teaching them would be more beneficial than opening up a whole school.”

               “Speaking of padawans,” Rey tells you. “You do know that part of the arrangement was for me to start meditating with you again, right? To make sure that you don’t lose your balance? I have nothing left to teach you, but they just want to make sure-“

               “Yeah, no, I understand,” you say quickly. “Luke already explained that once you go to the dark side, it leaves an indelible mark upon you, and I’ll appreciate any help I can get in try to control it.” You bite your lip nervously. “To be honest, I don’t know how I’ll react if anything happens to Kylo. I may go full dark side, I don’t know, but it wouldn’t be a lie to say I’m almost afraid of what will happen to myself if something like that were to happen, I just, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

               “And I’ll be there for you,” Rey assures you. “We all will, but in the meantime, try not to stress too much about it. I understand that you’re afraid, but fear will only take you closer to the dark side.”

               “My point exactly,” you mutter under your breath, but Rey only pushes a reassuring smile to her lips.

               “It’s not going to be easy,” she admits. “But I’m sure in time you’ll be able to find your way back to yourself, so long as you trust in the light side of the Force.”

               “I’ll try,” you tell her, but Rey just shakes her head.

               “One of Luke’s old teachers told him that there is no trying,” she tells you. “That there is only action or a lack of it, but even deciding not to make a decision is still a decision in itself.”

               “I still don’t understand any of these Jedi phrases,” you tell her, unable to hide the tiny hint of exasperation in your voice. “It’s like they’re purposely trying to be vague just to sound wise or something.”

               “I always thought they kept their phrases as vague as possible so that it could be widely interpreted to be applicable to any number of situations,” Rey offers. “There are no straight answers in life. What is the right thing to do, what is the wrong thing? I don’t have the answers to those questions, and neither did they. Even though they’ve become one with the Force, they’re still not omniscient. Even their foresight is limited, because we always have the power to change our minds, and make different decisions than the ones we could otherwise have made. No matter how grim you think the future is going to turn out, there is always a chance that you can turn back and change it for the better, always.”

               You sit in silence for a few moments as you consider this. You wanted to believe that, you wanted to believe that your future could still be positive, and happy, but there were simply so many variables on the board that you didn’t even know which to consider first. “All right,” you say quietly, because you couldn’t think of anything else that you could possibly say to that.

               “Now then,” Rey tells you. “I’m supposed to help you meditate, but seeing as how you don’t need me to teach you like I once did, I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind me taking on a new apprentice.”

               “A new apprentice?” you ask blankly, and as if on cue, the door to the Green Room opens and Ani sheepishly walks through.

               “Ani?” you exclaim, more out of sheer surprise than any other emotion. You look between them, almost dumbfounded. “But Ani, you know the Force, you-“

               “I know,” Ani says quickly, and if you’re not mistaken, he looks almost a bit guilty. “I know, you and Father did an excellent job training me, but I want to learn more. I don’t want to be corrupted by the dark side, no matter what the circumstance. I want to learn how to control it and trust in the light in a way that I don’t think I’ve considered before, to make sure that if Snoke comes back, that he can’t try to possess me or control me as well.”

               You just let out a snort through your nose as you look down at the floor. If you were being totally honest with yourself, part of you did feel betrayed, or rather, disappointed, that your training had obviously not been enough. You and Kylo were both strong in the Force, but Ani was looking for a different kind of strength, one that you couldn’t provide. He wanted to immerse himself in the light side of the Force, to make sure what happened to you and Kylo never happened to him, and that was nothing you could fault him for, nor was it something you could truly deny him.

               This was something he needed to protect himself, to protect his future, to protect the kind of life he wanted for himself, and you couldn’t have been any prouder of him than you were in that moment. “And I can think of no better teacher to help you with that than Rey,” you tell him, and the relief in the smile that emerges onto Ani’s face is palpable. A weight looks like it’s been lifted off of Rey as well as she beams of you, and you can’t help but grin as you look up at Ani. “I’m guessing you got a different response from your Father?”

               “In all fairness, I haven’t yet _asked_ ,” Ani says, emphasizing the last word. “But I’m sure once he hears that you’ve given your blessing, he’ll be less resistant to the idea, or at least, I hope so.”

               “How is he?” you ask, pulling your knees into your chest so that you can rest your chin on the loose fabric of your pants. “You went to see him this morning, right?”

               “He was a bit more-“ Ani struggles with the words, waving one hand in a small circle. “-than usual.”

               “Depressed?” you ask nervously, biting your lower lip.

               “Sarcastic,” he informs you, and you can’t help but let out a brief chuckle at that. “Poe was in there trying to talk to him about the trial earlier, but he’s gone back to being apathetic about the whole thing. He says there’s no point.”

               You just sigh as you rub your temple, and you can feel Rey’s concern from beside you. “I’ll talk to him tonight, Ani. He was probably just in a mood over something. He’s not giving up on us.”

               “I worry how this is affecting you,” Rey offers suddenly, and you can’t help but quirk an eyebrow in confusion. “The doubt that you’ve been feeling lately, I wonder how much of it is caused by his own uncertainty, reflecting on you through the Force bond.”

               You bite your lip and consider her point. Maybe the whole reason you felt so back and forth between your emotions lately was because Kylo himself didn’t really know what he wanted. A part of him was too realistic to hope that he would ever be granted his life by the Republic, but at the same time, he couldn’t help but hope to be reunited with you and Ani, even if he didn’t truly believe it to be possible. He was torn between realistic and optimistic, selfish and selfless, wanting to do the best for you and Ani while also doing the best for himself. You didn’t know how to grant him the reassurance that he craved any more than you knew how to provide it; none of you knew how this was going to turn out, and there was no way to know for sure. As Rey had said, even the Force ghosts wouldn’t have an answer to this one. You were all simply the prisoners of time, waiting to see how this would turn out.

               “I’ll talk to Kylo again tonight,” you tell her. “And I’ll figure things out then.”

               “Sounds like a plan,” Rey says as she gets to her feet, offering you her hand. “But right now, we should head to dinner.” She glances aside at Ani as she helps pull you to your feet, her grip stronger than you remembered. “Is everyone else there already?”

               “Yup,” Ani replies with a quick nod of his head. “Just waiting on you two.”

               “I don’t know if I should go.” The words are out of your mouth before you can stop them, and they both quickly turn around to look at you. “I mean, it’s just, there are people there that don’t like me, right? I’d rather just lie low for a while-“

               “When’s the last time you’ve eaten?” Rey asks, and you can’t help but blanch. That was the second time you had heard that comment today, and you quickly glance down at yourself. You don’t feel any skinnier, but then again, considering you had bandages completely covering your midsection on an almost constant basis, you hadn’t really had much time to properly take stock of yourself.

               “If I go with you, do I still have to answer that question?” you ask, and Rey laughs as she takes your hand and leads you out of the Green Room. She and Ani walk side by side down the hall together, chatting animatedly about something or another that you really weren’t paying all that close attention to. You were glad Ani was making friends, there was no way you couldn’t be, but at the same time you couldn’t feel like you still didn’t belong here. Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t, but you couldn’t help but remember the vision Anakin presented you with back on Naboo, reminding you that you no longer fit in at the Resistance. That had been so long ago, and yet, maybe some things didn’t change. You could only imagine that no matter how many roads you took or choices you made, some conclusions were just inevitable. If that was the case, you wondered if there really was a chance of saving Kylo after all.

               “Come on,” Rey says, turning around to face you. “We’re almost there, and we’ll make you forget all about this for a while. You’ll see.”

               “We’ll see,” you echo as you follow her into the mess hall. It was just as crowded as you remembered it, if not moreso, but this time Rey and Ani make a sharp right as you follow them down a long row of tables into another room.

               _A bit quieter in here,_ Ani tells you. _Not exclusive seating, but a lot of the pilots and maintenance crew sit back here. Apparently the base has gotten a lot more crowded since the last time we were here._

 _I’m surprised you still remember it,_ you reply good-naturedly. _How do you feel about seeing it again? Any waves of nostalgia?_

 _Honestly?_ Ani asks. _Yeah, a bit._

You frown safely within the comfort of knowing that he can’t see it. You’re not sure why it bothered you, but you don’t have time to think much more about it as you arrive at a table in the corner of the room. It’s set up so that it’s half chairs, half booth, and Poe pats the section of booth beside him without any subtlety. Regardless, you can’t help but grin as you slip into the booth beside him. “Way to make things obvious,” you murmur to him, keeping your voice down so as not to be overheard.

               “Obvious?” Poe asks, raising his eyebrows. “I thought I was just being friendly.” The corners of his lips are quirked upwards in his tight smirk, and suddenly everything else melts away as you get the desire to press your lips against his. You don’t, you can’t, not here, and you quickly turn around to face your friends. Rey was sitting in a free chair immediately to the left of the table, Ani was sitting across from her, with Ladson beside him and Finn at the other end of the table on Poe’s right.

               “Where’s Asher?” Ani asks, tilting his head to the side, and you can’t help but feel a bit nervous. You weren’t sure you were really up to meeting anyone new right now, _especially_ Ladson’s boyfriend who must have heard all kinds of stories about you, but Ladson’s answer quickly alleviates your fears.

               “Still in the hangar,” Ladson replies. “Probably working late tonight.” Rey glance aside at you, subtly conveying that there may have been a reason that Asher chose that night to work late, when Finn suddenly passes you a plate of food unlike anything you’d ever seen. Looking down, you could clearly identify some kind of meat that was distinctly purple, almost with a pinkish underbelly, and by the way its delicate flesh was cooked to a crisp, it almost looked like it had been some kind of fish.

               “We’ve got some new food here for you to try as well,” Finn offers, and you just poke at it with your fork, unsure of how exactly to go about eating it. Regardless, they’re all watching you expectantly, and so you just cast your eyes down as you poke it around the plate, focusing first on a series of brightly colored orbs beneath them.

               “What are these?” you ask, picking one up in your fork as you hold it towards Poe.

               “Uh, a kind of berry,” Poe responds quickly, but it almost looks like he’s making a face. Did he not like them? Was he allergic? “Why don’t you, uh, give it a try?”

               “Okay,” you say tentatively, keenly aware that all eyes are on you as you put it in your mouth, sliding it off the fork with your teeth. You bite into the thin flesh as it explodes into a ball of warm juice, and although you flinch at the sensation, it doesn’t have any immediate flavors that you can pick up on right away. Maybe a little sweet, definitely not salty, but that was that.

               “How is it?” Ladson asks, and you just shrug your shoulders.

               “I mean, it’s food?” you offer. Confident that they weren’t going to poison you, you cut off what you can only assume to be the tail of the fish as you put it in your mouth. A bit mushy on the inside, crisp on the outside, but other than that, there was nothing really special about it. It tasted a bit, bland, to be honest, and you quickly picked up the salt shaker from the middle of the table and put some on your next piece. You could feel the salt flecks against your tongue, and that helped alleviate it somewhat, but otherwise, nothing. It was mush and there was crisp and that was about it.

               As you look up again, you notice that you’re starting to get looks from the neighboring tables, and you can’t help but let your heart sink. Here you were, making a conscious effort to at least try to be included in things again, trying to develop a normal routine back at the Resistance, but-

               “Oh man, I can’t take it anymore,” Finn says as he gets up abruptly, and the rest of the table explodes into laughter as Rey buries her face in her sleeve. The rest of them have similar reactions, covering their face and noses as if there was suddenly a toxic gas floating into the air. 

               “What is-?” You can’t even form a coherent sentence as you glance back and forth at everyone on the table. Was this some kind of bizarre practical joke they were playing on you? What the hell had you just eaten? “Someone tell me right now what’s going on before I get angry.”

               “That smells absolutely foul,” Rey informs you. “Like really, that-“

               “Stinks,” Ladson finishes for her, wiping the area under his eyes with his fingertips as if he was about to cry. “You really can’t smell that, can you?”

               “Smell?” you repeat blankly before you realize that this was a test, and you had just failed it in the worst, most embarrassing way possible. You should be angry, you know you should be angry, but instead all you can feel is a hollow numbness ringing through your chest, a sense of hurt. “You didn’t believe me when I said I couldn’t smell, so you decided to test it for yourselves?”

               The expression at everyone at the table sobers, as though they had failed to take your feelings into account as they expense of this little experiment. “We’re sorry,” Ani says quickly. “We just thought, we had no idea-“

               “It was my idea,” Ladson offers, and you can tell by the quick way that Ani turns to look at him that he was taking the blame from someone else at the table, although who that was, you could only guess. If you had to put money on anyone, it was probably Finn, but you couldn’t say for sure. “Sorry, I didn’t realize-“

               “It’s fine,” you say quickly, dismissively, wishing you were seated in a position where you could quietly slink out of this noisy din and back to the safety of either your or Kylo’s room without calling attention to yourself.

               “So how does it taste?” Ladson asks, leaning forward, and you look down at the plate again before glancing back up at him.

               “Like nothing?” you offer, and he can’t help but look taken aback. “I don’t know, the berries are a little sweet, I guess, but the fish-thing is, uh, I don’t know, mushy on the inside, crispy on the outside.”

               “Those are textures,” Poe tells you. “But what does it taste like?”

               _Weren’t they the same thing?_ You tried to remember what taste had been like for you before, but for some reason, you honestly couldn’t recall it. “I’m not sure,” you reply as you cut off a small slice of the fish and stick your fork into it as though you were mounting it on a spear. “Why don’t _you_ tell me?”

               You push the fork in the direction of Poe’s face, and his head immediately jerks back as if on impulse. He glances around the table to see everyone watching him closely before he finally lets out a frustrated, yet good-natured sigh as he puts his mouth around your fork. As he pulls away, his hand immediately goes to his mouth as his eyes screw shut, and even you can’t help but giggle as he seems to visibly struggle with himself to chew and swallow while the rest of the table laughs on.

               “That is-“ Poe can’t even finish his sentence, and you pat the side of his arm gently, the only bit of affection that you can muster right now in such a public place.

               “Putrid?” Rey offers.

               “Rancid?” Ani adds.

               “How about just fucking _terrible_?” Ladson finishes, and you all stop to turn to Finn who has finally come back to the table.

               “Sorry,” he says quickly. “But that stuff is-“ Suddenly Poe leans in close and breathes into his face, and Finn almost literally staggers backwards in his chair as if he had just been punched.

               “Dude-“ he cries out as he bounds away from the table again, and this time you find yourself laughing in earnest. You can see they’re all watching you, pleased that you’re laughing, pleased that you seemed to be coming more or less back to yourself. You couldn’t quite be sure, at least, not yet, but even you had to admit that this had been a somewhat pleasant distraction from the difficulties that you had been facing as of late.

               “So you really can’t smell that?” Ani asks, turning his attention back to you. “Or taste it?”

               In answer, you grab the fish in both hands and take a massive bite, pulling the flesh away with your teeth. The rest of them laugh as they try not to flinch away, and you roll your shoulders up and drop them again, giving them as much of an answer as they needed. “Guess it’s gone for good,” you say at length. “So I guess you guys will have to tell me if I start to stink, or if there’s any gas, or-“

               “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Rey advises. “It’ll take some adjusting to at first, but you have the Force. Trust your instincts.”

               “I don’t think the Force is really going to tell me that I need a bath,” you say dryly, and Rey chuckles lightly as she looks away, understanding the point you were trying to make.

               “At least this way you can’t tell if _we_ stink,” Ladson offers. “Especially after I’ve been working in the maintenance hangar with Asher all day, I smell like sweat and fuel and-“

               “And their apartment reeks of it too,” Ani tells you as Ladson casts him a look of mock offense. “It is really nice though. I’m going to have to show you my room some time.”

               “I’d like to see it,” you tell him, because you don’t know what to say to that either. Ani’s room had always been sparse after leaving Naboo. Phasma had made sure to give him plenty of toys as a child, but he had outgrown that phase pretty quickly, and since then his room had been as meager as yours, filled with nothing but a small pack of clothes and nothing else, in case you had to get up and go quickly. You had never been able to pack as anything other than a nomad ever since you had lost most of your possessions on the Starkiller Base, but as Sadie had told you at the time, that was your fault for over packing. Now, you didn’t see a point in trying to collect much of anything when you didn’t have a home to store it in. Besides that, you couldn’t even be sure what you would put in your own bedroom if you had one. Instinct compelled you to be Spartan and austere, and you didn’t really mind it one bit.

               Finn eventually comes back to the table and the conversation again dips into talk of his obstacle course, which you hated to entertain, seeing as how you mentally insisted on calling it some sort of simulation chamber, seeing as how that was what it really was. Either way, it was Finn’s project, and it was up to him to call it what he wanted. Besides, you had much larger matters to worry about. You could understand Poe sitting next to you, you could understand Rey to your left, Ani was your son and you had learned to pick up on his subtle cues and micro-expressions, Ladson always talked loudly, but there were times when you couldn’t understand what Finn was saying. At all. He would be talking and you would hear sound, but his words were seemingly slurred together, and you were unable to consciously separate them to extract their meaning. Everyone else at the table nodded their heads along while you just sat there listening to the plethora of sounds, trying to give them meaning.

               It was hard listening simply for comprehension, trying to understand just what he was trying to say when it sounded as though words were being omitted left and right, whole fragments of sentences that didn’t touch your ears. A couple of times, you thought Finn was saying _they,_ they did something, something with the obstacle course thing, _they_ were helpful, until he pointed at Rey and you realized he had been saying _Rey_ instead of _they_ this entire time. You were frustrated with yourself, but you kept silent, afraid to ask Finn to speak up and draw more attention to yourself. Your lack of smell had been treated as a joke, as a fun little quirk for others to draw entertainment out of, and while you didn’t mind it so much, you _understood_ , you couldn’t help but wonder how this was going to be detrimental to you in the future. What if you were sitting alongside something that was emitting gas and you fell unconscious and died simply because you couldn’t smell it? Sure, most gases didn’t exactly have an odor, but you couldn’t smell smoke now either. If there was fire, or trouble, you wouldn’t be able to detect it. You would have to use your eyes, and your ears, which were not operating at full capacity either.

               _You okay?_ You can see Ani glance at you from across the table, and you quickly nod your head forward, trying to make the action as small as possible to not draw any attention to yourself. You could hear Finn talking, but you couldn’t really understand what was being said, and you hoped he wouldn’t call on you to give your opinion on a matter that you weren’t even sure you knew he was actually talking about. Regardless, Poe seems to pick up on your silent bit of communication with Ani, as his leg gently bumps against yours underneath the table and stays there. You can’t help but smile slightly as you rub your leg back against his, and Poe places his hand inconspicuously on your knee, safely hidden away underneath the table. It’s only there for a minute before he has the good sense to pull it away, but you were grateful for the small bit of comfort it provided all the same.

               Comfort was something that wasn’t easy to come by, and as you left dinner early that night to head to Kylo’s room, you hoped that it was something that you would be able to provide to him. You needed it from him now, more than ever, but that only meant that you had to give twice as much as you wanted to receive and hoped that it would come back to you in return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter to me is really sad because Reader is trying to go back to the person that she was like in A Candle in the Night, she is giving it one chance to see if she can but she can't. She wants to go back because it would be easier and she knows if she breaks out Kylo she will really never be able to go back. I feel like though if that happens and she and Kylo run away that will make some people here very happy! 
> 
> Also we are mean people, we do this to Krae a lot so she wrote it in so we can read from her perspective. She was born with no smell and sometimes we find food that smells really bad and we put it near her to see if she notices and she doesn't. Not spoiled food no but we gave her Durian as a joke to see if she would notice but now she likes it! If you don't know what that is, you are lucky. 
> 
> Sorry for late posting, this is much more work than I thought. I saw Krae today and she is doing better. She thanks you very much for all your well wishes and hopes you are not missing her too much! Kylo Ren smut coming on Tuesday to keep you all distracted until then! :) 
> 
> -Tara


	56. Chapter 56

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW Content Ahead

               “You seem happy.”

               You’re standing in front of Kylo with your hands behind your back, pinched at the wrist, your head bowed slightly as you stand guiltily in front of him. In truth, you had felt, well, not _happy_ at dinner, but a bit more carefree and unburdened than you had felt as of late. Coming back to see Kylo here, in this pale white room, was sobering, reminding you that you had it far too good out there when the truth was that you should have been locked in there with him, prepared to suffer through the same fate. Although, you supposed, in a way, you already had. You had been locked in the medbay yourself until Poe had convinced the Resistance you weren’t a threat to them at your trial, and now you were waiting for Kylo to experience the same with the Republic. The only difference here, though, was that you doubted the outcome would be the same.

               “I’m not happy,” you tell him as you shake your head. “How can I be happy when you’re stuck in this room all day? It’s not fair. You deserve better.”

               To his credit, a smile pulls at the corner of Kylo’s lips as he raises an eyebrow. “I can feel you,” he tells you quietly, and you quickly cast your eyes down again as if you were being scolded. “Hey,” he says, urging your eyes back up. “You don’t have to feel guilty about this.”

               “I do though,” you say quietly, driving the toe of your boot into the floor, not really willing to say anything more than that.

               “Because of the pilot?” Kylo asks, his tone even, and you can’t help but feel heat rise to your cheeks.

               “I shouldn’t-“ you start, shaking your head. “I’m trying to find comfort in him, but it’s not the same. It’s not like what I have with you, and it makes it worse, knowing you’re here and I’m with him when I could be spending time with you instead.”

               You can hear Kylo settling back into the pillows as he appraises you, but you continue to avert his gaze. “I need to know you’ll be all right,” he tells you in that same gentle voice. “I need to know that after I’m gone you’ll have people you can rely on here. If Snoke comes back, I can’t risk losing you to the dark side again.”

               “He told me he can bring you back,” you mumble to yourself, and out of the corner of your eye, you can see Kylo sit up sharply.

               “No,” he says firmly. “No, think of Anakin. If you followed Snoke, it wouldn’t have been long until he asked you to bring Ani to him and then I would have lost you both.” He leans forward now, commanding your gaze. “No, I need to know that if he comes back, no matter what he promises, that you will stay here with the Resistance.” He’s glaring at you, his dark eyes fiery and intense as he stares you down. You wanted to tell him that you wouldn’t, that you wouldn’t even be tempted, but you couldn’t lie to him.

               “I don’t think he’ll exactly try to persuade me,” you offer quietly, remembering how you had beaten him before. “If anything, he’ll want revenge.”

               “Which is why you need to stay here, with the Resistance, where it’s safe,” Kylo tells you. “And you should know better than to trust the Republic. They may say they have dropped the charges against you now, but once I’m gone they may turn their sights on you or Ani next, and I can’t risk that.”

               “Well, if they do, there’s not a whole lot I can do about that, can I?” you ask with an idle shrug.

               “Stay with the pilot,” Kylo commands. “If he-“

               “Really?” you demand suddenly, throwing your arms out by your sides. “Seriously, this is why you want me to be with Poe? Self-preservation? Just because he’s the Captain you think if I fuck him he’ll protect me from whatever the Republic wants to do to me?”

               This time, Kylo can’t help but make a face. “I think you know it’s more than that. Don’t forget that we are connected, and you do a terrible job at hiding your emotions from me.”

               “I never meant to-“

               “You missed him,” Kylo says with finality. “You can’t deny it to me when I can feel what you feel. I know-“ he swallows hard, as if this is something that’s hard for him to admit to. “I know that, given the choice, you would choose me. I know that. In a way, it makes this easier.” He turns to look at you now. “But I’m going to be gone soon, and I _don’t_ want you to be alone. No matter what you say to me, I know you feel something for him, and you need someone. I know you.”

               You open your mouth and close it again, blushing furiously at the insinuation. “But I want you,” you tell him as you take one of his hands in both of yours, playing with his long fingers. “We don’t know what the Republic is going to say. You may-“

               “Even if the Resistance somehow manages to convince the Republic to spare my life, I’ll be locked away in chains for the rest of it,” Kylo tells you. “Possibly with my abilities siphoned. If that happens, I’ll be sure to end things myself before too long.”

               “No,” you say firmly, trying to conceal the horror in your voice. “No, Kylo.” You shake your head from side to side. “No, because if that happens, you can bet that I’m going to do whatever I can to break you out.”

               “No,” Kylo says, pulling his hand away from yours as he grabs your shoulders suddenly. “No, do you understand me? No. I don’t want you ruining your life for me. You need to stay here, watch over Ani.” He hesitates for a moment as he looks over your face. “It’s not going to be easy for you. I know that. I can feel you right now, and you’re afraid.”

               “I’m terrified,” you whisper quietly. “Kylo, I can’t _lose_ you. I can try to distract myself from it all I want, but if you died, I lose _everything_.”

               “Which is why I need you to try to make a life for yourself here,” Kylo tells you. “You’re not going to forget me, and I’m not asking you to, but the last time you were here you were able to move on from me. You were ready to start a life here with the pilot and I want to give that back to you.”

               “It’s too late,” you say as you shake your head, and Kylo quirks an eyebrow.

               “Too late?” he repeats. “He seems to still care for you.”

               “I know he does,” you admit weakly. “And I’m trying to care back, I mean, I do _care_ , but it’s not the same. I need time to be by myself for a little while, I need time to heal, not just from everything that happened with Snoke, but with everything that’s going to happen to you. I understand where you’re coming from and I know what you mean, and I’m grateful for it, I am, a part of it makes things easier that you’re not as jealous as I expected you to be-“

               “I am jealous,” Kylo says immediately, and you can’t help but let your heart sink. “I am jealous. I wish I could spend the rest of my life with you, but I can’t, and we both know it, and I don’t want to make things worse by pretending. You have someone here that cares about you, that makes you happy, and I don’t want to hold you back from that. You deserve better than what I’ve given you the past few years, I-“

               But you can’t hear it, you can’t, you just can’t, and you quickly lean forward and kiss him, pressing your lips into his, suddenly appreciating how awkward Poe must have felt when you told him that you didn’t deserve him. Kylo grabs your cheeks in both hands as he pulls you closer to him, and you slip forward on top of him, pressing your chest against his. He doesn’t stop, and neither do you, as his hands slip underneath the back of your shirt, skimming over the bare skin over the waistband of your pants before his fingertips brush against the bandages that were still covering your midsection.

               “Still?” Kylo asks, tilting his head to the side in concern. “Are these still necessary?”

               “Uh, maybe?” you ask as you pull away from him slightly, sitting back on your knees as you straddle his waist. “One of the medical droids changes the bandages every two to three days and the doctors check on it, but I don’t want to hear how it’s doing. I just tell them to put the bandages back on, and leave it at that.”

               “And if you don’t need them?” Kylo muses aloud.

               “I don’t know,” you shrug. You want to say more, but suddenly words seem to escape you as Kylo takes the hem of your shirt in both hands. You can feel him testing the fabric in his fingertips before he pulls it up and over your head slowly before he drops it at his side. You can’t help but bite your lip as you grin down at him, exposed except for the bandage that’s still covering your midriff.

               “Does it still hurt?” Kylo asks, reaching his hand forward slowly to touch the area where you had been wounded, and you flinch away on instinct.

               “Probably,” you respond, and Kylo tilts his head to the side in confusion. “I mean, if you touch it, then, yes, it probably will. Otherwise, it just hurts when I bend or move or stretch and stuff.” Kylo’s face turns serious as he nods and focuses on the wound, as if trying to see through the bandages, and for the first time you realize that he didn’t know the extent of your injuries beyond what he had been told. He hadn’t been there to watch your battle with Snoke, hadn’t been there to watch you clumsily trying to bring the _Propitiate_ down around you as you got shot in the stomach by a blaster bolt.

               “I was reckless,” you say in a voice so quiet Kylo stops focusing to look up at you. “I wanted to die. A part of me did, just, thinking about you lying there like that? I couldn’t go on, not without you.”

               “Ani-“ Kylo starts, and you shake your head.

               “I think he’d be okay,” you say, staring just past the spot on his pillow behind his left ear. “I really think he’d be okay, you know, without me. He’s older now, he doesn’t need us like he did before. He needs people who can help him be his best self, people who can help advance his skills, and I don’t think I can help him with that anymore. If anything, I’m holding him back.”

               “Stop it,” Kylo says, firmly, automatically. “I know you’ve been having these thoughts. I know you push them away where you think I can’t see them, but I can. I’m worried about you, but I’m not sure how I can help you.”

               “And you think Poe can?” you ask as you raise an eyebrow, and Kylo merely shrugs uncomfortably to show his dissatisfaction with the question.

               “You can talk to him,” Kylo responds, and you can tell he’s doing his best not to sound bitter. He looks like he’s about to say more, but you don’t even give him the chance.

               “It’s different with him,” you explain, trying to rid yourself of the nagging, petulant whine in your voice. “You understand me, implicitly. You can feel my emotions and read my thoughts, so I never have to put a label on them or figure out how to describe them to you. With Poe it’s different. He wants me to be open with him and so I have to actually _think_ about how I feel and put words to them and that’s…hard.”

               You look away uncomfortably, but Kylo only rubs your side comfortingly, his thumb gracing over your midsection. “Has he seen this?”

               “Yeah,” you reply, looking down at yourself. “Yeah, he said it’s healing but slowly. He said there’s, uh, some skin left but-“

               “Let me see it.” Kylo’s voice is firm and automatic, but you simply shake your head from side to side.

               “I don’t know,” you reply. “I don’t want you to, I don’t know, I don’t think you’re going to freak out or anything, but I don’t want you to get upset if you see it, and I know you will.”

               “Let me see it,” Kylo repeats firmly, and you can’t help but pout as you meet his eyes in a weak attempt to placate him. Kylo meets your gaze before he finally sighs and looks down at himself. He’s wearing nothing but a white tee shirt and pale blue pants that seemed a bit too big at the hips, but too short in the legs, at least for his tall frame. “Do you want to see mine?”

               “Um.” Before you can gather much more of your thoughts to figure out if you really wanted to see the mark it had left, Kylo reaches down and pulls the shirt over his head in one fluid motion, revealing a series of bandages that stretched across his shoulders and down to his side. The bandages looked to be wrapped around his shoulder a few times, and you tilt your head to the side.

               “Did something happen to your shoulder?” you ask cautiously. You had remembered Kylo and Snoke fighting, but you didn’t remember anything happening to his shoulder, specifically.

               “I’d rather not talk about it,” Kylo mutters as he avoids your eyes, and you can’t help but cross your arms over your chest.

               “Is it something that Snoke did?” you press, but Kylo doesn’t answer, and his silence is starting to unnerve you. “Wait, Kylo, was it something that happened here?” Kylo’s eyes glance up to meet yours, and you can feel coldness spreading through your chest as his silence confirms your suspicions. “Who did this to you?”

               “Doesn’t matter,” Kylo responds petulantly as he casts his eyes down.

               “Who did this to you, Kylo?” you repeat firmly, with new authority in your voice that urges Kylo’s eyes back up to look at you. “Kylo, tell me, who did this?” His silence is unnerving, and you cross and uncross your arms over your chest. “Was it Rey? Did Rey do something?” Silence, but there’s something in your eyes that tells you it wasn’t her. If it was, he would have told you that already. But the fact that he hadn’t even mentioned it meant that…

“Poe?” you exclaim suddenly, and Kylo’s eyes jerk up to meet yours. “Poe shot you? Why-?” Kylo shakes his head, but you are not going to just let this go. “Either you tell me, or I’m going to get the answer from him.”

               “He shot me,” Kylo tells you slowly, and you can tell you’re going to have to drag this out of him. “When I woke up.”

               “When you woke up?” you repeat skeptically, arching one eyebrow. “So you just, sat up, yawned and stretched, and he pulled out his gun and shot you in the shoulder?” Kylo looks away, and you narrow your eyes. “I know you two aren’t the biggest fans of each other, but I have a hard time believing he would just shoot you for no reason. You attacked him, didn’t you?”

               “It was when I first woke up here,” Kylo begrudgingly explains. “I wasn’t sure where I was and he was the first person who came into the room.”

               “So it was in self-defense?” you ask, and Kylo nods his head after a brief moment has passed, as if it wasn’t something he wanted to admit to. “Well, I mean, to be fair, you have tortured him, you took me away, he has no reason to like you. You should be lucky that it wasn’t a headshot considering he knows just how easy it would be for you to kill him.”

               “What makes you think it wasn’t?” Kylo asks as he quirks up an eyebrow, and you just narrow your eyes as you shake your head from side to side.

               “You think he would miss from barely four feet away?” you ask as you continue to shake your head. “Not a chance. Besides, Leia would eat him alive if he killed you, if _anyone_ killed you. It’s probably one of the biggest reasons you’re still alive.”

               “For now,” Kylo says quietly, and you can’t help but groan in frustration, rolling your neck back along your shoulders.

               “Kylo, stop,” you command as you take his hands and guide them to your sides. “I don’t know what to say anymore. I don’t want to keep having this conversation over and over-“

               “Then when will you stop thinking about it?” Kylo asks, but he doesn’t sound angry or upset when he asks it. Instead, his voice is even, matter-of-fact, and he seems much more collected than you are considering its his life that’s on the line instead of yours.

               “Let me stay with you,” you urge. “Please? I don’t know how long you have left, and-“

               “No,” Kylo says immediately. “If you’re here all day, that will only make it worse. It’ll only remind us how little time we have left, and I don’t want to put you through that.”

               “But isn’t it lonely for you in here by yourself?” you ask quietly, running your fingers down his chest.

               “No,” Kylo says quietly as he shakes his head from side to side. “No, you know I value my solitude, and my mother comes by to visit daily.”

               “I haven’t seen her yet,” you admit. “I probably should go and do that, huh?” Kylo shrugs as if it doesn’t make a difference to him, and that’s when something dawns on you. “Wait, you said she comes in here to visit you daily, right? She never visited me when I was in the medbay.”

               “She did, a few times,” Kylo tells you. “But you were out of it each time. Plus, her room is close to mine in this back part of the base. She doesn’t venture around too much, not since the incident.”

               “Incident?” you repeat, and your mind immediately jumps to when you had felt her distress on the _Propitiate._ You thought that she was _sick_ , but- “Did something happen to her? Did someone do something to her?”

               Kylo makes some motion with his head that’s halfway between a nod and a shake. “You should ask her,” he says quietly, and you bite your lip. The conversation has suddenly gotten far too dark for your liking, and Kylo seems to sense it as well as you draw away from him slightly.

               “I don’t want to be sad when I come here,” you tell him in the same soft tone. “I don’t want to be sad when I see you. In a way, it just makes this whole thing worse.”

               “Then let me fix that,” Kylo tells you as he reaches up to kiss you, cupping your cheek in one hand. He presses his lips against yours, slowly, softly, and you part your lips as you nuzzle him gently, letting the tip of your nose rub against his. You can feel his tongue brush against your lower lip in a slow, languid motion and you can’t help but snort through your nose as you mount him again, letting him take you in his lap as he wraps your legs around his waist. He doesn’t try to undo the bandages around your midsection, and lets his hands dip lower than they usually do, wrapping around your lower back just above your ass while he holds your cheek in his other hand.

               You sit like that for quite some time, kissing, exploring the already familiar territory of each other’s mouths, trying to go further, but for some reason, it isn’t coming. You want him, you always wanted him, but for some reason this felt different in a way that you couldn’t quite describe, and it had nothing to do with Poe or the situation. You weren’t quite how to put your finger on it, but-

               “You’re afraid you’re going to hurt me,” Kylo murmurs as he pulls away slowly, and you can’t help but laugh.

               “See, what am I going to do without you around?” You mean it teasingly, but the look Kylo gives you is nothing short of pity, and you quickly glance down and to the side, trying to figure out how to ease the tension between you. “Okay, you’re right. I don’t know badly you’re hurt and I don’t want to press in any of the wrong places.”

                “You’re not going to hurt me,” Kylo says dryly, but you just shake your head, not willing to accept that as an answer.

               “You’re mortal, you’re fallible,” you say bluntly. “And as bad as my own wound is to me, you had a lightsaber cut _right through you_ , Kylo. I don’t think I need to explain why that should have killed you, of all people. Maybe the fact that it was your lightsaber that saved you from it, I don’t know, but it’s going to take you a long time to recover from a wound like that.” Kylo looks down and away, and you settle back glumly again. “Because if I’m having a problem healing slowly, then I can’t imagine how much of an effect the bacta is having on you.”

               “It’s not that bad,” Kylo says with an errant shrug, and suddenly you’ve had enough of this back and forth. Kylo was never going to admit to being in pain, and you were never one to let your pain hold you back from anything, which meant that there was only one thing left to do. You quickly rush forward as you place your hands on either side of his face as you kiss him, pressing him back into the pillows with all the force you can muster. Kylo seems to welcome this as one of his hands finds its way along the back of your head as he keeps you in place, kissing you with new urgency.

               You fall forward as Kylo rolls out to the side, pinning you face first into the pillows underneath him. You try to get up, but he’s heavy on your back, and suddenly you feel your lower back arch slightly as he squirms his hand underneath you and into your pants. His other hand slips over your mouth as he slips a finger inside you, and you can’t help but pant against him as you adjust to this new position. You were face first into the pillows with his hand over your mouth, barely able to breathe, while you could feel the pressure of his body along your back, pressing you down further into the bed as he worked his finger in and out of you.

               It was one way to do things, you had to give him that, as you could feel his erection start to build against your ass. You couldn’t help but let out a snort of laughter that you almost ended up choking on as you arched your neck up to breathe a little bit before you pulled your head back down again, licking and sucking at the skin of his palm. You alter your licks in time to the way he rhythmically pumps his hand into your soaking entrance which was getting wetter by the second, slowing down to gentle, languid laps when he slowed down, and picking up intensity when you could feel yourself starting to build all over again.

               Suddenly, Kylo lets out a grunt, and you’re not sure if it’s from pain from the positioning or sexual frustration, and you hoped it was the latter as he pulled himself off of you, and you quickly try to push yourself up onto your forearms. Before you even having time to turn over, however, Kylo has grabbed the hem of your pants and yanked it down and away from you as he hovers himself over you and pushes himself into your entrance. You dip your head forward again as you grunt, feeling an uncomfortable ache in your core that you hope Kylo doesn’t pick up on.

               He must, however, and as his hands plant firmly into your sides, you can’t help but notice that he starts to increase his rhythm as you hear his voice in your head. _I’ll make this fast._

_What?_

One of his hands quickly finds your clit, and you can’t help but buck your head forward as you moan out, grinding your hips in small circles against his hand. But just before you can really get a chance to lose yourself in this sensation, you can feel Kylo find his release inside of you, and you are nowhere near ready. You hesitate for a moment, not sure what to do or say, as Kylo stills inside of you and slowly removes his hands as he pushes out of you. He rolls backwards onto the bed so that he’s lying down next to you, and you make a move to sit up, swinging your legs off the side of the bed.

               He lets out two deep breaths while you sit there, soaking wet, and honestly, sort of uncomfortable. Of course there were times where he had come before you did, but he had always made sure to finish you off as well. For all the years you had known him, you had never known him to just _stop_ , unless he really was in too much pain to continue. From beside you, you can hear Kylo let out two deep breaths, trying to regulate his breathing. “Where do you think you’re going?”

               “I-“ you start hesitantly, but Kylo lifts you up suddenly, positioning you in reverse, with your back to his head. You immediately laugh as you position yourself so that your knees are on his shoulders, trying to evenly distribute your weight through your legs so as not to put too much pressure on him before you slowly hunker yourself down, using your hands to balance the rest of your weight on his chest as carefully as you can without hurting him. You raise yourself up slightly, using your hands for support, as you lift your weight onto your ankles to raise off his face slightly to allow him room to move beneath you.

               Kylo immediately responds by sucking at your tender clit, using one hand to grab your ass, and you can’t help but whimper as you let your chin drop down to your chest as you ride out the myriad of pleasurable sensations that are rushing through you as he laps his tongue against your clit. You rock back and forth gently with your hips, biting down on your lower lip as you breathe in and out through your nose as the sucking gets more and more intense with each passing second. His fingers reach up and around to gently brush against your clit, and that’s when you finally find your release, grabbing onto the blankets on either side of him as you arch your body forward. Even still, Kylo continues to greedily lap at the juices flowing from your entrance, and you simply screw your eyes shut as you allow the favorable waves of pleasure to rack your body, trying to offset the pain that was still emanating from your midsection.

               Eventually Kylo releases you and you make sure to roll off of him before you collapse. Your arms shoot forward, desperate to touch him, and you can’t help yourself as you place a row of kisses against his neck as he pulls you into him. You run your hands along his arms, feeling his overheated skin underneath your hands as you slowly reach up to kiss him, pressing a firm kiss against his lips as you snuggle into his shoulder.

               You don’t know how long you fall asleep there for, but when you eventually pull yourself into a seated position, you can’t help but roll your neck from side to side, trying to ease it out of its cramped position. Kylo sits up as well, running his hand down from the nape of your back along your spine to the area that’s covered by the bandages. “How long was I out for?” you murmur groggily, glancing around the pale room that showed no signs of the passage of time.

               “Only about an hour or two,” Kylo responds as he strokes his hand up and down your upper back. “Not long.”

               “Your bed _sucks_ ,” you exclaim as you roll your shoulders back, trying to stretch out your arms. “It feels like I was sleeping in a coffin.”

               “Hence why the pilot offered you alternative arrangements,” Kylo tells you, and for a moment you wonder if Kylo himself had something to do with that.

               “I want to sleep here with you,” you offer. “Maybe I can convince them to give you a bigger bed, and then-“

               “No,” Kylo says immediately with a quick shake of his head. “No, I don’t want you to be trapped down here with me. If you stay, you’re just going to become miserable and I don’t…can’t, see that.” He pauses for a moment, as if deciding to try a different tactic. “I can feel you. If you’re miserable, it will only make things harder for me, and I can’t carry the both of us. But if you’re happy, I can feel that, and it makes dealing with what’s to come just a bit easier.” He smooths your hair back out of your face as he leans forward to kiss your temple. “You should get back. You’re seeing my mother in the morning, and you should be well rested for that.”

               “Why?” you ask, the skepticism leaking into your voice. “Does she hate me? Is she mad at me?”

               “No,” Kylo says as he shakes his head. “No, I took the blame for everything that happened, although-“

               “Although? Although what, Kylo?”

               “She does… _lament_ your decision to join with the First Order,” Kylo says, choosing his words carefully. “Especially when she went to such lengths to secure your alliance here at the Resistance.”

               “Oh great,” you mutter petulantly. “She thinks I betrayed her. Great. No wonder the Resistance hates me so much; they think I’m a traitor. Apparently the Republic really wasn’t that far off in calling for my capture after all.”

               “She knows you were only there because of me,” Kylo tells you firmly. “She doesn’t hold that against you.”

               “Does she know what I did?” you ask nervously. “What I’ve done?”

               “I have reason to suspect the pilot may have told her,” Kylo says quietly, and you cast your eyes down. “But she won’t reveal anything to me, and so _I_ have told her nothing.” He looks back up at you. “I don’t know how much she knows of what you’ve done. It depends on how much you’ve told him.”

               “I told him everything in bits and pieces,” you admit with a sigh. “I mean, it’s a safe bet to know she knows just as much as anyone in the Resistance knows, but beyond that I can’t say.”

               “You should speak with him,” he tells you, brushing your hair away from your face again. “Find out how much she knows before you go and speak to her.”

               “I mean, even if she does know everything, she’s not going to tell everyone in the Resistance what I’ve done, right?” you ask. “There was already a trial and I was cleared of everything. They can’t come after me twice for the same crime, can they?”

               “It was a military tribunal,” Kylo replies with an errant shrug. “And the Resistance isn’t held to any particular standard of law. I imagine they could do whatever they wish.”

               “But they wouldn’t,” you offer. “That’s just bad form. If they want to play the peacekeepers of the galaxy, they should at least hold their honor to a higher standard than other forms of government, shouldn’t they?”

               Kylo shakes his head, as if this wasn’t a conversation he didn’t want to be having. “Regardless,” he says firmly. “You have nothing to be concerned about. You are Ani’s mother, and she’s not going to risk her relationship with her grandson by trying to condemn you. You’re basically the only family she has left now. She’ll need you.”

               “Yeah,” you say softly. “I forgot about that, honestly, I did. I never had a mother, or any sort of maternal figure, so it’s kind of weird to think about.” You shake your head. “But I guess family is family. Maybe before you go we could all have some big meeting together or something, I don’t know.”

               “I wouldn’t count on it,” Kylo says dryly. “They wouldn’t release me for anything, and I doubt they would risk it with your loyalties still in question.”

               “Well, maybe my visit with Leia can help clear all that up,” you say, trying to sound as optimistic as you can for his sake. Regardless, he can see right through you. “Too positive?”

               “I have a hard time trying to picture who would be the most uncomfortable in that situation,” Kylo says dryly, and you can’t help but sigh.

               “It was worth a shot,” you say with a shrug. “I doubt it would be Ani, though. He seems to be getting along great here.”

               Kylo tilts his head to the side as he observes you. “Are you jealous of him?”

               “No,” you say immediately. “No, of course not. I’m glad he’s fitting in so well and that everyone seems to love him, but I just can’t help but think about…after.” Kylo waits patiently for you to keep going, and you let out a sigh as you twist your hands in your lap. “After the trial, if the Resistance decides that they don’t want to keep me around, or maybe if it’s too risky to keep me around, it might be better for everyone if I wasn’t _here,_ if I crawled off to a corner of the galaxy to be by myself, where I couldn’t hurt anyone.”

               “No,” Kylo says with a firm shake of his head. “That’s why I want you to at least try to make an effort to fit in here. I don’t want you to be alone. I don’t want you to have that kind of life when I’m gone.”

               “Yeah, but.” You don’t know what to say, and just let your shoulders heave. “It’s clear Ani doesn’t need me anymore, and Leia can watch out for him. If Snoke comes back, well…” You shake your head as you meet Kylo’s eyes again. “I won’t let him use me again. I’ll do what I have to do.”

               “No,” Kylo says immediately, with much more authority in his voice as he takes your face in both hands. “No, I don’t like these thoughts from you, especially when I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around to reprimand them. You _will_ stay here, you’ll stay with Ani, and my mother, and the pilot and the scavenger and Luke. You will stay with people who can keep you safe and protect you so that he can never harm you again.” He looks you in the eye, making sure that you know he means it, silently implying that this was his dying wish. “Am I understood?”

               “You’re understood,” you say quietly as you nod your head forward. Kylo just leans forward as he plants a kiss in the middle of your forehead before he pulls back slightly.

               “I love you,” he reminds you, and you can’t help but pull the corners of your lips up in a tight smile as you meet his eyes.

               “Me too,” you reply softly, before you realize how off that sounded. “I mean, I don’t love me too, I love _you_ , I-“

               Kylo just chuckles softly as he kisses your lips, and you lean your forehead against his cheek as he strokes your back. “You need to get to bed, and you’re not going to get any rest here.”

               “Are you seriously kicking me out when I’m this sleepy?” you ask, but even as you say those words, you can’t help but feel your neck stiffen in protest.

               “You know I want you here,” Kylo says softly. “But as the situation stands-“

               “You pick the worst times to be selfless, you know that?” you ask as you shake your head. “Fine. I’ll go talk to Poe about Leia and I’ll visit you right after I see her, okay?”

               “I’d like that,” Kylo says as he kisses your hand. “But I’m not going to let you spend every waking minute here trying to spend as much time with me as possible. That’s only going to make you miserable and I don’t want that to be my fault.”

               “None of this is your fault,” you say firmly, but you can tell by the way Kylo looks away that he doesn’t believe you, and you just lean forward and kiss him again reassuringly before you scramble to your feet, struggling to stand up as your muscles groaned in protest.

               “Okay, if you insist, I’m off so you can get some rest,” you tell him, making a show of tucking him into bed. “Just, reach out to me, if you need me, okay?” You hang back hesitantly, and Kylo just rolls over to the side, eyes closed. He _looks_ tired, and you wonder if he hadn’t actually been able to get any sleep while you were dozing, considering how squished he seemed just lying there all by himself in that tiny bed. You want to sit by his bedside until he falls asleep, but there isn’t even really any room _to_ sit, and so you just watch him for another moment, acutely aware of how fast your heart is beating in your chest, before you slowly walk out of the room and head back up to Poe’s quarters.

               When you enter, the lights are off, and you can see Poe asleep on his back, his one arm sprawled out to the side. He’s shirtless, and you can’t help but snort as you walk closer. You consider climbing into the top bunk, but for some reason you’re sure that may make things more awkward than they already are, and so you just roll into bed beside him, resting your head on the pillow just under his arm as you face away from him.

               Still, you can’t help but think about Kylo. He was being far too patient, far too selfless with you, and that more than anything seemed like a clear sign that he had given up completely. But Kylo was a fighter, always had been, always would be, and you could only imagine that perhaps dying once had changed something for him, something even he wouldn’t maybe want to admit to. Would his mother know something? Was Leia able to pick up on the change in him as well? She had been distant with him for quite some time, but she was still his mother, and her intuition with the Force seemed to be much better than yours would ever be. Did she see something change in him that you couldn’t discern?

               As if on cue, Poe rolls over to cuddle you, tossing his other arm around you as he pulls you into him. “Hey,” he mumbles, his voice thick with sleep. “When’d you get back? You okay?”

               “Yeah, I’m fine,” you reply quickly. “Just wanted to ask you a few things before I see Leia tomorrow morning.”

               “Yeah, I’m still taking you to see Leia tomorrow morning,” Poe echoes, and you can’t help but roll your eyes. “Try to get some sleep.”

               “Okay,” you reply, and as Poe presses his face into the back of your neck, you can’t help but close your eyes and pretend that you were back in Kylo’s bed, with Kylo’s arms around you instead. Poe was nice, and Poe was warm, but Kylo was home. No matter where you were in the galaxy, Kylo was always home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *in time to the Hess jingle*  
> Krasava's back and she's better than ever- 
> 
> Okay, so no I'm not, not really. To make a very long story short, I always knew I was allergic to lactose but I started having bad intestinal issues and it turns out I'm allergic to gluten too. Fun times. Anyway, while I was, erm, getting sick, I pulled my neck wrong, and reawakened a three-year-old neck parkour injury from when I twisted two vertebrae in my neck to the side, and now I am partially paralyzed...again. Basically I can lie here like a dead fish but sitting up causes spikes of pain through my neck and my back, and moving at all causes me a lot of pain, it's not so much the being in different positions but moving to get there.....like the other night I rolled out of bed trying to get to the bathroom myself but I just couldn't do it and needed someone to legit carry me there which was painful in its own way, but ugh. Super embarrassing. Anyway, that's going to be my life for the next while but as long as I'm "good" and "rest" I should be back on my feet in a few weeks to a few months. The more I rest now, the better I'll be later, and considering you all know how much I love to spar and just be active, you can imagine how much hell this is for me.
> 
> But I want to thank you guys for all your support so far!! I'm going to go back and answer all of the messages you left me individually later (right now my neck is cramping and I'm just trying to get this out as fast as possible so I can lie back down again, it's like every click of the keyboard is like, oww pain, oww pain, oww pain) but I want to let you all know that I'm here and I'm alive and I brought Kylo Ren smut with me...hopefully there will be some more of that coming up in the not-too-distant future too. ;) And as you can see from the top, 85 chapters, yes, the story is finished being written, and now is down to final edits. Admittedly, I didn't read the past few chapters, I think I wanted to tone back on the Poe and I don't think that ended up happening (oopsie) but it is getting increasingly more Kylo-centric in the future, so three cheers for that!! 
> 
> Okay, hopefully this message is coherent, I'm a bit medicated right now and I need to lie down but I just wanted to let you all know that I'm here, I'm alive, and I really do appreciate all the support and messages that I've received, you guys are awesome and I want to give every one of you a giant hug when I get better, cause moving my arms higher than my elbows is not a thing that can happen as of this moment, but hopefully after PT tomorrow I'll be in a bit better shape than I am now. Okay, until Thursday, cheers!!


	57. Chapter 57

               “You _what_?”

               You were walking through the corridors of the base with Poe, using every last reserve of strength in your body to not just simply shove him into the wall behind him and hold him up by the collar of his uniform while his legs struggled uselessly beneath him. He had been wearing it a lot more than his flight suit as of late, his time seemingly monopolized by mundane diplomatic discussions between the Resistance and the Republic. With the First Order again in tatters after the destruction of the _Propitiate_ and no formal entity to make a treaty with, the Republic was seemingly left with the option of asking the Resistance to step in and clean up the mess they had caused by using the information both you and Kylo would provide so that the Republic didn’t have to risk their own army. After that, they were apparently asking the Resistance to formally relinquish their weaponry and demilitarize, lest they be seen as a threat to the New Republic, or rather, the New New Republic, but that wasn’t something that you really cared enough to discuss.

               If you were even supposed to be discussing it.

               There had been some mention of it at dinner last night that was quickly hushed, and the rest of it you managed to pick up on from idle conversation in the hallways. Not all of it you understood, words were cut out left and right, but it was understandable that the people who had done nothing but spend the last decade of their lives here were concerned that they would be kicked out into the cold dark reaches of space and told to fend for themselves again. You doubted most would even know where to begin. There was always a chance they would be offered a place from within the Republic’s military, but a distrust of the Republic ran deep at the Resistance, and you doubted it would be long before the friction between the Republic and the Resistance came to a head. You supposed that’s what the Republic was trying to prevent by asking the Resistance to demilitarize, but you weren’t sure quite what would happen if they didn’t. A war between the Republic and the Resistance was one the Republic would surely lose, and it wasn’t a stretch to imagine that they were painfully aware of that fact.

               Regardless, that wasn’t your problem. _Your_ problem was that Poe had apparently told Leia everything, from what happened back on Tatooine all the way through your trial, which she had been in attendance for, and you weren’t quite sure how to feel about that.

               “You told her _everything_?” you exclaim, even as Poe gestures for you to keep your voice down. “Everything? Even back on Tatooine? You even told her that we-“ Your voice cuts off immediately before you can finish your sentence and Poe gives you a look that you can’t quite decipher. Yes? No? You couldn’t be sure, but you weren’t sure if that said more about you or about him.

               “I told her what she needed to know,” Poe replies, and he can’t help but sound a little aggravated. “You know I have-“

               “No, I know,” you say quickly, shaking your head from side to side. “Look, I know you had to tell her stuff, all right? That’s your job. I’m not asking you to keep secrets, I’m just trying to figure out how much she knows.”

               “Assume she knows everything,” Poe says with some finality, and you make the conscious decision not to respond to him. You weren’t quite sure he did tell her about what happened back on Tatooine, but then again, it didn’t reflect favorably on you. You weren’t quite sure how to explain you slept with her Captain to try to protect her son, because at the time even you couldn’t be sure that that’s what you were really doing. You had simply been doing the best that you could, even though you still weren’t completely convinced that even you knew what that meant. You simply hadn’t been in a right state of mind at the time, and you weren’t completely sure you were any better now.

               “You okay?” Poe asks after a while. “You’ve been, I don’t know, acting differently all morning. Did something happen last night with Ren?”

               “No,” you reply with a quick shake of your head. “No, it’s not him. I’m just worried about seeing Leia again, I guess.”

               Poe tilts his head to the side in confusion, as if he couldn’t possibly understand where you were coming from. “How come?”

               “Kylo may have indicated that she’s not, uh, completely happy with the role I played in the First Order,” you admit nervously. “Or, you know, the fact that I got involved at all.”

               “It was Snoke,” Poe says, as if he doesn’t know better, and you suppose a part of him really doesn’t. He didn’t understand the way that Snoke was able to manipulate you any more than the way he was able to truly understand how Leia could read people, although now that you thought about it, it made sense why she asked Poe to help lead the Resistance. She knew implicitly that he would do whatever she asked, no matter what the cost to himself, and you supposed a part of you sensed that as well. It was probably also why she had so eagerly accepted Rey and Finn into the Resistance as well; she had _sensed_ something about them, some goodness in them, and they had repaid her kind offer with fidelity.

               You, on the other hand, had graciously accepted her offer to be trained to protect her grandson and then betrayed it by signing up with the First Order. It hadn’t been your choice to leave the base, she must have known that, but a part of her must have wondered why you never came back, or at least let her know that you and Ani were okay. She knew implicitly that Kylo wouldn’t hurt either of you, that was something more than you could say for Poe and the rest of the Resistance with the exception of maybe Ladson, but you still could have tried after all she had done for you, rescuing you from the monotony of your old academia and helping you to become what you had once assumed to be the best version of yourself.

               Still, if you had been the best version of yourself with the Resistance, and the worst version of yourself at the First Order, was it possible to go back to who you used to be, or had you been too irreparably damaged? Your body was, your failed senses and the ever-prominent wound in your center made that very, explicitly clear to you, but what about your mind? Was that okay, or would you forever be plagued by thoughts that didn’t quite seem to match up with what you really thought, leading you down a dark corridor into the depths of your mind where fear thrived and darkness lurked around every new revelation? You had always considered yourself realistic before, but now your thoughts seemed not only pessimistic, but fatalistic in nature, and you weren’t quite sure how to curb that negative impulse that seemed to drive you now.

               “Do you think she’ll want to send me away?” you ask, more out of idle wonderment than anything, and Poe turns to regard you sharply.

               “What?” he asks, clearly confused. “No. Is that what you’re worried about? She’s not going to send you away.” He stops walking as he turns to face you, putting his hand on your shoulder. “I know you’re worried, but you shouldn’t be. I know you regret what you did but you’re trying to make up for it, and Leia knows that.” He takes his hand off your shoulder as you start walking again. “And besides,” he adds with some humor in his voice. “You’re Ani’s mother. She’s not going to throw you off base and ruin her relationship with him.”

               “That’s exactly what Kylo said,” you mutter under your breath, and Poe can’t help but make a face. Regardless, he recovers himself quickly.

               “Then you should listen to us,” Poe tells you with some finality. “You should know that if Ren and I happen to agree on anything, we’re probably right.”

               Maybe it’s his choice of words, or something in his tone, but either way, you don’t like how this assertion sits with you. “Do you hate him?” you ask, angling your head to look up at him as you walk.

               “What?” Poe asks again, as if he’s distracted. “I-“ He glances ahead of him, and takes hold of your arm as he steers you down a sharp left corridor that you barely noticed. It was so narrow that it almost blended right into the wall, and you supposed it was designed that way for a reason. It would easily go unnoticed unless someone was specifically looking for it. “We’re almost here.”

               Regardless, you weren’t going to let that deflection go unanswered. “You do,” you insist. “You do hate him.” Poe says nothing. “I mean, I don’t blame you after all he’s done to you, personally, and the Resistance, but-“ you shake your head. “Then why are you trying to save his life? It doesn’t make any sense.”

               “Because those are my orders,” Poe says firmly. “Leia wants her son alive, and he still knows more about the First Order than we do. He’s beneficial to the Resistance, and if he can help us eliminate the threat of they pose to the galaxy once and for all, then we’ll all be grateful for his help.” You can’t help but notice that Poe looks tight-lipped as he’s talking, as if there’s more he wants to say but isn’t.

               “But you hate him,” you continue, and Poe doesn’t so much as even glance in your direction as a new thought strikes you. “You’re helping him, but you’d rather see him dead, wouldn’t you?” Poe just puffs a breath out of his cheeks and keeps walking without looking at you, but you’re not quite ready to accept that. “Stop, stop-“

               From the security of the narrow corridor, you grab hold of his wrist and as he turns to face you, you grab hold of his face in both hands as you reach up and kiss him. Poe returns it, but only for a brief moment before he pulls away in confusion. “What was that for?”

               “Your honesty,” you reply after a moment, before you can’t help but let your face relax into a gentle grin. “And for reminding me that you’re no better than the rest of us.” For some reason, you were relieved to find that Poe could, in fact, be selfish, that he wanted what he wanted and didn’t try to make excuses for it. A part of you wished you could be that honest with yourself, but then again, you had no way of knowing what Poe was thinking at any given time. That challenge was part of what attracted you to him in the first place, the constant enigma of trying to figure out who he was and what he was thinking. Then again, even though you were able to read Kylo’s thoughts and pick up on his emotions, that occasionally just made everything more confusing than they should have otherwise been.

               “Glad you finally noticed,” Poe says, returning your smile as you head back down the hall towards Leia’s room. At the end of the hallway, there’s four doors, two on each side, and you supposed this must be where the upper echelons of the Resistance lived; either that, or perhaps a small team of security personnel to ensure that Leia remained protected at all times. You still weren’t exactly sure what had happened to her back when you had felt her distress of the _Propitiate,_ but you supposed you were going to find out.

               “Okay,” Poe says as he puffs out a breath. “Second door on your right.”

               “You’re not coming with me?” you ask, knowing it’s a stupid question as soon as it leaves your lips. Regardless, Poe just shoots you a sympathetic smile as he reaches forward and squeezes your hand.

               “It’ll be fine,” he tells you. “You can come find me when you’re done if you want to talk about it.”

               You honestly don’t have the heart to tell him that you were planning on seeing Kylo instead, and so you just nod your head forward in a short series of nods as Poe releases your hand and heads back down the narrow corridor. For some reason, you couldn’t help but think back to the first time you had met Leia, when he had stayed outside partially for her protection, partially for your moral support. Back then, you hadn’t needed the moral support, but you could sure use it now. Similarly, back then, she didn’t need any protection from you, and you didn’t think she did now, but you weren’t exactly seen as trustworthy as you were back then either. Still, Leia had apparently decided that it was okay for you to know where her private quarters were, and let you visit her alone, which meant that she didn’t think she had anything to fear from you, and although that should have provided you with at least a small amount of relief, it didn’t provide as much comfort as you would have preferred.

               Still, you know you’re going to have to get this over with, and you don’t want her to sense you just loitering outside her door as you walk up to it and rap your knuckles three times along its surface. There’s a brief pause, and you wonder what you’ll do if she was still asleep, or not even around to hear it, when the door suddenly slides open and you find yourself walking into a modestly well-furnished living room that’s surface was almost entirely covered in…books, not datapads, but actual books. As your eyes swept across the expanse of the room, each one looked older than the last, and you could imagine that Leia had collected these ancient books and scrolls and older exponents of literature from across the galaxy, although you couldn’t be sure what purpose it served her, or what she was trying to find in them.

               “I hope you don’t mind the mess.” Leia’s voice rings out from the other room, and you almost jump out of your skin as you look up to see a golden humanoid droid walking out of the doorframe where you had just heard her voice.

_Leia-?_

               “The General will be just another moment,” the droid informs you. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I am See-Threepio, Human-Cyborg Relations.” He places his small golden hand on his chest, as if he took a great deal of pride in the name. “And you are?”

               You stammer for a moment, but before you have time to respond, Leia comes out of the other room. She’s wearing a simple embroidered purple tunic instead of the military uniform you had seen her in previously, and her elaborate hairstyle had been replaced by a simple braid running down her back.

               “Why don’t you bring us some tea, Threepio?” Leia asks as she steps into the room, gesturing for you to take a seat on the loveseat behind you. You sit down immediately without looking, almost missing the edge of the couch, but Leia at least pretends not to notice as she settles herself into her own wooden chair that looks a lot less comfortable, but she doesn’t seem to mind it.

               Almost immediately, C-3PO brings out a small tray containing a kettle and two small cups, and Leia watches in silence as he pours a cup and hands one to her, before pouring another and handing one to you. You thank him with a stiff nod, your lips pursed firmly together as you mumble a quick word of thanks that doesn’t quite leave your lips. Leia, however, doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to you as she watches C-3PO’s robotic movements with a distant expression across her face. “That will be all Threepio,” she says as soon as he’s placed the kettle back onto the tray. “Why don’t you get back to the archives? You can leave the tray.”

               “Of course, right away,” C-3PO responds as he swivels back to look in your direction. “It was so very nice to meet you.” And with that, his robotic legs carry him to the door, and you both wait in silence until he’s gone. Even after the door has shut, Leia doesn’t speak right away as she sips her tea, and although you can feel the hot tea burning the insides of your hands through the cup, you don’t make any move to drink it or even adjust your position.

               “Is that a, uh, new droid?” you ask in an eager attempt to break the silence, and Leia laughs audibly at this.

               “That droid has been with me for a _long_ time,” Leia tells you, and you can tell by the way she exaggerates _long_ that she must have had some kind of sentimental attachment to it. Either way, that’s not for you to judge as you settle back a little ways into the cushion, holding the rim of the teacup a little closer to your lips as if you were finally considering drinking from it.

               “How are you?” Leia finally asks, and you’re taken a bit aback by the perceived sincerity in her voice as she poses the question.

               “I’m, uh, good,” you stammer awkwardly, not sure what to really say to her, but Leia just chuckles and shakes her head from side to side, as if she knew better. You supposed she did. You supposed she could see through you right now, see how nervous you were, but beneath that? Even you had no idea what was beneath that, but you knew _good_ wouldn’t be a word you would use to describe it. “I guess you’ve already heard about what happened,” you say quietly, trying to keep the bitterness out of your voice. “About what I’ve done.”

               “I have,” Leia confirms as she sips her tea, making no effort to say more than that. You adjust your position a bit uncomfortably, trying to figure out why you were really here. Maybe Leia didn’t know quite what to say to you either, although she looked a lot more composed than you did. Even still, you supposed that it wouldn’t have been hard to, considering she got to look safely down at you from her moral high ground. She didn’t do anything wrong, to the best of your knowledge, she never had, and she wasn’t the one who was still in fear of being punished.

               “It seems we have a lot to talk about,” Leia says finally as she sets down her tea cup, and you look gratefully up at her. The only thing worse than actually talking things out was sitting in uncomfortable silence before talking things out. Much like your duel with Snoke, if you were going to fight and probably lose, you wanted to get it over with as soon as possible, rather than drawing out the inevitable. You had won that duel, for whatever reason, you had come out the victor, although you didn’t think this was a conversation you could say you would win or lose with any real certainty. “Why don’t you tell me what happened, in your own words?” Leia asks, and you purse your lips together.

               “Since Kylo took me off base?” you ask, and Leia nods her head forward, as if that was fine by her. You hesitate for a moment, not at all eager to retell your story yet again, but feeling compelled to do so nonetheless. Although you weren’t quite sure if Leia was in absolute command of the Resistance anymore, she had founded it, and thus you concluded that she could be seen as the ultimate authority regarding your fate. If she wanted you gone, the Resistance would probably remove you without waiting for any dissenting opinions.

               “Kylo brought me to Naboo,” you tell her, opting for the short version. “We raised Ani there for a while until he had to start doing stuff in the First Order again, but he didn’t want to leave us alone, what with the Republic hunting me down as well, so Ani and I travelled from base to base with him. We didn’t do much, we were pretty much confined to our quarters for our own safety, but we ended up going back to Naboo. You must have found us, somehow, and then we escaped to the _Propitiate_ and we stayed there for quite a while until we, uh, left. After that, we hopped around the galaxy until we ended up on Tatooine, where I ran into Poe, and then we all ended up on the _Propitiate_ again, along with Ladson, where Hux revealed himself to be Snoke. He-he stabbed Kylo, through the chest, with his own lightsaber, and I told Ani to take his body back and escape to the hangar. I fought Snoke and then tried to bring down the _Propitiate_ by sealing the central vents to their superweapon, right as your team started their assault on the outside of the ship. I got blasted in the stomach and Poe carried me out, and that’s when I fell unconscious and woke up here.”

               You hoped that Leia wouldn’t question too many of the gaps and time jumps in your story, but you weren’t exactly eager to relive every unfortunate detail, and you especially wanted to leave out the part about you kidnapping Poe. You weren’t entirely sure which version he had told her, although you could assume that she had probably guessed that his loyalty to the Resistance and his mission came before anything he had with you. You didn’t blame him for that; you truly, honestly didn’t, but you couldn’t deny that it made things considerably harder for you. Regardless, you had fallen for it, and as much as you didn’t want to, you had to take ownership for your actions and take responsibility for the terrible things you had done. Leia, you knew implicitly, would not allow you to do anything less.

               “Is that the superweapon you helped create?” Leia asks, and you know right then that she’s not going to pull any punches.

               “Yes,” you say immediately, letting your eyes drop down to the cup in front of you.

               “I don’t remember you having any knowledge of advanced fleet weaponry when you were here last,” Leia says evenly, and you figure that’s her way of asking how in the galaxy you even knew what you were talking about.

               “Phasma made a blaster for Ani to practice on,” you explain to her, muttering like a petulant child afraid of being scolded. “It used a combination of Kyber crystals and plasma that relied on the Force-sensitivity of the user for better accuracy and used only a small amount of plasma compared to standard blasters. I offered the idea to Hux with the belief that he might be able to adapt her technology on a much larger scale to create a better weapon.”

               “So it was Phasma’s idea?” she asks, and you shrug your shoulders uncomfortably, not sure how to answer that question. Perhaps Phasma had offered that idea to Hux before only to see it shot down, but maybe he considered it a valid solution again when you brought it up? Perhaps Hux himself had dismissed the idea, but Snoke had quicky seen how such a weapon could be used to his benefit when you suggested it to him? You didn’t know, you weren’t sure, and you had no way to answer her. Leia herself seems to sense this as she changes her question. “Why would you help them with it?”

               “Because I wanted to impress Hux,” you answer automatically, and Leia seems surprised by your candor. She wasn’t the only one. That was a thought you had entertained in the back of your mind where you knew you’d never have to answer for it, but it wasn’t something you wanted to admit to anyone else, not even Poe or Kylo. Still, you couldn’t deny that there was a certain amount of truth in your words, and Leia seems to nod to herself, as if she had suspected that this might be the case.

               “You mean Snoke?” she asks, and you shrug uncomfortably again, unsure of how to respond.

               “I mean, I guess so,” you reply after a momentary pause. “I mean, I didn’t know he was Snoke at the time. None of us did. We just knew that something was changing me, and Kylo wanted to get me far away from it as fast as possible.”

               “Yes, Ani explained as much,” Leia answers, and you can feel a pit drop into your stomach. You had no idea how much Ani had told her, but you could bet that he had probably told her a lot, and you could also stand to guess that a lot of what he had said had been the truth as well. She knew that you had kidnapped her Captain and one of her troops, if that’s what she considered Ladson. If Poe and Kylo had kept the truth from her, Ani definitely had not.

               “Then I guess you know everything,” you conclude with some finality. Leia looks up at you suddenly, eyebrows raised, as if wondering when you had suddenly become so brash. “I know why I’m here. I know what I’ve done. Kylo implied you weren’t really happy with me, and I’m pretty sure I can guess at least several reasons why. You set up the Resistance for the sole purpose of counteracting the First Order, and I joined them, even after you helped me and did so much for me.”

               “How much were you aware that Snoke was controlling you?” Leia asks, and this time you have to pause as you think back.

               “I don’t think I was,” you admit hesitantly. “I mean, I knew something was happening to me, I knew I felt _different_ , but even Kylo didn’t know that it was Snoke. He didn’t know what was happening either, that’s why we left.”

               “And that’s how you ended up on Tatooine.”

               “That’s right.”

               “And that’s when you ran into Poe?”

               “Correct.”

               You shift nervously in your chair, trying to make the motion as inconspicuous as possible as Leia appraises you, choosing her next words carefully. “And what happened there?”

               “Poe captured me,” you say quickly, trying to get the words out of you in a rush. “He captured me, brought me back to one of your safe houses, I guess, and he and Ladson tried to bring me back here, again, I’m assuming, before Kylo and Ani saved me and then we turned around and captured them.” Considering Ani had already told her everything, there wasn’t much use in holding back now. He still harbored considerable guilt about what had happened, and you knew he would be eager to get that off his chest at the soonest opportunity. Even still, you couldn’t quite say that you were eager to do the same.

               “What happened with Poe?” Leia asks, and you grit your teeth as you drop your eyes. She was pushing you, you knew that, pushing you to see if you’d snap, or how far you’d be pushed until you refused to answer her. Even still, you don’t _want_ to say anything, and Leia decides to put you out of your misery once and for all. “What would you say if I told Poe to lure you in and capture you by any means necessary, even if it meant using your old relationship against you?”

               You swallow hard and avoid her eyes, trying to ignore the uncomfortable knot that has suddenly taken up residence in your chest. You weren’t stupid, you had at least assumed that much yourself, but you had thought that Poe was simply trying to play to your sentimentality, trying to appeal to the bit of goodness that you had left by trying to access the part of you that still cared for him. Now Leia was offering you the truth, that it had been her idea, a filthy plot to get you to lower your defenses around him and make you vulnerable. It was an underhanded move, a dirty trick, but you should have known the Resistance wasn’t above playing dirty. They were the ones who had infiltrated the Starkiller Base with the Tortutaru to begin with, and they were the ones who sent you in as a _distraction_ for Kylo Ren. Truth be told, Poe had basically played the same role for you that you had played for Kylo, both on the Starkiller and on the _Resolute_ , and you didn’t like how that made you feel. Not one bit.

               “I could assume as much,” you say quietly, glancing down.

               “And yet you allowed yourself to be captured?” Leia asks, and you shrug your shoulders.

               “I don’t know what I was thinking at the time,” you admit. “My head wasn’t in the best of places, I don’t know. I was just trying to do the best I could at the time, and I wasn’t thinking straight. I know it doesn’t excuse what I did, and I can’t take that back now.” You shake your head from side to side as you stare at a spot in the distance as Leia looks on.

               “I know,” Leia says softly, and you can’t help but pout as you arch an eyebrow in her direction, trying to figure out what she’s talking about. “Rey was the first to feel it, probably because you two had become so close while you were here. Luke felt it next, but by that point it was clear that some evil had overtaken you. We were so focused in trying to figure out what to do that we didn’t notice that Rey was changing too until it was too late, but luckily Luke caught on before any more damage could be done.” She shakes her head. “So much happened in such a short amount of time, and we couldn’t keep on top of any of it.”

               You pause for a moment, hearing something resigned in her tone. “Is that when something happened to you?” you ask quietly. “I felt it back on the _Propitiate._ I felt like I was choking. I didn’t know what was happening, I just knew it had something to do with you.”

               “I was poisoned,” Leia tells you, and you can’t help but let your jaw drop in shock. You knew it had to be something dramatic in order to feel her distress all the way in the Unknown Region, but poison? Who’d want to poison her? Who would even get close? Leia seems to sense the myriad of questions you have as they flick across your features as she nods her head slowly. “Kohun centipedes. Someone from the Republic snuck them in under the guise of trying to enlist with us,” she explains. “But that’s been dealt with. It’s not worth going over again. I’m all right now, that’s all you need to concern yourself with.”

               “I’m glad you’re okay,” you say firmly, letting her know that you mean it, and she looks up at you as she nods her head thankfully.

               “Which is more than I can say for you,” she says with a sigh. “Luke has already explained to me that you’ve already lost too much of yourself to the dark side, much like my son in that way. And yet-“ She looks up at you. “You were able to defeat Snoke, and save Ani from a fate far worse than what my son had endured. I’m very grateful for your help.”

               “Your training is what helped,” you say quickly, mostly because it just sounds like the right thing to say. “You allowed Rey to help me get in touch with the light side of the Force. Without that foundation, I might have been lost to the dark side for good.” Leia just shakes her head, like she appreciates what you’re trying to do but doesn’t believe it either. “No, you’re right, she didn’t help me,” you admit at length, and Leia looks up at you sharply. “It was Kylo. It was your son. He’s the one who helped me get through this. He got me away from Snoke and he took me away from the _Propitiate_ when I was losing sight of myself. He made sure that Ani would have gotten away from there, even if I didn’t want to leave. He’s the one you should be thanking. He sacrificed himself for me, for Ani, for everyone, even Poe and Ladson. He’s-“

               “-changed?” Leia asks, raising her eyebrows, and you hesitate before nodding your head slowly. “I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or not, but he seems different from when he was here last.”

               “He _is_ different,” you tell her, leaning forward to rest your elbows on your knees. “I mean, after Snoke disappeared when he was on Naboo, he was a lot softer and gentler with me and Ani than I’ve ever seen him, but I think that might have been due to leaving the First Order behind him, at least for a while.”

               “Snoke tormented him,” Leia says, and the regret is palpable in her voice. “He tormented him for years and I didn’t know what to do or how to help him. I just felt so useless, but maybe he didn’t need someone to feel responsible for him. Maybe he was looking for something to feel responsible for himself.”

               “Maybe,” you reply with a light shrug of your shoulders. “I don’t know, I don’t really know what he was like before the Starkiller Base, but I know Ani’s tantrums calmed down almost immediately once we got to Naboo. They were good for each other.” You pause for a moment, and Leia tilts her head to the side as she watches you think. “He’s different _now_ , though,” you continue. “And I don’t know how to put my finger on it. Like, he seems more selfless. Sometimes it seems like he’s just pushing me to move on without him, and I don’t want to do that. I know he still cares about me, I can feel it through the bond, but he seems, I don’t know, different. He’s him and yet he’s not.”

               “Dying changed things for him,” Leia says, but she’s not looking at you now. She’s staring off at a spot in the distance, and you quietly glance down at the cup in your hands again, but make no motion to drink from it. “He won’t give me any details, but he saw Han, spoke with him, I can sense it.”

               “We haven’t talked about it,” you admit quietly. “Although to be honest, I don’t think he’d talk about it with me. Some things he just likes to keep to himself, you know?” Leia nods her head in understanding, and you glance down at your cup again.

               “He’s more like Ben again,” Leia admits. “I haven’t known Ben in so many years I almost feel crazy for thinking it, but it almost feels like I have my son back.”

               A part of this rubs you the wrong way, but you try to let it go. Ben Solo was dead, and there was just Kylo Ren now. If he happened to be more like who Ben Solo used to be, then fine, but in your mind, Ben Solo no longer existed, and it would be impossible for Kylo to go back to that person if he tried. “But now he’s back and we might lose him to the Republic again,” you lament quietly. “I don’t want to lose him, but I don’t know what I can do.”

               “I don’t think there’s much we can do,” Leia admits quietly as she readjusts herself in her chair. “When Darth Vader died, he became Anakin Skywalker again. In saving Luke, he was able to become one with the Force when he passed because he was able to find balance between the light and the dark within himself. After that happened, his body was physically absorbed by the Force, and there was nothing left of him but his armor, and Luke decided to burn it back on Endor in the old Jedi style. I didn’t think much of it until we got back to the Alliance fleet, and the Alliance Command was furious with him. They had no body to present to the people, no proof to present to the systems that Darth Vader was truly gone for good. They sent someone to try to collect the remains of his armor from where Luke had left them, but I don’t know if they were ever found.” You sit there quietly, wondering why Leia was telling you this. “From what you’ve described, Snoke took over Hux’s form and his body went down with the _Propitiate,_ correct?”

               “Yeah,” you say quickly. “Yeah, and Snoke was possessing his body, so there’s nothing left of him either, which means…” You pause, and Leia nods as you reach the conclusion for yourself. “So there’s no physical remains to present to the Senate to show that Snoke or Hux are really gone.”

               “They may believe he’s gone,” Leia admits with a small scoff. “But they’re going to want to see someone punished for Hosnian Prime, for every ill that the Republic has had to suffer through after everything that’s happened.”

               “And they’re going to turn to Kylo to take the fall for everything,” you say quietly as you let your eyes slip closed momentarily.

               “They have no one else,” Leia tells you, and you quickly open your eyes as you glance back up at her. “No, the only person who ever had any real problem with you was Captain Deso, and I don’t think I need to tell you why that is.” You just snort as you nod your head. “No, they have nothing physical linking you to the First Order. We know what you’ve done, but you can do more good with us here.”

               “I’ll do whatever I can,” you tell her, and for a moment you think you can feel hot tears welling up behind your eyes. Leia watches you now, but her expression isn’t comforting, it’s curious. “I’m sorry,” you stammer over yourself. “I just hate this. Kylo’s much, much better than I am. He’s much better for Ani than I am, and I don’t belong here. Kylo does. You finally have an opportunity to get your son back, and now he’s going to be taken away from you again. It’s not fair.”

               “Nothing is fair,” Leia says with a shake of her head. “But I can see how much you care for him, and I’m glad that he had someone there for him when he needed it. He wouldn’t have come back to himself if it wasn’t for you, I have no doubts about that.”

               “But he’s still in trouble,” you insist. “I want to do something for him, I mean, I have to do something for him. I don’t want to move on. I want him here, with me, and I’ll do whatever it takes to help him.” You can’t help but cast your eyes down again. “He just seems like he’s ready to give up, that he knows what the Republic is going to do to him and it’s not worth fighting for. I mean, he’ll fight, but it just doesn’t seem like his heart’s in it.”

               “He’s trying to be realistic to keep himself from getting hurt,” Leia tells you. “But I can see why he doesn’t want to seem too optimistic, for your or Ani’s sakes. We don’t know which way this can turn yet.” She shakes her head. “Back when I was Senator, I would have thought he had a chance, but now? I’m not sure. The Republic is desperate for someone to be held accountable for the destruction the First Order caused, and they don’t have anyone else.”

               “But it’s not a lost cause, right?” you ask desperately, pushing yourself towards the end of your seat. “He still has a chance, right?”

               “I hope so,” she says quietly, and for a moment you think you can feel her through the Force bond.

               “Me too,” you admit. “But all we can do is trust in the Force, right?”

               Leia pauses for a moment, and something seems to be stirring behind her eyes. “Where were you planning on going?” she asks. “After we finished here?”

               “Um, to see Kylo?” you offer, and you quickly set your cup down on the table as Leia gets to her feet.

               “Let’s go see him together,” Leia says as she offers you her arm, and you quickly take it as she leads you out of her apartment. As you walked down the hall, you tried to give Kylo some kind of signal, some kind of warning that you would be coming. You could only imagine his face when he saw you and Leia entering into his small room together, unannounced, as if this was some kind of attack against him. You honestly had no clue what Leia wanted to talk to him about, especially with you there, but you supposed you were going to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Leia and Reader are off to see Kylo.....but what about, what about? I don't know how much smut I can promise with both of them in the room, but I can tell you that next chapter is one of my absolute favorite chapters and I've been waiting for it for a while now......for a reason that I don't think anyone here is going to guess, but feel free to speculate. ;) Until Saturday, cheers!!


	58. Chapter 58

               You stand there awkwardly, shuffling your feet from side to side, trying to decide if this was one of the punishments that your treachery had caused you. Kylo was glaring openly at you, or perhaps Leia, you weren’t quite sure, considering that you were standing right beside her. You could feel through the Force that he was not happy to be seeing you both standing there together, in his room, as if this was some kind of intervention for him, and you could only hope that that wasn’t what Leia had in mind. You had never had a family meeting of sorts, and it wasn’t one that you could say you were looking forward to after everything that had transpired.

               “Is there something you want?” Kylo asks finally, as if he’s bored by your combined presence instead of intimidated by it.

               “To talk,” Leia says firmly, as if this wasn’t something that was already obvious to everyone in the room.

“Nothing to talk about,” Kylo mutters under his breath as he glances away, but you can tell that this motion only hardens Leia’s resolve.

“I was thinking we could talk about your upcoming tribunal,” Leia says coolly, but when Kylo fails to give more of a reaction than simply tolerating your presence there, Leia decides to try to take a different tactic as she gestures to you. “She’s worried about you; she thinks you’ve given up.”

               Kylo narrows his eyes at you, and for a moment you stand there awkwardly, not sure how to respond to Leia so blatantly steering things in your direction. You had expressed your concerns, but you knew that Leia had concerns of her own, although you couldn’t be absolutely sure that she had voiced them, at least not maybe not directly with Kylo. You could imagine that they had talked, but you hadn’t exactly been privy to those conversations, and so you just couldn’t be sure you knew how either of them would respond to this situation. They hadn’t seen each other in so long, and even though Leia wanted to believe she had her old son back, you could imagine that she was still cautious and wary of being betrayed again.

               “As do you,” Kylo says at length, and you can’t help but puff a breath out of your cheeks, relieved that Kylo knew that you weren’t the only one who was concerned about him, especially when you couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t misinterpret your concern for weakness. “You’ve made your sentiments on the Republic and my outcome quite clear.”

               “I said we would have to play this carefully,” Leia says in a tone you’ve never heard her use before. “But I never told you that you should give up. You know I am trying to do everything I can to save your life.”

               “Clearly,” Kylo replies, but he’s taciturn as he glances away, and you can tell immediately that he doesn’t think he deserves to be saved. A part of him honestly doesn’t want to be. He had died once, and that was supposed to be his escape so that he didn’t have to go through all of this again. He didn’t want to be drawn into the spotlight, to be ridiculed and be made a mockery of in front of the entire galaxy, before he was forced to succumb to whatever death the Republic had devised for him. However they did it, though, it would be humiliating and degrading, especially for the great Kylo Ren, who many had imagined would go down fighting in a brilliant blaze of valor. Instead, the Republic wanted to put him down like a petty criminal, and you could think of no worse way for him to die. As Phasma had said years ago, death was inevitable, and despite the randomness of birth, your death was something that you could more or less control, if you were lucky. She had planned to go out fighting, and you didn’t even need the Force bond to know that Kylo had wanted to go out the same way.

               “This is just as hard on us as it is on you,” you tell him firmly as Kylo turns to glance up at you. “I know it doesn’t seem like it is, but-“

               “It’s harder on you,” Kylo quickly responds, and you can’t help but frown at him, but he doesn’t say anything more.

               “Do you want to die?” Leia asks suddenly, and even though you’re surprised that she would put a question to him so bluntly, Kylo doesn’t do more than shrug his shoulders absent-mindedly, as if she had posed him a much simpler question.

               “Is there anything left for me here?” he asks, and it’s clearly not an existential question. As much as it pained you to admit it, Kylo didn’t belong here. He would never be welcomed by the Resistance with open arms, and he would never be able to live a private life. Even if he promised not to cause any more damage to the galaxy than he already caused, it wouldn’t be fair to any of his victims to find any happiness beyond what he had already achieved. Kylo’s time seemed over and done with, and while you could understand that, it didn’t make it any less easier to deal with. You still wanted him here, still needed him here, and you weren’t about to let him go.

               “I think you know there is,” you tell him as you cross your arms over your chest. “You still have me, you still have Ani-“ You glance hesitantly over at Leia before you decide to go for it anyway. “And your mom cares about you. Besides, what if something happens? What if Snoke comes back? You know his first targets will be Ani and me.”

               “As I said, that’s why I want you to stay here,” Kylo says crossly, as if he wasn’t ready to have that conversation all over again.

               “I’m not their problem,” you tell him, unable to help but raise your voice, even with Leia so close by. “Ani’s your son, Kylo, and you and me? We’re bonded, and that isn’t going to change. We’re responsible for each other, whether you like it or not.”

               Kylo just sighs and puts his forehead in one hand, as though he was trying to figure out where to go from here. “What do you want me to do?” he asks at length, his voice quiet. “If I could go away with you and Ani, I would. As it stands, the Republic will never allow me to have that freedom again. Either they’ll cage me or kill me, and there’s not much I can say that will influence either.”

               “That’s not true-“ you start to argue, but Leia holds up her hand to stop you. Her face is set, and she’s gazing just past the wall next to Kylo’s head.

               “He’s right,” she says to no one in particular. “No one there expects you to show any remorse for what you’ve done. Our best chance is coming up with a defense that shows you have more purpose alive than dead, and in order to do that, we’re going to need more information, and it has to come from you.”

               “Information?” you ask, turning to face her, but Kylo only glances away.

               “Operational doctrine,” Leia replies simply, but you’re still not sure you completely understand what that means. “Luke can take the information from you, but it will be easier for everyone if you’ll help us-“

               “No,” Kylo says immediately, quietly, but he doesn’t look at either one of you.

               “What do you want from him, exactly?” you ask Leia, but she seems hesitant to respond. Fortunately, she doesn’t have to tell you anything. Without warning, the door opens from behind you and a familiar voice answers before you even have time to turn around.

               “Everything he’s not willing to share,” Poe replies casually as he strides into the room with Ani in tow, and the look on Kylo’s face is nothing short of disdain. “Sorry, but I saw Ani in the hallway and thought he might like to come as well.”

               “That’s fine,” Leia says dismissively, and for a moment you wonder if this meeting had been pre-arranged. You couldn’t imagine it would be, and yet, how else did Poe know that you and Leia were down here? You weren’t sure, but you didn’t really think it was a question that you should be asking.

               “But what information does he have that you can’t get from Ani or me?” you ask as Ani comes to stand beside you, trying to make enough space for everyone in Kylo’s small room.

               “A lot,” Poe explains. “To break it down, he’s been with the First Order a lot longer than you have, since before the New Republic was even aware of it. The only problem is that a group that large doesn’t come out of nowhere. There were Senators, people in the New Republic, who were helping to create the First Order behind the scenes. Some were accounted for, but others weren’t. There are probably still people in the Senate that have ties to the First Order that we’re unaware of.”

               “So you want Kylo to name them?” you ask as you raise an eyebrow. “Give up someone else’s life in exchange for his own?”

               “He’s not going to do it,” Ani says flatly as he turns to you, although you’re not sure what he sounds more disappointed by, the fact that Kylo wouldn’t, or the fact that he was being put in this position.

               “So far he’s also been uncooperative in disclosing anything he knows about First Order operations before the destruction of the _Propitiate_ ,” Leia says as she turns to you. “We know that you have information we require as well, but it’s him we need to hear it from. If you can corroborate that information later, it will only help make the situation look better, but it has to come from him first.”

               “But he wasn’t really even involved in anything back when I was on the _Propitiate_ ,” you tell them. “I was the one doing everything with Hux. Kylo was barely involved, Hux, or Snoke, I guess, practically told me so himself. He told me he was constantly questioning Kylo’s commitment because it seemed like he was defying all of his orders.”

               Kylo shifts uncomfortably but doesn’t look at you as Ani puts a hand delicately on the back of your arm. “That’s not entirely true,” he says quietly, as if he was trying to have a private conversation in the middle of this crowded room where everyone could clearly hear him.

               “What do you mean, not true?” you ask, shaking your head. “On the _Propitiate_ , Kylo wasn’t involved in anything, end of story.” There’s a silence the descends upon the room, and Kylo’s eyes flick to yours and then back again. “Kylo, what did you do?”

               Kylo remains silent, and so Ani decides to fill in the gaps for you. “Dad went away sometimes,” he explains. “On missions and stuff. He was always busy doing something, but usually he was working with Phasma on something. Sometimes he was gone overnight, sometimes for a few days. You never noticed.”

               “Okay, that’s not true,” you say immediately, because it obviously wasn’t. You would _know_ if Kylo had left, because you would feel it in the Force, or you would have just noticed that he wasn’t there. Regardless, the energy in the room seems different now, tenser, and you can’t help but awkwardly shuffle your feet as you realize just how little attention you had paid to Kylo and Ani while you were there. And then when you had clued into things, you had left, although you were still wondering why Kylo had seemed to continue to be so distant with you. It wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine why now, with him seemingly spending so little time around you then, but you couldn’t dwell on the past. You had to dwell on the present and the future, and, in a way, it made the whole situation worse. The time you could have spent with Kylo was gone now, and maybe that at least in part explained your guilt over this whole situation. Kylo was not only here because of you, but the last time you had ample time to really spend with him, you had been either ignoring him completely, even unintentionally, or awkwardly skirting around each other. And now that you realized the one thing that you really wanted was to be with Kylo, just to be safe and warm and happy with each other, that was being taken away from you while you did nothing to try to stop it.

               And it was all your fault.

               “I have to go,” you say quickly, and although Ani reaches out to you, no one says anything as you leave the room, not even Kylo, as you quickly brush your way past Poe. Your feet carry you down the corridors so fast that you almost felt like the paneled walls were flying by you, and you only seemed to be picking up speed as you went. “I’m a horrible person, I’m a horrible person,” you whisper to yourself over and over again. You felt the familiar shudder in your chest, the familiar ache that you were about to have a complete and total meltdown, and voices in the distance told you that this was not a safe place to do it. You could go back to Poe’s room, but that was in the middle of a usually well-trafficked hallway, and that was too far. No, you were heading back towards your old apartment, just like you used to, and at the end of that familiar hallway was the surface hangar. There was no safety for you on base, no privacy, and that only meant that you had to leave it, at least temporarily, so you could cry and break down and try and figure out what you needed to do before you got back.

               As the hangar doors open, you see a group of people milling about a ship parked off to the right, and so you quickly head into the left hangar bay. It had been expanded since you had been here last, in fact, the whole hangar looked different, bigger, more polished, upgraded with the latest and greatest technology that was no doubt at least partially funded by the Republic. Still, you don’t dwell on that as you find one of the old _Beta-_ class shuttles that you used to practice on parked nearby, its boarding ramp still extended.

               You quickly make your way over to it, trying to seem as inconspicuous as possible, acting as though you were _supposed_ to be there, but no sooner had you placed a foot on the boarding ramp than a tall, scruffy man appeared at the top of it. He seemed older, and was remarkably thin, but his clothes wore the distinction of elevated rank. “What are you doing here?” You can tell by his tone that he’s not happy, and while you don’t recognize him, he seems to recognize you.

               And it’s more than just a little obvious that he doesn’t like you. At all.

               “I’m taking the ship out for a run,” you tell him, trying to make your voice sound as innocent as possible. “Poe Dameron said I could. I’ve been cooped up on this base for a while, and he said that it would be good for me to get some air.”

               “Who gave you clearance to be in this area?” the man barks, as if he hadn’t heard a word you said. Regardless, it’s the spit that’s flying in your face from his open mouth as he leans in close to yours that really sets you off. “You are not permitted to be in here.”

               “I just said, Poe Dameron said I could,” you argue, your hands balling into hands at your sides. “Do you actually fucking listen when people talk to you, because I literally just said _Captain Dameron_ gave me permission to be in here so I can take a light craft. I have a flight plan, I have a callsign on register with the Controller, and I-“

               “If Captain Dameron would be so foolish as to permit _you_ to simply steer one of our spacecraft out of orbit-“

               “How would I take it out of orbit?” you demand as you glance back to the shuttle. “That’s a Sienar Beta shuttle, I trained on them here all the time when _I_ was here, long before you were, apparently. Can it go into orbit? Sure. Will it get me very far? Not really.”

               “Even still, I very much doubt you’ve obtained clearance to be able to fly solo,” the man sniffs, and you’re about two seconds away from Force choking him out before you can feel a hand clap you on the back.

               “’Course not,” a man says as he steps up beside you. “Sorry I’m late, Pete got into the tool crates again and started causing all sorts of havoc. Took a while to calm him down.” He turns back to the man in front of you, who is watching you both very closely. “Captain Dameron has said she’s not a risk, so unless you’re questioning his judgement…” He lets his voice trail off, and it’s not hard to wonder why. Captain Dameron probably outranked mostly everyone on the base, and he definitely outranked whoever this man was.

               “And Dameron sent _you_ to accompany her?” the man asks, and you turn to the guy on your left who appeared to be coming to your rescue. He looked like he could be a pilot, although he wasn’t wearing one of the Resistance signature jumpsuits. Instead, his maintenance uniform and hands were stained with mechanical grease, and he seemed to be covered with the same sort of soot that Poe was usually covered in after working on his engine.

               “That’s what he said,” the pilot says with a shrug of his shoulders. “I mean, we could wait around while you find him and ask, but I believe he was trading words with the General and I can’t remember which one takes interruptions as the bigger offense.”

               The man stares him down for a long moment, but the pilot, to his credit, seems completely unaffected as he stares back at him. “Have her back before sundown,” the man says with finality as he strides away, but the pilot isn’t about to let him get the last word in.

               “Captain’s orders exactly, sir,” he calls after him, and you can clearly see the man cringe as he hikes up his shoulders before he heads out of the western hangar.

               “So, uh, thanks,” you say as you turn back towards the pilot, only to find him bounding up into the shuttle himself.

               “What are you waiting for?” he asks as he turns around to face you. “If you’re coming, you better hurry up.”

               You jaw opens and closes as the pilot disappears inside, and you have no choice but to follow him, your earlier outburst completely masked by confusion as you head into the cockpit of the shuttle to see him sitting in the pilot’s chair, hitting a variety of buttons you immediately recognize as the start-up sequence. “Better strap in,” he says as he nods over to the co-pilot’s chair, but even as you do so, you can’t quite figure out why you are.

               “Who are you?” you ask at length. “Do you know me? Have we met before?”

               “No,” the pilot answers, seemingly paying more attention to the console than to you. “And don’t take this the wrong way, but I know _of_ you, same as anyone around here.”

               “None taken,” you mutter under your breath. At least this person appeared to be a sympathizer, rather than someone who hated you out right otherwise they never would have come to your aid. You wanted to get off of D’Qar more than anything, just wanted to _go_ , but at least this time you would have company, considering you hadn’t actually asked Poe if it would be all right to hop in a ship and fly away for a while. You weren’t planning on leaving D’Qar’s atmosphere, that was true enough, you just wanted a break from everything that was going on. You wanted to find a place where you didn’t have to feel responsible for anything, and right now, the only place where it felt like you could do that was _away_. You knew Rey would again attempt to teach you to find control and solace from within yourself, but for now that seemed like a long time away. Could you learn to regain control of your emotions and your inner self again? You had no idea what that would even look like, and the word _trying_ made you feel like it would require spending much more energy than you had at the present moment.

               “Control,” the pilot says as he picks up the intercom. “This is RedSparrow here with-“ He suddenly glances over at you. “You said Dameron gave you a callsign?”

               “Yeah,” you reply quickly, hoping beyond hope he wasn’t going to make you actually say it. But RedSparrow just raises his eyebrows expectantly, and you let out a sigh. “It’s Moonstaff, okay? It’s fucking Moonstaff.”

               To his credit, the pilot doesn’t seem in the least bit humored by your callsign. “Control, this is Redsparrow here with Moonstaff, just looking to catch a little air within atmosphere, are we clear for go?” There’s a brief pause, and then the Controller speaks up through the comlink.

               “RedSparrow, I read you, but I’ve been notified that Moonstaff has not obtained sufficient clearance to depart-“

               “That’s a shame,” RedSparrow mutters as he glances over at you, and you sigh, thinking you’re going to have to disembark after all, when suddenly the ship lurches forward. You’re about to ask what the hell he’s doing when you suddenly notice that there’s another ship that’s preparing to head out of the opening hangar doors on the far left, and RedSparrow quickly brings the shuttle around to fly up and around the numerous parked ships, almost colliding with the transport shuttle that was on taxi as he nearly clips the top of the shuttle, just managing to squeeze out the hangar doors in time.

               You can hear him chuckling quietly to himself, and for a moment you wonder if you’ve just been kidnapped by a First Order sympathizer, or perhaps someone from the Republic who was looking to capture you as well. If that was the case, you just made it really easy for them to get you not only alone, but defenseless. Even though you could probably snap his neck with the Force, you weren’t exactly eager to add to your body count, nor were you really comfortable killing the pilot of a ship who could probably set it crashing onto D’Qar’s surface before you could figure out how to pull it out of a nosedive.

               “So anywhere you want to go?” the pilot asks, as if he had not just ignored the Controller and almost crashed into several ships on the way out of the hangar. “Or were you just looking to get some air?”

               “Air,” you reply faintly, not sure if you even heard your own voice.

               “I hear that,” the pilot replies with a firm nod of his head. “An underground bunker can get pretty stuffy after a while, but I’m sure you’ll get used to it again. You didn’t have a problem the first time, right?”

               “No, but I was pretty busy-“ You stop as you turn to look at him. “Wait, how did you know I was here before? Are you sure we haven’t met?”

               “Could have,” RedSparrow replies. “Then again, there was only one of you and plenty of us. I don’t think there’s a day that went by that I didn’t hear some mention of you, from what you did on the Starkiller Base, or something about your lightsaber, or how you joined back in with the First Order.”

               You couldn’t help but let out a soft groan as you rolled your eyes. Apparently you had kept the gossip mill churning without even realizing you were doing it. You had just called it living your life, but apparently some other people decided to use it as a source of their own entertainment. “None of its true,” you tell him. “Whatever you heard, it’s not true. People on military bases love to talk, love to up each other’s stories-“

               “Last week someone told me that Kylo Ren is over seven feet tall and his limbs were reconstructed with cybernetic enhancements after what Snoke did to him,” RedSparrow tells you, his voice completely deadpan as he stares out the front window, and you can’t help but snort.

               “Pretty much,” you reply, deciding to test the waters as you glance over at him. “Kylo Ren _is_ over seven feet tall, though.”

               “Dude ain’t that big,” the pilot replies without missing a beat, and you can’t help but let a small laugh escape from underneath your breath as you lean back in your seat and stare at the landscape that passes you by as the pilot flies low to the ground, lower than Poe ever let you fly.

               “So you’re a pilot?” you ask, glancing over at him. “Under one of Poe’s squadrons?”

               “Yes, m’am,” he replies with a firm nod of his head.

               “Don’t call me m’am,” you say with an errant shrug of your shoulders. “That just sounds, ugh, I don’t know. Just call me-“

               “Moonstaff?” he asks with a raised eyebrow as he glances over at you, and you can’t help but make a face before you stick your tongue out at him.

               “That’s a stupid name,” you admit bitterly. “I only let Poe pick it because I was sleep deprived when he asked and I couldn’t come up with anything better myself.”

               “Moonstaff,” the pilot replies as he tests the name on his tongue. “It’s cute, got to give him that.”

               “It’s not cute,” you say, the words bursting out of you like bubbles. “I mean, maybe, but I’m not cute. Cute people don’t kill people.”

               To his credit, RedSparrow just looks confused. “I’m pretty sure cuteness doesn’t limit someone’s capability for murder,” he says slowly, as if he was honestly perplexed by the insinuation, and you can’t help but let out a brief snort of laughter through your nose as you shake your head and look out the front window again.

               “So things going okay for you?” the pilot asks, and you can’t help but regard him suspiciously. You didn’t know anything about him, and yet he was just expecting you to blab all of your secrets to him? The pilot glances over at you out of the corner of his eye, and nods his head as if he understands your concern. “You just looked like you were ready to kill someone getting out of the hangar, is all. Just say you’re okay and we don’t have to talk about it.”

               “I wasn’t going to _kill_ anyone,” you say indignantly. “Despite what you may have heard, I’m not dangerous. I can control myself. I only killed one – well, I guess now two people, if Snoke even counts as a person – but I was in full control of myself at the time. I think.”

               “Yeah, Ladson already explained all that to me,” RedSparrow replies, and you can’t help but quirk an eyebrow.

               “Ladson?” you repeat, a bit dumbfounded. “You know Ladson?”

               “Everyone on base knows Ladson,” the pilot replies with a shrug. “After you left, the guy was a wreck. Starting fights with all the wrong people, trying to tell anyone that would listen that you didn’t defect to the First Order, especially after the Republic branded you a traitor. He really lost his cool after that.”

               “I’ve never seen Ladson out of control,” you say as you shake your head. “I mean, even when we drank, he just got _chill_ , you know? I don’t think I’ve ever seen him actually freak out over anything.”

               “He thought it was his fault,” RedSparrow says simply, and you can’t help but glance away in embarrassment. It wasn’t his fault, and Ladson knew that. You’d tell him again if he wanted to hear it, but you weren’t exactly eager to bring up that topic of conversation again. Besides that, you weren’t about to go baring your heart to this stranger who knew absolutely nothing about the real situation despite what he heard from rumors. “But you two have moved past all that now, haven’t you?”

               “We have,” you say quickly, grateful for an escape from having to weigh your guilt for what you did to Ladson up here too. The conversation again dissolves into muted silence, and you can’t help but glance around awkwardly. You were expecting to have some sort of breakdown where no one could find you, much like you had in the utility closet, but that was next to impossible with some stranger sitting right beside you, possibly mentally recording your entire conversation to report back to Poe or someone else.

               “So, uh, what do you do on base exactly?” you ask, but RedSparrow doesn’t seem in any particular hurry to respond as he fiddles with something on the control panel. “You said you’re a pilot, right?”

               “Yes,” he replies simply, and you can’t help but quirk your eyebrow up as you consider him. He seemed taciturn, and you supposed if there was something you wanted to know, you were going to have to draw it out of him.

               “So you like to fly?” you ask evenly, as if this was an obvious conclusion to draw from his statement.

               “Sometimes,” he replies, and you can’t help but tilt your head to the side. Was he being this obtuse on purpose?

               “Sometimes?”

               “Yes.”

               You cross your arms over your chest as you sit back in your seat and watch him, eyes narrowed, a scowl playing on the edges of your lips. Was he trying to insinuate that what he did with the Resistance was confidential and that you shouldn’t ask about it? He was the one who had seemingly come to your rescue. If he didn’t want to talk at all, why bother getting involved? Besides, he seemed to know more about you than you cared to admit, and the only thing you knew about him was that he was apparently a pilot that tended to have a reckless edge, if his escape from the hangar against Controller clearance told you anything.

               He glances back at you, and almost seems surprised by the look on your face, making you lose a bit of your edge. “Want me to elaborate?” he asks, and you can’t help but let your jaw drop slightly as you make a quick attempt to recover yourself.

               “Um, yeah, that’d be nice,” you say quickly as you sit up a little straighter again, adjusting the thick harness around your shoulders as you do so.

               “It’s crazy sometimes,” he says as he shakes his head, continuing to stare straight ahead into D’Qar’s vivid blue sky in front of him. “One moment your feet are on the ground and the next it’s just blue, and then black, as far as you can see, it’s just black, and if it’s not, there’s always lights streaking out ahead, trying to race you, trying to beat you there and sometimes you almost wonder if you can beat it, like you’re going to sail past it, but you never do. No, instead you drop off into the blackness and there’s a sea of fire all around, noises unlike anything you’ve ever heard, a triumphant cheer mixed with a strangled gasp of breath as someone besides you explodes into a fireball, leaving behind only stardust. It’s crazy to think about, one second he could be there with his thoughts and his life and his mission, and the next he’s not. People are always arguing about whether you think with your head or your heart and then the fire sets in and roasts them alive and then you can see for yourself that it doesn’t matter because there’s nothing left. There used to be a person there, a ship, a craft that took years and years to make and fine tune and perfect and then suddenly all that’s left is this vacuum, as if they weren’t there at all. Sometimes I wonder, maybe they weren’t, maybe they were just someone I created in my head to pass the time when suddenly I do it to someone else, I set them aflame, I wipe them out of the universe, and I can’t help but wonder what their last thoughts were, you know? Did they hate me? Did they see it coming? Did they forgive me for doing what needed to be done? Do they curse me because they know I don’t feel bad about it? I can’t say.”

               He seems like he’s going to keep going, but you have to stop him, something uncomfortable bubbling up in your chest. “You…you don’t feel bad about it? About taking a life?”

               “No,” he responds automatically, a touch of surprise in his voice. “Maybe it’s because that’s all I was bred to do, but we all need to die eventually. I just take someone out sooner rather than later. Maybe it’s a mercy. Maybe they wanted out, and I helped them. I can’t say. But I know it doesn’t bother me. Never did. If I didn’t kill them, they would have taken my life, they would win, and I’m told I must prevent that from happening, whatever the cost.”

               You frown visibly, something about his manner of speech bothering you intensely. “Sounds like something the First Order would say,” you mumble under your breath, not sure if he would be offended by the insinuation.

               “It was the only life I’ve ever known,” RedSparrow responds simply. “Never knew my parents, or don’t remember them if I did. Captain Phasma told us that we didn’t need parents, that parents were there to provide affection and nurturing, and she was going to give us neither. She cared if we were alive, she cared if we were fit to perform, and that should be a parent’s main goal anyway, right?”

               “I wouldn’t know,” you reply bitterly, but the pilot just brushes past your statement as if you hadn’t said anything at all.

               “We weren’t raised to fight,” he explains. “We were raised to kill. To take a shot and not care what happens when you squeeze the trigger. I didn’t care. Never did. I used to think there was something wrong with me that way. The others cared, when we were kids, I remember how they used to talk about how bad it felt. How unnatural it was to squeeze a trigger and watch someone’s thoughts just stop dead in their skull. Those thoughts never bothered me, but at least I never became intoxicated by that power either. Some came to like it, others just tolerated it, but to me it wasn’t natural or unnatural, it was as commonplace as taking a shit when you first wake up in the morning.”

               You open your mouth to say something before you close it and decide to ask the more pressing question at hand. “So if you were with the First Order, and that’s how you felt, why did you defect over to the Resistance?” you ask him. “Everyone here seems like they have a passion for fighting for freedom and liberation from the tyranny that the First Order wanted to hand down.”

               “I guess some do,” he admits, but he glances down as if this notion hadn’t really crossed his mind before. “When the Starkiller Base exploded, a bunch of us got out in a pod together. We thought that the First Order was done for good and we didn’t know where to go or what to do. We had been raised to kill, trained to fight, and none of us wanted to stop. We knew the New Republic would not have us, not that we would have gone over to them anyway, and so we headed to the Resistance. We briefly considered being outlaws, bounty hunters, but we didn’t have the structure or the leadership to persevere. Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it but don’t ask me to think. The Resistance was hesitant to take us in at first, thought we might betray them in some way, but it was Finn who convinced them to take us in and Dameron who saw our potential and trusted us enough to let us fly beside him.”

               “They’re good guys,” you mutter with a quick nod of your head. “They both seem to have a knack for that, looking through the bad things people have done in order to see their full potential.”

               “I don’t see what I do as bad,” the pilot tells you. “But I can see how some people see it that way. If you asked me what I did, I wouldn’t tell you I’m a pilot, because that’s not what I am. Pilots fly, killers kill. Dameron knows it, that’s why we’re all still here. Can’t respect a guy that has any illusions about what we need to do.” For some reason, it makes you uncomfortable to hear Poe being referred to as a _killer_ , when that’s not how you thought of the word. You had killed someone simply because you could, and you weren’t under any threat or duress like he usually was. He was fighting to save people, to help others, although you couldn’t help but wonder if there were times when he fired a fatal shot when he could have let someone go.

               Even still, the pilot seems to notice the expression on your face. “We’re all killers,” he tells you. “Just in different ways. Even if you hadn’t killed anyone directly, you probably did indirectly somehow, and you just didn’t know about it. Something you said led someone down a bad path that ended up costing them their life, it happens. We’re all killers, you, me, Dameron, Ladson, every one of us has taken a life we could have spared, but our reasons for doing so are our own. And then people die, and you see what happens. There is no after, there’s nothing. There’s smoke and flames and finally, stardust. And when that fades away, there’s nothing.”

               “Yeah,” you say quietly, before you turn to get a good look at him. “Wait, what do you mean, Ladson’s a killer? Ladson’s never killed anyone, even in battle…has he?”

               RedSparrow arches up an eyebrow, as if he’s genuinely confused. “I thought he told you what he did for the Order.”

               “He did, but-“ You let your voice trail off as you glance away, trying to remember. Ladson had told you a long, long time ago that he had done things he preferred he hadn’t, things that he wished he could forget, but he never told you that he had murdered anyone. And even if he had, you doubted that he would have really ever had a choice in the matter. He was basically a prisoner at the Starkiller Base, forced into a Stormtrooper’s lifestyle only because he was facing certain death if he didn’t. It was their life or his life, and he never had a choice, not like you had.

               “You did what you did,” he says with an absent shrug. “It’s over now, it’s done. You can’t let the past keep eating you this way, or it’s going to destroy you.”

               This seems like a bit of a pointed remark from someone who didn’t even know you, but right now you’re in no mood to contest this slight.

               “You don’t know a thing about me,” you argue. “You don’t know who I am or where I come from. You don’t know what I’ve done. It’s different for you. You’re fighting a war, at least, but I let down the people that I care about. They shouldn’t forgive me, and they say they have, but they don’t understand. It’s different for them but-“

               “Are you special?” the pilot asks, and you can’t help but be taken aback by this question. “I’m sorry, but, from the sounds of things, you’re really disappointed that you let down the people that you care about, but you act like you haven’t forgiven them for anything either. I’m sure these people have done things before to hurt you in the past, right?”

               “Yeah,” you say, shrugging uncomfortably at the memory of Kylo leaving you on your academia for years and years to raise Ani by yourself. “But that was different. They did what they had to do in order to protect me. This is different. I thought I was trying to protect them, but I wasn’t. I was just looking out for myself.”

               “Sometimes you got to put yourself first,” the pilot says. “If you’re not taking care of yourself, you can’t expect others to do the same, right? And you can’t exactly take care of other people if you’re not taking care of yourself.” You bite your lip and look away as you think about how Kylo probably needed you right now, and you had been so embarrassed with him that you had just walked out on him. “I don’t know you, so you might be offended what I’m going to say, and if so I’m sorry, but…are you sure you’re not just holding onto everything that you did wrong in the past so you don’t have to deal with what’s wrong right now?”

               “I don’t know,” you reply with an uncomfortable shrug of your shoulders. “I mean, I guess it’s possible, but they are sort of linked together, I guess.”

               “If you’re talking about everything Ren did, most of what the Republic blames him for was long before he met you,” RedSparrow tells you, although that doesn’t exactly make you feel a lot better. “Look, I don’t believe in the right thing or the wrong thing, but he killed a _lot_ of people and he helped the First Order wipe an entire system off the map. Someone’s got to take the blame for it, and Ren’s a smart guy. He’s got to know what’s coming to him.”

               “He does,” you say quietly. “I just, I don’t know, I wish I could help in some way. How do you support someone who’s basically on death row short of helping him escape?”

               “There’ll be no escaping,” the pilot says suddenly, his voice much firmer than before. “If you’re counting on Phasma and her troops to bust in here again, I wouldn’t. This place is secured much better than it ever was before, and they would be detected the second they dropped out of hyperspace.” He turns to give you a pointed look. “And you wouldn’t be able to help him escape either. You seem like a nice enough person, and I don’t want to take you down, but I will if that’s what it comes to. Those are my orders.”

               “Poe ordered you to take me down?” you ask, raising your eyebrows.

               “He ordered us to stop you by any means necessary if you try to aid in his escape,” RedSparrow says as he turns to face you. “I don’t know if that’s what you’re planning, but I can see the logic in it. If you’d help him try to escape once, you could do it a second time. I’d prefer not to kill you, but I have my orders and I have to follow them no matter what the cost.”

               “I don’t think Poe meant that you should actually _kill_ me,” you say hesitantly. “But I’ll, uh, I’ll ask, okay? I want to get that clarified as soon as possible.”

               The pilot just makes a face as he shrugs and turns back to the screen in front of him. “Not to tell you anything you don’t know, but this is why the First Order forbade attachments. I’m not saying it’s compromising Dameron’s judgement, but he seems to have a weak spot for you, and it’s kind of more than just a little obvious, especially to us. He and the General butted heads so often after you left on what to do next, it was almost scary to see, and we tended to get the worst of it. Conflicting orders and what not.”

               “I’m sorry,” you say with a brief shake of your head. “I mean, I was taken away from the base by force, I-”

               “By force or by literally the Force?” RedSparrow asks and you can’t help but tilt your head to the side.

               “Both,” you decide. “I don’t know, Leia and Poe always seem to get along so well, I almost can’t picture them arguing or disagreeing on anything, and I really don’t like knowing that I’m the one who caused it.”

               “To be fair, it only lasted about a month or two,” the pilot says with a shrug of his shoulders. “After he clued into the fact that you didn’t want to be found he calmed down a bit, and things sort of went back to normal for us after that.” He turns to look at you. “Though I’ve heard Ladson say that you have that effect on people, that you can meet someone for five minutes and just make them care about you.”

               “Why?” you ask sullenly. “Because I’m so weak and pathetic?”

               “Don’t know,” RedSparrow replies with another shrug of his shoulders, and you can’t help but let your head lull to the side in annoyance. “I don’t usually get sentimental around people. It takes me a long time to trust someone, and even longer to care about their well-being ahead of mine. The First Order messed with my head pretty good, turned me into something that I’m not sure is even human. I don’t know how I would have turned out without their involvement, but I can’t lose myself thinking about that, otherwise that’ll be a bad trip that I’ll never come back from.” He turns to you as he arches an eyebrow. “You know?”

               “Yeah,” you reply as you nod your head forward in a quick burst of nods. “Yeah, I, uh, I think I do, actually.” You shuffle uncomfortably in your seat. “By the way, I know RedSparrow’s your callsign but what was your na-?”

               “Hold on,” the pilot says suddenly as there’s two quick beeps from the console, and as he presses a button, you hear Poe’s voice through the speakers.

               “RedSparrow, do you copy?” Poe asks, and RedSparrow just turns to wink at you, grinning more than was probably appropriate for the situation.

               “Yes, Black Leader, I copy,” the pilot responds. “Is this the part where you tell me how much trouble I’m in?”

               “Well since you know, I don’t think I have to waste my breath,” Poe replies, his voice scathing even over the comlink.

               “Ouch,” the pilot whispers as he turns to face you, a look of mock horror playing on his face.

               “Is Moonstaff with you?” Poe asks, and if you’re not mistaken, there’s a bit of trepidation lingering at the end of his words. The pilot just gives you a dramatic wave, gesturing between you and the console, and you can’t help but grin.

               “That’s a stupid name,” you tell him with a bit of a laugh in your voice, to let him know that you were there and you were okay, but there’s only silence on the other end for a few moments, and now you know you’re in trouble.

               You hear Poe curse on the other end of the comlink, and for a moment it confuses you. “You didn’t give her anything, did you?”

               “Give me-?” you ask as you turn to the pilot who just chuckles good-naturedly.

               “No sir,” he replies, and you think you can hear Poe let out a sigh of relief from the other end as the pilot turns back to face you. “I sneak out here to smoke sometimes,” he whispers. “The good stuff, if you’re ever interested.” You had no idea what he was talking about, but you were starting to wonder if maybe Rey’s Green Room held more than just plants of an aesthetic variety.

               “Just get your asses back to base,” Poe says through the comlink, and you and RedSparrow can’t help but stifle giggles like a couple of nervous schoolchildren caught doing something they shouldn’t.

               “Yes sir,” the pilot replies. “I’ll get her ass back to base, but do you want me to leave the rest of her in the shuttle?” You let out a snort of laughter that you can’t quite suppress through your elbow, and you’re pretty sure Poe hears it as you hear his long, drawn-out sigh from the other end of the comlink. “See you soon, Captain,” he says with finality before he hangs up the comlink and turns to face you. “So, what do you think? Think we should head back or do you need a little more time yet?”

               You can’t help but turn and blink at him incredulously. “Seriously?” you ask, pointing to the console. “You heard how much trouble we’re in. You want to make it worse?”

               “Well, we’re already out,” he says with a shrug of his shoulders as he waits for you to make your decision.

               “Let’s head back,” you say with a sigh. You had a feeling Poe was already not happy with you, and it was only occurring to you now that the rest of the Resistance upper echelons would probably not be too happy with this little stunt you pulled either. You weren’t stealing a ship, but borrowing without asking and feigning Poe’s permission was probably not going to help you much. You were starting to see things from Kylo’s perspective now; he needed you to be there for him, and Ani would need you to be there for him too. You couldn’t do that if you were convinced that you were going to fail them, or worse, if you got yourself thrown into solitary as well. Then you wouldn’t be able to see Kylo at all, and you would only be making a bad situation worse. If you lamented how little time you had to spend with him before, you should have known better than to take such a chance with it now.

               “You want to fly at least?” RedSparrow asks. “Sorry I’ve been hogging the controls all this time, I feel like a jerk.”

               “Hey if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be out here,” you tell him, and the pilot just shrugs as if it didn’t mean anything to him as he switches the controls over to you. You slow the shuttle down enough until you feel confident you can turn it in a comfortable arc before you race back towards Delta Base as fast as it can possibly go.

               “So thanks for that,” you tell him once you reach the entrance to D’Qar’s hangar. “I mean, really. You stuck your neck out for me when you didn’t have to, and you’re probably in at least as much trouble as I am now.”

               “Probably more,” the pilot says with another shrug. “It’s no big. It’s always good to get into the air. Not as much fun as my T-70, but there really isn’t any better feeling than being above everything, seeing how small everything is beneath you, and then finally come crashing back down until you’re a part of it too, and there’s nothing left to do but look up again.”

               “Yeah,” you say with a small laugh as you nod your head in time to his words. “Yeah, I get you.”

               “Come on,” the pilot says as he gestures for you to follow him out of the cockpit, and you bow your head as you reluctantly follow him off the boarding ramp, where Poe is waiting with two men in uniform standing behind them. They all seem to turn their attention on the pilot, and you can’t help but try to make yourself small behind him, hoping that if you weren’t noticed, perhaps your transgressions would go unnoticed as well so you wouldn’t have to be punished for them.

               “So,” RedSparrow says as he looks up at Poe. “I’m guessing I’m in a fair bit of trouble, am I right?”

               Poe’s face remains even, impassive, his hands behind his back, his lips pursed firmly shut, but the man standing behind him off to his left explodes. “A fair bit?” he echoes angrily. “A fair bit? Do you realize how many lives you endangered with your little stunt trying to leave the hangar against orders?”

               “Major,” Poe says warningly, but the pilot doesn’t seem in the least bit affected.

               “In my defense,” the pilot says firmly. “I was never _ordered_ not to leave. I was told my companion didn’t have clearance and thus our gate wouldn’t be opened. I was not expressly told not to leave the hangar with all due respect, _sir._ ”

               “I-“ the angry man behind Poe starts, but Poe just holds up his hand and the man immediately settles back, crossing his arms angrily across his chest as he huffs and looks away.

               “Didn’t you just come off suspension?” Poe asks, and you can’t help but arch an eyebrow as you turn to get a good look at your companion’s face.

               “I will in two days,” he offers, and you can’t help but roll your eyes to the side as you take this in. He wasn’t just some benefactor helping you out, he had something that he wanted to gain from this as well. Either way, you had been able to help each other, and he didn’t seem like a bad guy to you. Maybe a little callous, but considering his upbringing, you couldn’t really hold it against him.

               “That was a risky move,” Poe tells him. “You got lucky this time, but I don’t want you to see you pull any such maneuver inside my hangar again. Do we have an understanding?”

               “Yes, Captain,” the pilot replies, and suddenly you notice that he’s standing up a little straighter, and is suddenly a bit more respectful than he was before. He didn’t look unnerved, exactly, but a crease formed in his forehead and he looked at least a bit concerned over what he had done. You could only imagine what the price for his antics would have been back at the First Order, and you wondered if this was his way of slowly coming back to himself, especially considering he had no idea who that was.

               “Go with them,” Poe says, jerking his head to the side to refer to the two people behind him. “They’ll discuss the terms of your punishment. I have other matters to attend to.”

               “Yes sir,” the pilot says before he turns back to face you. “Nice to meet you. I’ll see you again soon, I’m sure.”

               “Same,” you stammer quickly, not sure what he meant by this last remark, but you don’t have time to ask as RedSparrow heads off with the two men in the opposite direction. You quickly skirt your eyes back to Poe who narrows his eyes at you as he takes the time to cross his arms over his chest in a slow dramatic movement. “I, uh, I can explain this.”

               “Do I want to hear it?” Poe asks, and you bite your lip and give him a nervous smile before he relaxes his arms and lets out a sigh. “If you’re going to invoke my name for favors, can you at least run it by me first?”

               “I’m sorry,” you tell him. “I just, I needed to go, and I didn’t know where else, and I-“ You sound like you’re about to have another breakdown again, and Poe quickly puts up his hand to stop you.

               “It’s all right,” he says firmly. “We’ll talk about this, okay?”

               “Am I going to have to be punished?” you ask hesitantly, and Poe just sighs as he runs a hand through his hair.

               “Once I can figure out what it is, then yes,” Poe tells you, the exasperation evident in his voice, and you can’t help but let your shoulders drop.

               “Would it help if I pinky swear never to do it again?” you ask hesitantly as you look up at him, but he just shakes his head.

               “You’re being confined to my room until further notice,” he tells you. “No more trips out to see Ren or anyone.” You start to protest, but he doesn’t give you the chance. “If you want to see him, you reach out to Ani, and he’ll escort you down there, or to Rey, and they will take you to where you need to go. Otherwise you do not leave the room without an escort, is that clear?”

               “Considering how much trouble you’ve gone through trying to protect me lately, it’s more than fair considering how much trouble I could have gotten you in today,” you say softly as you drop your gaze, and Poe’s expression softens just a bit.

               “Come on,” he says as he takes hold of your upper arm, escorting you back to his room as he walks, holding you out in front of him. You can’t help but cast your eyes down, and Poe just lets out a sigh. “If it helps, I’m not mad at you. I understand why you went out; I just wish you would have run it by me first.”

               “I will next time,” you say with a sigh, hoping to appease him.

               “You really think there’s going to be a next time after that?” Poe asks as he leads you down the hall, and you can’t help but drop your eyes again. “I hope you had fun with Asher, because I doubt they’re going to allow either one of you near the hangar for a _long_ time now.”

               You stop walking as you turn to look at Poe, completely dumbfounded. “Wait,” you say quickly. “That was _Asher_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus we have finally met Asher!! I've been waiting to introduce him for quite a while now because he's fun to write and he's based off a really good friend of mine but the importance of introducing Ladson's boyfriend at the perfect moment could not be overstated, and I thought this would be a fun little way to introduce him while still pushing the plot along. The Reader's in a fair bit of trouble, which will lead to another fair bit of trouble, such is the way it goes. But fortunately the Reader may be getting the wake-up call she needs, especially with the trial close at hand....and then drama of a whole new kind will unfold. What more will our beloved duo have to go through before they can finally be together? You probably don't want me to answer that question! Until Tuesday, cheers!! 
> 
> PS: PT has been going pretty well....it's a long road ahead, but I'm hanging in there. Thanks for all your well wishes and concern, it truly does mean a lot!! <3


	59. Chapter 59

               Because of the little stunt you pulled with Asher, or rather, the stunt you tried to pull that Asher helped you complete, you were confined to your room for a while, unable to go out unless someone was there to escort you. Fortunately, your friends were able to keep visiting you on the regular in order to keep your mind busy, probably concerned as to how bad things could become if they didn’t, if you were left to your own devices to just think and think and think. No one wanted to pretend they knew how your mind worked, but it was more than just a little obvious that each individual cell in your body was still drowning in guilt, and they weren’t sure what you would decide to do if you decided it was too much for you to take.

               Still, it was Kylo who took your new isolation the worst. Ani dropped by daily to make sure that you could still see him, and even Rey brought you down there on occasion, but he was not happy that you were making the situation at the Resistance worse for yourself instead of better. You had been more or less caged when you got here, then set free, and now you were causing all sorts of trouble for yourself, without really thinking about how that trouble could impact him and Ani, especially Ani. But you just considered that that was you, doing the worst possible thing to anyone at any given time, and so you never got a chance to talk to him about the clarity you thought you had achieved while talking to Asher. You had felt more or less okay after your conversation, but apparently it was as short-lived as the insight you had achieved after you had awoken from Death’s icy grip.

               Fortunately or unfortunately for you, there was nothing you needed to do in order to change the Resistance’s opinion of you. You were locked in Poe’s room and your meals were again being brought to you by a tray slipped through a newly-installed crack in the door, ensuring that you caused as little trouble as possible. Even still, you couldn’t help but lament that you kept finding yourself in these situations, confined to one room or another, but the agitation you felt towards these seemingly familiar circumstances was ephemeral. You felt like you were being punished for something you had done wrong, and in a way, it almost felt _right._ You had done a lot of bad things, and while other people seemingly wanted to push it under the rug, you wanted to take ownership for your crimes and pay some sort of retribution. If being locked in here all day to dwell on your crimes and be denied the same sort of comforts that everyone else took for granted was what it took, then so be it.

               The main thing that did irritate you, however, was that the food at the Resistance had gotten far worse. It was bland and tasteless in the literal sense of the word; meaning everything literally had zero taste, from the meat to the bread: the meat was chewy, the bread was dry and the liquid they gave you was sweet and thick like nectar. Your sense of sweet and saltiness was unaffected on your tongue, but anything else, any fragrance or aroma that food seemed to give off upon eating was completely lost to you. You regarded it as an unfortunate fact of your new life now, an annoyance, but you failed to notice something essential, and that was how detrimental this could be to you in the long run.

               It was so hard to keep track of the waking hours confined to Poe’s room, but somewhere between the meal provided to you between breakfast and lunch, you couldn’t help but hear your stomach give out a loud whine, as if it were a pressurized gas line that had sprung a leak. You immediately put both hands on your stomach and laid down, curling your knees into your chest as you wrapped your arms around your midsection, trying to mentally dissolve away what felt like a very bad cramp. You still refused to peek at the wound underneath the bandages around your midsection, and so you just lay there, holding your stomach, holding it to you like you were trying to keep a constant sense of pressure on it, although you weren’t sure if that was going to make it any better or worse. It wasn’t like a dull ache, this was something else, as if a ball had literally been shoved into your stomach and was slowly inflating like a balloon, growing bigger and bigger, and you weren’t quite sure what you could do to pop it, or what damage it might cause to your insides if it decided to blow of its own accord.

               You weren’t sure when your eyes had slipped closed, but the next thing you were aware of was Ani’s voice trying to stir you from the blackness of your vision. You weren’t sure if your eyes were open or closed, but you felt strangely detached from yourself as the world seemed to swirl around you, taking you completely out of space and time so that you existed simply in your own little pocket of darkness.

               “Mom? Mom?”

               His voice sounds distant and far away, but you couldn’t be sure why. Seconds pass, or maybe they’re minutes, hours, you didn’t know, or even care to know. The pain in your stomach has gotten louder now, if such a word could be used to describe the uproar that seemed to be coming from your gut. The next sensation you felt was someone placing their hand on your head, Poe’s hand, if you guessed correctly, and you couldn’t be sure you didn’t feel a thick layer of sweat lining your forehead as he pulled away. You think you can hear him mutter something about an infection, and immediately your mind jumps to the wound in your side. Had it just been festering all this time without you recognizing it? But you let the doctors change the bandages at least every few days now, and surely they would notice if your flesh was rotting instead of knitting together as it should, right?

               Nevertheless, you think you can feel yourself being moved, although this only emits a burst of pain that shoots through your nerves like wildfire. You wished you were out of your head, out of your body, wished you could do something, anything, to make the pain lapse, at least temporarily, although a part of you was afraid that even if it did, it would only come back ten times stronger than it had when it had vanished. Suddenly you can hear Kylo’s voice in your head, as clear as if he was standing right next to you.

               “How could you let this happen to her? I need to see her. You _will_ let me see her.”

               He says this with such intensity that you can’t help but think he’s trying to mindtrick someone, but you can’t imagine who it would be. Anyone who they would ever allow near Kylo would no doubtedly be strong enough mentally to resist such a trick, although you still couldn’t help but wonder.

               You could feel Kylo’s concern for you ebbing through the Force bond as you searched around the familiar blackness behind your eyelids. Something about the situation seems to have changed, and you almost felt like Kylo’s presence had comforted you in a way that you couldn’t explain as you began to take stock of yourself once again, looking yourself over with a seemingly new, detached perspective. You weren’t hurt that badly, at least, you didn’t _feel_ as though you were hurt that badly. You felt more or less like yourself, and although that should have been at least a little bit concerning, you didn’t feel anything that would lead you to believe that your life was at stake yet again. It wasn’t until you saw a familiar cloaked figure standing with his back to you that you began to suspect that things were a lot more perilous than you may have initially wanted to believe.

               “Anakin,” you call out to him as you start to make your way towards him, and the hooded figure turns around, slowly pulling off his hood to reveal his thick, wavy hair. His lips are pursed in a thin line, and yet he doesn’t seem altogether displeased to see you. And, to be honest, you’re almost happy to be seeing him. “What are you doing here? It’s been so long-“

               “You’ve been poisoned.” There’s no greeting, no preamble, and it takes a moment for his words to permeate the thick layer of your brain that simply didn’t understand what he was saying. Once it did, though, your feet stopped moving in mid-motion as you tilted your head to the side, seemingly unable to believe it.

               “Poisoned?” you repeat, as if you couldn’t be sure of what he was actually saying. “But who would poison me? And why?” Anakin stands there for a few moments as if he’s waiting for you to come up with the answers to that one yourself, but if that’s what he’s waiting for, it’s never going to come. You could venture a guess that someone in the Republic had tried to do to you what they had done to Leia, but it would be risky to implement the same strategy twice. If anything, you didn’t think that someone would be able to sneak Kohun centipedes in twice as the Resistance would have been more alert to whatever shipments came in since that happened, which made you think that whoever wanted you dead had come from inside the Resistance itself.

               Whatever the case, that hardly seemed relevant now. “Is that why you’re here?” you ask him. “I haven’t seen you in some time. Am I dying?”

               “That is not my place to decide,” Anakin responds, and you can’t help but inwardly sigh. You had thought you had missed your visions from Anakin with a sense of keen nostalgia, but you had forgotten how downright frustrating these ambiguous messages could be.

               “If you’re trying to tell me it’s up to me to determine my own fate, we’re going to be at a bit of an impasse,” you warn him. “In case you haven’t been watching me, I’ve been doing a terrible job of that lately.” Anakin looks down and away, and for some reason, you can’t deny how much this hurts, like someone had flicked the edge of a knife against the fragile muscle in your heart, slowly watching as the sinews split and became undone. “You’re disappointed in me.”

               “I can’t be disappointed in myself,” Anakin responds, and you tilt your head to the side in confusion. “We are quite alike, but I suspect this is no accident. I too sought to protect my family from visions planted in my head by a nefarious force, and I too fell victim to them, to my own arrogance. In my thirst for power I thought I could protect those I cared for, and they died by my hand.” He looks up at you, the expression on his face serious. “You are stronger than I was. You were able to resist the pull to the dark side-“

               “Too late,” you remind him. “The scars that I wear are permanent now, Anakin. There is no coming back from this; your son told me so himself.”

               “My son.” A brief smile tugs on the corner of Anakin’s lips in a way you could only describe as endearing. “Yes, he is stronger than me, as is his sister.”

               “They are good,” you agree, nodding your head firmly to show that you meant it. “And my son is good. If he’s ever tempted, I have faith that he will not be swayed.”

               “And yourself?” Anakin asks. “And Ren?”

               “He is good,” you say firmly, and you can’t help the crease that forms in your forehead as you say it. “He _is_. It took him some time to come back to himself, but deep down, he cares about me and he cares about Ani, and he was willing to sacrifice himself for us. That makes him good.”

               “And yourself?” Anakin asks, raising an eyebrow. You can tell he’s waiting for an answer, but it’s not one that you’re looking to give.

               “I don’t know,” you say quietly as you glance down at the dark ground beneath your feet. There doesn’t seem to be anything there but the pulse of blackness that beat ever on, but that hardly concerned you right now.

               “As I recall,” Anakin starts, and his voice is lighter this time. “You also were willing to sacrifice yourself so that your son and the others could escape. Would that not be considered a good?”

               “It’s a good,” you agree. “But I was the reason they were there to begin with. There’s no honor in saving someone from a fire if you’re the one who lit the match.” You shake your head from side to side. “I know I wasn’t always like this. I know I wasn’t always this…conflicted. But now that I am, I don’t know how to go back to the way I was.”

               “There is no path that leads back to the past,” Anakin tells you. “But that doesn’t mean that you cannot learn from it, or that it cannot provide you with old answers to new questions.” You just shake your head, almost unwilling to entertain any more riddles. Anakin seems to sense this as he crosses and uncrosses his arms over his chest. “What if I told you I could connect you to someone who I think would be able to help you?”

               “Help?” you repeat. “You mean like, Obi-Wan?”

               “No,” Anakin says as he shakes his head. “This is someone else.” He begins to pace around you in a slow circle, but you just stand there, refusing to turn your head to watch him as he walks. “The Force lives in us, in every living thing. Some are more connected to the Force than others, and that is what allows us to become one with the Force and communicate through the veil. You must understand, some have greater Force sensitivity than others, and with it, we are able to communicate through to the other side.”

               “So you mean you want to bridge the gap so that I can communicate with someone who is Force sensitive, but not strong enough in the Force to communicate with me directly?” you ask, and Anakin nods his head as he stops beside you. “Okay, but who?”

               “A friend,” Anakin says simply as he gestures his hand forward, and out of the darkness you can just begin to make out the outline of a tall figure making his way towards you. As he gets closer, his features begin to take shape as they emerge into the amorphous light, and you let your eyes sweep over the approaching figure. It didn’t appear to be exactly human in shape, but it was humanoid, although the head was big and wider than a normal human head. Your eyes swept over his dark green skin to his eyes, which were always so full and expressive. His face is relaxed in a gentle greeting, and as he stops a few feet in front of you, you need to consciously resist the urge to grab onto Anakin for support.

               “Taro?” The words are out of your mouth before you can stop them, and you quickly pick up your hands, which are shaking slightly, as you make his familiar name sign on the side of your arm. Taro just smiles as he nods his head, and repeats your own name sign, the first letter of your name rotated down in a spiral on the left side of his face, from his chin to his shoulder. Your hand immediately curls into a fist as you push it to your mouth, and you’re suddenly aware that thick, hot tears are dripping down your cheeks.

               Anakin turns to you, a soft smile on his face, before he turns back to Taro and nods. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see the spot where he had been standing suddenly fade to blackness, and just like that he was gone, leaving you alone with Taro. In truth, you didn’t honestly know what to say to him, and you stand there for a moment, just watching each other. His large eyes had always been full and expressive, and now was no exception. You bite your lower lip as you stare him down, gnawing on it with such fervent intensity that you’re almost afraid it might split and bleed.

               Taro reaches out with one long index finger and runs it up the inside of his arm before he gently taps the outside of his wrist, letting it rest there for a moment. _Long time._

               _Yeah_. Your head bucks forward in an involuntary nod as you let out a small snort through your nostrils. You weren’t crying, at least, that’s what you wanted to insist. You weren’t crying and you weren’t being affected by this encounter at all. Nope, not in any way shape or form. Taro was just standing in front of you again, and a small part of you had almost started to believe that he was just something your subconscious had constructed in order to help make sense of everything that had happened to you on the Starkiller Base. But here he was, in the flesh, or at least some corporeal form that you could see with your own two eyes.

               Taro’s large hand clenches into a fist as he moves it around his chest, over his heart, in a slow circle, and you cock your head to the side, trying to understand what he means.

               _Sorry?_ you ask, repeating the own sign over your chest with raised eyebrows. _What do you have to be sorry about?_

Taro just points to you, communicating in the way he always did, saying so much with only a few simple signs. You just shake your head as you start to gnaw on your lower lip again, and this time you think you can actually feel the damp metallic trickle of blood over your lower lip. _You have nothing to be sorry about_ , you tell him in broken Tortuarune, your hands fumbling awkwardly with the signs that now felt unfamiliar on your hands.

               Taro pauses for a moment as he looks at you before he makes the sign for _light_ , pinching his thumb and middle finger together as he flicks his middle finger out twice and gestures over to the area on the left side of his body. With his right hand, he moves it across his face, fingers flat and palm facing towards him before he gestures off to the area on his right. He holds up one outstretched index finger to represent a person, and you don’t have to ask who he means to represent as he holds his finger towards the left side of his body and moves it in front of him in a quick line, moving the person marker from the space he created to represent light, into darkness.

               _I know_ , you reply, tapping your bent fingertips against the side of your temple twice. You hesitate for a moment, trying to convey over a decade worth of frustration and emotion into your hands, but in the end you can only point to yourself before you hold out your right hand, palm facing up, and place your left hand, fingertips stretched down onto it, as you bend them back and forth twice, letting your nail bed fall flat onto your palm with each bounce. _I’m weak._

               Taro shakes his head resolutely and reaches up to his face, making the sign for _K_ and then _R_ down the side of his face. You hadn’t seen that name sign used in so, so long, and you almost didn’t expect the nostalgia that surfaced with it. Even still, you can’t help but shake your head in confusion, and Taro’s face hardens slightly as he closes his fingers together over his thumb and thrusts it quickly over his right hand, which was closed into a fist, palm facing down. It was the sign for _blame_ , the sign you used to assign _fault_ to someone, and you can’t help but let your jaw drop slightly.

               _No_ , you tell him quickly, your outstretched index and middle fingers snapping down over your thumb. _No, this is not Kylo’s fault. This me. This all me. My entire fault._ You have your flat right hand behind your flat left hand and you move your left hand up and around your right hand making almost a scooping motion as you do so, as it goes up and around before resting in its starting position again. You make the sign as big as possible, trying to make it all encompassing, trying to make it clear that _every last thing_ had been your fault.

               Taro just shakes his head and makes a sign you had never quite seen before, and you tilt your head to the side to indicate your confusion. He repeats it twice before spelling it out so you understand it, and you can’t help but balk at the word as you pull your hands up in front of you.

               _He didn’t_ corrupt _me_ , you insist, spelling the word right back to him. _I was weak. I was tempted._ You stick out your elbow and tap the bottom of it twice with one crooked finger. _I fell._

               Taro looks at you sadly, and through your mind, you can almost feel the silent link of communication passing between you. If he hadn’t help set up that wall in your mind on the Starkiller Base, perhaps it would have been easier to have gotten to know him, but then again, you had to remember that back then you didn’t know why you were really there, or why Taro had concealed so much from you. You didn’t blame him for any of it, you truly didn’t, that culpability was reserved for B and B alone. You had gotten the distinct sense that Taro had wanted to protect you from what was happening and had your best interests at heart, you could sense that, implicitly, only now you knew that it was never your stellar sense of intuition that was telling you that. It had been the Force all along, guiding you to someone who could help bolster your abilities and help you find the strength you so desperately craved. After all, it had been Taro who had outed you to Kylo Ren in the first place, and while you thought that a hindrance at the time, looking back, you were almost quite pleased that-

               Taro shakes his head, as if he doesn’t like your line of thought. You can’t help but pout at this, and you search for something, anything to say, any excuse to give him. Unfortunately, the first one that comes to your mind is also the weakest. _But I love him._ Your signs leave your hands in pathetic little bursts, and you can’t help but feel like a child as your hands drop to your sides. You felt like a child, back on the Starkiller Base, completely and totally unable to protect yourself or discern the dangers that surrounded you, but more than that, you had been innocent back then. You didn’t know the Force, you didn’t know what you were capable of, and now you did. Now you knew all too well the havoc you could unleash on not only yourself, but those around you.

               Taro offers you a sad smile, but he seems more or less accepting of this tired excuse. _I know,_ Taro tells you. _I saw it._ But he doesn’t use the classic sign for _see_ , instead he makes a different motion as he travels the sign under one arm and towards you, and you can’t help but tilt your head to the side in confusion. Taro had been able to instill a vision in your mind, but what had been the range of his other abilities? He continues to sign, and you put his words together in as much of a coherent sentence as you can manage. _He was always going to cause you pain. Bonding to him? This path was inevitable._

You can’t help but let out a small puff of air from between your cheeks. Inevitable? So this was all supposed to happen? Kylo was supposed to abandon you? You were supposed to develop feelings for Poe? You were supposed to be taken to Naboo? You were supposed to join in with the First Order? Taro can see the myriad of emotions crossing over your face, but he just shrugs good-naturedly. _The child had to be born._

               _Ani?_ you ask you glance up at him. You had said from the moment he was born that he was destined for great things, you could _feel_ it, but you didn’t know that that was anything more than a mother’s instinctual sense of pride in her child. That was what it had felt like at the time, but now he seemed to be signaling that it meant…something more? _In what way?_

Taro just shakes his head, and you should have known that he wouldn’t have known. Greatness could take many forms, but it was probably up to Ani to choose his own destiny, and suddenly you felt a little better that he was at the Resistance after all. Perhaps he would become a pilot, working himself up the ranks to become a Commander? A Captain? A General? You honestly didn’t know what Ani wanted, you wanted to let him figure that out for himself, but admittedly you hadn’t been giving him much room to grow when you were constantly on the run under threat of capture and death.

               You hesitate for a moment as a new thought occurs to you. _But Kylo. If you can see…can you see?_ You let your mind wander over to thoughts of the impending trial, and Taro seems to understand.

               _Story – finish – not._ Taro tells you. In other words, _His story is not yet over._ You’re about to ask him what that means, if that meant he would be executed and live on through the Force bond, or if it meant he’d be imprisoned for the rest of his life when suddenly Anakin steps forward out of the darkness again, as if he had been there all along, silently waiting for the right moment to re-enter the conversation.

               “You have to understand,” he begins. “Not every event is fixed, and those that are can never be set in any specific way.”

               “So like, me falling to the dark side?” you ask. “Once Kylo and I bonded, that would always have been inevitable?” Anakin nods, and you can’t help but sigh in exasperation. “Can I just have, like, a list or something? Just a list of what events were fixed and which ones I could control so I can feel at least a little better about things?”

               Anakin chuckles with good-humor, but you didn’t really mean it as a joke. “He can’t answer you any more than I can,” Anakin answers, a bit more seriously this time. “Maybe it’s because it can be changed. Maybe it’s because we don’t know. Maybe it’s because we don’t _want_ to know-“

               “Which means it’s not fixed,” you say, focusing on what you want to hear. “Which means Kylo’s fate-“

               “-rests with him,” Anakin tells you firmly, as if this was something that you needed to understand. “Think about what you learned. It’s much harder to be passive, but sometimes the best course of action is to let people dictate their own futures.”

               “But I-“ you start to argue, before you realize his point. You wanted to insist that there had to be something you could do, anything, but that wasn’t the point of this. The point was that in the end, you and Kylo were still two separate, distinct individuals and if he didn’t want to save himself, there was nothing you could do, just like there was nothing he could do to stop the string of bad decisions you had made on the _Propitiate_ and afterwards. He could be there to support you, and encourage you, but in the end your future was still your own, despite who you were bonded to.

               “I understand,” you say softly, slowly nodding your head as if to confirm this to yourself. A part of you did understand, a part of you was finally beginning to understand things again for the first time in perhaps a really long time. You made a mistake, but it was time to move past it like everyone wanted you to. Constantly holding yourself to a higher standard, constantly insisting that you could not be forgiven when you would forgive any one of your friends for doing the same thing to you, would not help you. It would not help Kylo, it would not help anyone. You had made fantastically bad choices, but the time for self-pity was over. It had to be. It was a constant narcissistic reflex to keep your thoughts focused inwards, because if something was wrong with you, you could change it. It was that same desperate drive for control over again. You could change yourself, but you couldn’t change the situation Kylo was in, and you certainly couldn’t rewind time to take away the terrible things either of you had done. You had to accept the situation now, as it was, and again surrender your will to the Force.

               “I understand,” you repeat with more conviction in your voice, and as soon as the words leave your lips, you think you can hear something behind you. You turn around quickly, and all at once you can feel Kylo there. You can’t see him, but you can feel him close by, and as your eyes scan the penetrating darkness, you think you can almost hear his voice trying to reach you. You close your eyes as you try to listen, try to open yourself up to hearing his voice, trying to embrace him when suddenly his voice rings out loud and clear inside your mind.

               _Wake up._

You immediately open your eyes and this time you face darkness of a different sort. It wasn’t the darkness that changed, but more your awareness of whatever was going on around you. You could feel your body again, the uncomfortable kink on your neck, the awkward strain of your lower back from the position you were lying in, and you could hear voices, although considering their volume, it wasn’t hard to.

               “This is _your_ fault,” Kylo snarls, and you can practically hear the growl in his voice as he does so. He sounds like he’s immediately off to your right, sitting right by your side, and you can’t help but be momentarily comforted by him, despite the anger you can feel flowing through the Force bond.

               “It is _not_ his fault.” Another voice speaks up from the other side of the room, and you know immediately that this is Rey. She sounds more frustrated and angry than you’ve ever heard her, although you supposed that being this close to Kylo would immediately put her on edge. “There is _nothing_ he could’ve done.”

               “She’s right, Ren,” Poe says, and it sounds almost as though he’s standing right at the foot of your bed, probably involuntarily putting space between them, although you didn’t know how safe that would be for him if either of them decided to settle this with blows instead of words. “I know you’re upset, but we had no idea that someone would try to do this to her.”

               “You mean try to kill her?” Kylo asks, almost incredulous. “I thought we discussed this. I told you my concerns that someone from the Republic would try to eliminate her due to her affiliation to me, and now they have. You were supposed to be watching over her, protecting her-“

               “We didn’t have any idea that someone would be able to get that close to her,” Poe tries to argue, but Kylo isn’t hearing any of it.

               “No, you just counted on her to defend herself if anyone tried to attack,” Kylo says, his voice practically spitting venom as he talks. “I told you I feared this would happen, and now it has.”

               “It won’t happen again,” Rey says firmly, but Kylo only lets out a small laugh of disbelief.

               “At least I can assume my son is safe, at least for the time being?” Kylo asks, and there’s a moment before Poe answers.

               “He’s with Ladson and the General in an undisclosed location,” Poe says at length. “We have no reason to believe that anyone would want to target him, but better safe than sorry.” Kylo scoffs, but Poe at least pretends to ignore him. “Like I said, we have Ladson with him. Considering you trusted him to look after her and your son once, I assume you have more confidence in him than any of us.”

               “Then why wasn’t he the one guarding her?” Kylo asks. “Was _anyone_ guarding her?”

               “She doesn’t _need_ a guard,” Rey says firmly.

               “Of course not,” Kylo replies sarcastically. “Of course, it’s not like I warned you that someone might be trying to harm her-“

               “What do you want me to do?” Poe asks, the frustration in his voice evident. “She was locked in a room with a very well-fortified door in the middle of a pretty well-trafficked hallway. I didn’t think that anyone would be able to get to her from there.”

               “Maybe if you hadn’t locked her in a cage like an animal than this wouldn’t have happened,” Kylo argues, but Rey just lets out a pitiful laugh.

               “Don’t pretend that you haven’t acted any differently,” Rey snaps. “Remember, I’ve seen inside her mind. Inside Ani’s mind. You’ve sealed them away for their own protection just as much as he has.”

               “But this time it wasn’t for her protection,” Kylo snaps.

               “No, it was punishment,” Poe agrees. “Because she was supposed to stay on base, and instead she tried to commandeer a shuttle.”

               “You know as well as I do she wasn’t going anywhere,” Kylo says, and this time is voice is low.

               “Rules are rules,” Poe says after a moment, and Kylo lets out another incredulous laugh. “What do you want me to do, Ren?” Poe asks, and his voice is louder than you’ve ever heard it. “I can’t give her any preferential treatment or grant any sort of favors that I wouldn’t give to anyone else. You know that, we’ve been over this.”

               “I thought we have,” Kylo replies coolly. “You were supposed to be watching her, protecting her…or have you forgotten the _conditions_ to our agreement?”

               _Agreement…?_

               Poe’s silent for a moment, and a heavy silence descends upon the room. “Enough,” Rey snaps suddenly. “Fighting won’t help anything. Don’t make the mistake of pretending you’re the only one who cares about her here, Ren.”

               “Oh, I don’t,” Kylo replies, and you could only imagine the look he must be giving Poe right now. Even still, you don’t want to open your eyes to look, and so you just stay silent, trying to absorb as much information as you could before they realized you were at least somewhat awake. “But it seems I _am_ the only one here that’s capable of defending her. At least I’ve kept her alive this long.”

               “She’s going to be fine,” Poe says firmly. “I told you before, Ani was able to sense that something was wrong and was able to find her in time.”

               “And if he was elsewhere?” Kylo demands. “And if he _hadn’t_ been able to find her in time? What then?”

               “Stop,” Rey commands, but you get a distinct impression from the changing energy in this room that neither of them was about to stop any time soon. If anything, it was only escalating.

               “Fortunately we’ll never be put in another situation where we have to find out,” Poe says through gritted teeth, and you can feel Kylo’s anger push past the surface. You can hear the brush of fabric, followed by Poe’s grunt as he’s presumably knocked backwards by the Force, and suddenly you can hear the gentle trail of wind followed by a low rumble as Rey and Kylo start to battle through the Force, their mental energies crackling and filling the air with a new sense of tension. You sigh inwardly, but it’s not until you hear a small gasp from Rey and the familiar hum of a lightsaber ignition that you sit up quickly, thrusting your hands out on either side of you. Kylo and Rey both stumble backwards into the walls behind them, respectively, as Rey’s lightsaber staff clambers to the ground, its glowing blades defused.

               “Put that away,” you snap at her. “Seriously, no fighting. It’s not going to solve anything.” Suddenly the atmosphere in the room changes as they all set their sights on you, and you can’t help but offer them a small smile. “Although don’t get me wrong, it’s good to know you care enough to fight over me. I’m flattered.”

               Kylo comes to stand by your side, and you just give him a quick nod, silently signaling that you were okay as he pushes your hair back out of your face. You know he wants to kiss you, and you want to return it, but there was no way he could be affectionate right now with anyone else in the room, and so you don’t press him. “How are you?” he asks quietly, and you just nod your head solemnly up and down, trying to convey to him through the bond that you were okay.

               “Do you remember anything?” Poe asks, and Kylo almost seems annoyed that he’s still in the room as he rolls his eyes back over towards him.

               “Um, mostly?” you offer, spreading your hands by your sides. “I was just sitting in your room, not doing anything wrong, when suddenly I felt a lot of, I don’t know, pain. It’s hard to describe.”

               “You were poisoned,” Poe tells you, but you can’t help but shift your shoulders uncomfortably. Anakin had already told you as much, but you weren’t sure you wanted to try to explain that to them.

               “Through your drink,” Rey elaborates as she turns to face you, securing her lightsaber back onto her belt at her waist. “The smell was quite strong. Someone must have known of your affliction in order to be able to slip you something so potent without you noticing.”

               You bite your lower lip as you try to think back. “I haven’t talked with anyone outside the group,” you tell her. “So no one else should know I can’t smell, although maybe someone picked up on something up after the night you guys were teasing me in the mess hall.”

               Rey turns back to glance at Poe, a clear expression of concern awash over her features. Kylo also turns to look at Poe, but his own expression is much, much different. “You what?” Kylo demands, but you just tug on his arm in a weak attempt to get his attention turned back to you.

               “It’s fine,” you say quickly. “Kylo, this isn’t his fault. I know you’re worried about what could have happened to me, but it’s not going to help anything.” Kylo just mutters something under his breath as you turn back to Poe. “Do you know who did this? Republic? Resistance? Got any leads?”

               “A few,” Poe tells you. “Did you happen to see anyone outside? Sense anything that might help us?”

               “No,” you say as you shake your head. “I-“ You pause suddenly, picking up something clandestine from Rey. You pause for a moment, trying to figure out what it is, and while they think you’re screwing up your face in concentration trying to remember something, you’re actually prying deeper in a way you hadn’t quite been sure you knew how to do before. “Wait, you know who did it, don’t you?” Poe raises his eyebrows in surprise, and Rey looks between you nervously.

               “There’s surveillance in that hallway,” Poe explains, apparently deciding it was useless to hold anything back from you now. “We know who delivered it to you, but we’re still trying to see if there were others involved.”

               “Someone to deliver the poison, someone to slip it into the drink, someone to orchestrate it.” You count them off on your fingers. “Maybe multiple someone’s. Good thing the Resistance has so many friends. So many possibilities as to who it could be.”

               “We’re not going to let it happen again,” Poe says firmly, as if he’s tired of repeating himself, and you look him in the eye as you nod your head.

               “I know,” you say softly. “Poe, I know. This isn’t your fault. You couldn’t have seen this coming, okay? Don’t blame yourself for this. You’re okay, I’m okay, so let’s just all-“ You glance around the room. “-try to catch a breath. Ani’s safe, the Resistance isn’t under any sort of attack.” You pause for a moment. “I mean, except from infiltration from the Republic. You’re really going to need to curb that. First, Leia, now me?”

               “Perhaps you’re not as safe here as I thought,” Kylo murmurs, putting his hand possessively on your arm, and you can’t help but give him a look.

               “Not that I’ll really be safer anywhere else in the galaxy,” you tell him, and Rey is quick to agree with you.

               “She’s right,” she says pointedly to Kylo before she looks down at you. “You should get some rest. I’ll stay with you and keep watch, just to make sure-“

               “No,” Kylo says firmly, and she can’t help but let her jaw drop slightly as she rolls her eyes towards him in exasperation. “I told you, _I_ am going to stay with her.”

               “Not a chance,” Rey snaps. “Leia gave you clearance to help because she thought it would be easiest for you to access her mind more than anyone to pull her out of this, and you’ve done that. We thank you for your help, but your services are no longer required.”

               “He can stay,” Poe says quietly after a moment, and Rey spins around to face him incredulously as Kylo’s lip quirks upwards into a triumphant sneer. “Someone should stay with her, and it’s not like he has anywhere else to be.” Poe gives Kylo such an icy, pointed look that it could have cut him if it were a knife.

               “Thank you,” you tell him, trying to make your voice as sincere as possible, and Poe only shoots you a tight-lipped smile that is clearly more forced than anything. You had been planning on asking him just how long you had to be on bedrest for, but if Kylo was getting at least a small reprieve from his usual captivity, then you would happily stay in the medbay for as long as you needed to, perhaps longer.

               “What if he tries to escape?” Rey asks pointedly, and you almost consider it an insult that she would ask such a thing with you right there. True, you were not in any shape to take him down, and Kylo had taken you away from base when you were weakened before…after a brief second of deliberations, you considered her point fair in retrospect.

               “He won’t,” Poe says, giving Kylo the same sharp, pointed look he had before. “I haven’t forgotten our terms.” You arch an eyebrow up at them, but Kylo just nods solemnly. Whatever agreement they struck about you, they both seemed to be taking it _very_ seriously, and you weren’t quite sure how to feel about that.

               “Feel better,” Rey says as she squeezes your arm, and you shoot her a quick smile.

               “We’ll be back soon,” Poe tells you, his voice a lot more comfortable and familiar than it was only a few moments ago. “Until then, rest up.”

               “Thanks,” you say with a small wave until they’re out the door, and that’s when you turn back to Kylo, offering him a small smile as you glance up at him. “So I think I found someone who likes me less than I like me right now,” you tell him, but no sooner than you finish your sentence does Kylo place both hands on either side of your head as he leans in, kissing you firmly. You can’t help but smile as you return it, and he kisses you with such fervent urgency that it makes you dizzy as he pulls away. “I’m okay, Kylo, really, I’m okay.”

               “You almost weren’t,” Kylo says seriously, and you can’t help but drop your gaze like a scolded child. You hadn’t done anything wrong, and yet you couldn’t help but feel like you should have been smart enough not to drink _poison_ , especially if it was as obvious as they said. “If Ani hadn’t found you in time-“

               “But he did,” you say firmly. “And you heard them. Nothing like this is going to happen again.” Kylo just shakes his head as he looks away, but you remain firm. “They care about me, they both do. I know you don’t like either of them, but they’re not going to let anything like this happen to me again, especially Poe. Do you realize he still hasn’t completely forgiven himself for letting you take me away from D’Qar in the first place? If I died on his watch, in his _room_ , when he was supposed to be looking out for me, he’d never forgive himself.”

               “I’m aware,” Kylo says through gritted teeth as he sits down in the chair by your side, and you can’t help but lace your fingers through his as you play idly with his hands. “You seem to be in a remarkably good mood for someone who was just poisoned.”

               “Anakin came to me in a vision,” you tell him, still looking down at his hands, but you can still feel Kylo’s energy shift through the Force. “He brought a friend with him.”

               “A friend?” Kylo repeats, and he almost sounds skeptical as he observes you.

               “Taro,” you tell him, and now you do glance up at him to see his reaction. He looks more or less perplexed, as though he’s trying to remember why that name sounds familiar until it dawns on him.

               “How?” he asks, as if he doesn’t understand, and you just roll your shoulders before letting them drop back into their natural position.

               “He’s Force sensitive enough to push through and communicate with Anakin helping him do it,” you explain. “I don’t really know how that works, but I spoke to him.” You pause for a moment as you shake your head from side to side, letting the realization sink in. “I spoke to him and then I heard you…and then I woke up. I-“ You look up at Kylo again, trying to quell the sinking feeling in your chest. “I didn’t get to tell him goodbye, again. I didn’t even get a chance to tell him all the things I wanted to tell him. So much has happened and he just slipped away again.”

               “Dying is like that,” Kylo tells you quietly, and you can’t help but meet his eyes.

               “Taro told me this was inevitable,” you tell him quietly. “He told me that this was always going to happen, that this was the road I was set on. From the moment I met you, you were always going to cause me pain.”

               “Love is pain,” Kylo tells you bitterly, and you can’t help but smirk as you chuckle lightly to yourself.

               “I think Anakin would agree with you on that,” you say with a firm nod of your head, as if trying to confirm this to yourself.

               “Do you speak to him often?” Kylo asks, trying and failing to conceal the curiosity in his tone.

               “No, this is the first time I’ve spoken to him in a while,” you admit. “Or at least, that I remember, anyway. He says that I’m a lot like him.” You can’t help but raise one eyebrow as you look at Kylo. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t think Leia would be happy to hear that.”

               “No,” Kylo agrees with a firm shake of his head. “You have to understand, my grandfather tortured her. She never knew him as Anakin Skywalker, only as Darth Vader, and she would never accept either of them as her father.”

               “And that’s fair,” you tell him. “It’s just like us. Anakin doesn’t seem like a bad person to me, but I understand how he was taken over by the dark side and that’s what made him act the way he did, making questionable, regrettable decisions that he couldn’t control, even when he thought he could. There are people who hate us for the same reason, who see us as nothing more than monsters-“

               “I am a monster,” Kylo says firmly. “You are not.”

               You can’t help but laugh as you hold up one hand, which is again hooked into an IV. “I can think of at least one person that doesn’t agree with you,” you tell him lightheartedly, and Kylo just shakes his head as he looks away from you. You know better than to ask, but a small part of you can’t help but wonder about what you had picked up on when they hadn’t realized you were awake. “Kylo, what were you talking about with Poe? What agreement did you make?”

               “Not your concern,” Kylo replies immediately, and you can’t help but scowl as you cross your arms over your chest.

               “So it has to do with me, but I can’t know about it?” you ask as you raise an eyebrow, and Kylo nods his head solemnly in response. “So what happens when I ask Poe about it? Will he give me the same answer?”

               Kylo looks you up and down for a moment, as if trying to figure out what’s different about you. “You’ve changed.”

               “Again?” you ask incredulously, swallowing the knot in your throat.

               “What happened?” he asks you, leaning forward slightly to show you that he was giving you his undivided attention. “You seem like you’re starting to come back to yourself, and this is the first time that I’ve seen you again in a long while. You seem happier, somehow, less burdened, although you shouldn’t, considering what almost just happened. What happened with Anakin?”

               “It was inevitable, Kylo,” you tell him quietly. “It was always inevitable, at least that’s what Taro and Anakin told me, and I trust them. They wouldn’t lie to me. They’ll keep pertinent information that I wish I knew ahead of time from me, sure, but they wouldn’t directly lie to my face, especially not about something like this. From the moment we became bonded, I was susceptible to falling to the dark side, and I fell. It was predictable, and it was planned, maybe by the Force or some other cosmic entity, I don’t know, but that makes the whole situation better somehow. I don’t know how to explain it, but if I had never bonded with you, Ani would never have been born, I would never have met Poe or anyone else here at the Resistance, and I wouldn’t have…you.” You pause as you look up at him. “If someone told me back then that bonding with you would have caused me to fall to the dark side, I wouldn’t have done a thing to stop it.” You lull your head to one side. “ _Mostly_ because I wouldn’t have known what that meant at the time, but also because I love you, truly, completely…you’re the most important person to me in the galaxy, and I don’t know if I could even call my life truly living if you weren’t in it. It’s been crazy, and dangerous, and uncertain, more than anything, but I can’t lose you.” You can feel tears prick in the corners of your eyes now, but you’re not crying, at least, not yet. “I can’t lose you, and yet there’s nothing I can do, I…” You let your voice trail off, afraid that it’s going to break with emotion, and Kylo seems to understand as he smooths your hair back out of your face with one large hand.

               “You don’t have to lose me,” he says quietly, his voice soft. “I’m not going anywhere.” You can’t help but let your eyebrows knit together in confusion as you look up at him, trying to discern his meaning. “I’ll do whatever I have to do at the trial,” he continues. “I’ll say what they want me to say, I’ll do what they want me to do, and if I agree to turn against the First Order and try to destroy everything I helped create, then there’s a chance I’ll live through this yet.”

               You pause for a moment, trying to process this new piece of information. It seemed like things hadn’t just changed for you last night. Before, Kylo had always seemed convinced that the Republic was going to wipe his existence from the galaxy for good and make an example of him, but now he seemed cautiously optimistic. “Are you repentant?” you ask quietly, trying to figure out where this change was coming from.

               Kylo, to his credit, pauses and contemplates his answer before speaking. “For certain things,” he says as he looks at you, and you don’t have to ask what he’s referring to. “But for what the First Order asked me to do? I can’t be. I thought I was doing what was right, and-“

               “Good,” you say quickly, and Kylo seems surprised that you would cut him off so quickly. “I don’t want you to be repentant for everything,” you say with a shake of your head. “It would seem, I don’t know, unlike you, that’s all.”

               “I don’t need to be,” Kylo continues. “It’s a military tribunal. They’re not trying to determine my guilt or my innocence. They know what I’ve done. The real question is if I’m worth more to them dead or alive.”

               “And you have to convince them of your worth,” you say as you glance at him. “Convince them that you won’t betray them, that if they ask you to do something for them that you’ll actually do it and help them destroy the First Order for good.”

               “I will,” Kylo tells you softly, and you can practically hear the regret in his voice. This wasn’t something he wanted to do, but felt compelled to.

               “What changed?” you ask quietly. “And don’t tell me nothing, because something obviously did. You’ve changed somehow. You’re, I don’t know, you’re different too, more resolved or something.”

               “You almost died,” Kylo says quietly. “Again. And I couldn’t do a thing to protect you.”

               “Kylo-“ you say warningly, but he doesn’t seem inclined to stop.

               “I thought you’d be safe here,” he admits. “I thought the pilot could look after you, and you’d be safe and happy here, even without me, but I can’t. I can’t give up when you might be in danger here, when Ani might be in danger here. I can’t risk anything happening to either of you, no matter what that requires of me.”

               “This had nothing to do with you,” you say quietly. “People hate me because of what _I_ did for the First Order, or for something to do with Poe, or because they’ve spent too much time around Deso, but I don’t think it had anything to do with you.”

               “Then was it coincidence that you were poisoned the same day they announced a date for my trial?” Kylo asks, and you can’t help the surge of adrenaline that shoots through you, making your heart beat painfully quickly as it throbs in your chest.

               “When?” you ask, but your voice comes out as no more than a breathless whisper.

               “Soon,” Kylo says as he glances away, and you know implicitly that he has no intention of telling you and causing you more alarm than you need right now. “If timing is any indication, whoever poisoned you may be someone that thinks you were going to testify on my behalf and say something that they didn’t want the New Republic to hear.”

               “Then whoever it was, they’re far enough removed from the process not to know that Poe doesn’t want me involved in any way,” you say as you shrug your shoulders up and down. “Or maybe they know and they just don’t care. Maybe they did it to try to get you to give up, I don’t know.”

               “I won’t,” Kylo tells you as he looks up at you fiercely, and the look in his eyes tells you that it’s a promise. “I thought you didn’t need me. I thought you could make it on your own here. I thought you and Ani would both be safe and protected, but I was wrong. You still need me, both of you do, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure nothing happens to you again.”

               You can’t help but smile as you look down, heat rising to your cheeks. “You almost make dying seem worth it,” you say teasingly as you glance up at him, but Kylo shakes his head.

               “This isn’t easy for me,” he tells you, the sadness palpable in his voice. “I don’t want to betray everything I’ve worked so hard for, but now I don’t have a choice.” He looks away from you, and there seems to be something else that’s bothering him, something that he won’t quite say, and it takes a few moments before you can tap into his mental energy and really discern what that is.

               “Phasma,” you say suddenly. “They’re going to want you to turn her in, aren’t they?”

               “Most likely,” Kylo admits as he shakes his head. “In a way, I almost wish they’d put me down so I wouldn’t have to make that choice, but I can’t risk leaving you alone here. I can’t.”

               “They’re going to make you kill Phasma,” you repeat quietly, your voice a low whisper as you look away.

               “If I can find her,” Kylo reminds you. “There are plenty of First Order bases in the galaxy, and-“

               “And you know her favorite hideout spots,” you admit quietly.

               “I’m sorry,” Kylo says as he glances away. “I know she was your friend.”

               “It’s more than that, though,” you say as you look up at him. “She helped me on the Starkiller Base. She helped raise Ani. She helped us escape the _Propitiate._ She may have had her own reasons for doing so, but-“ You just shake your head from side to side. “But it was still a kindness, and I can’t forget that.”

               “I’m sorry,” Kylo repeats, and you finally dare yourself to look up at him.

               “You know what this means,” you tell him. You know implicitly that Kylo has already more or less figured this out for himself, but you can’t help but say it anyway. “If you find her, she’s not going to allow herself to be captured. She’s pledged her life and her death to the First Order, and you’re not going to be able to convince her otherwise. If you find her, you’re going to have to kill her.”

               “I know,” Kylo says as he looks away, but you reach out your hand for his, forcing his gaze back towards you.

               “But it’s what she would want,” you tell him firmly. “She wouldn’t want to be taken prisoner, and she wouldn’t want to see the First Order collapse, let alone watch you dismantle it.” Kylo just shakes his head from side to side, and you try to think of something, anything to help him through this. “Are me and Ani worth it?” you ask gently, and Kylo looks up at you with fiery disbelief burning behind his dark eyes.

               “Yes,” he says firmly. “I would give my life for you both again and again.”

               “I want you here with me,” you tell him. “No matter what happens, I want you here with me, and not just because you’re worried about protecting me. We’ve both made fantastically bad choices, but through everything we’ve managed to stick together, and I don’t want that to change now.”

               “It won’t,” Kylo assures you. “I won’t leave you.”

               “Where’s your disclaimer?” you press. “Where’s the _if I can help it_?”

               “I won’t leave you,” Kylo repeats as his hand closes over yours, and his eyes burn with the same dark intensity they had when you had first met him on board the Starkiller Base. That had been one lifetime ago, possibly two, but that didn’t matter now. What mattered was that you were still here, still together, and you wouldn’t let him go for anything in this galaxy.

               “I’d follow you, you know?” you ask softly, and Kylo pauses for a moment before he understands your meaning.

               “I know.”

               You wait for him to challenge you, to tell you that you needed to worry about Ani, that you had to look after him, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t chide your way of thinking, he stays silent, and that’s when you know that things really and truly were going to be okay. Ren was going to fight, and you knew without a doubt that Kylo was going to win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sing-song voice* Taro's back and he's better than ever....... Not going to lie, I had wanted him included in Reader's vision after she passed on the first time; I thought about bringing a few people in, actually, like Hux, the real Hux, and Shayne, but ultimately I decided it was better if that was something that the Reader went through herself. But at least the Reader almost dying (again) has seemingly changed things for both of them. The Reader has new resolve that the Force is going to help Kylo work past this, and Kylo himself is ready to fight so that he can protect his family, although he is understandably cautious as to what the Resistance/Republic may force him to do if he agrees to work with them against the First Order. What does that mean for the future? Well, given how it's been quite a few chapters since they touched each other last, I'm guessing some how-did-you-almost-die-on-me-again smut is in order, but beyond that is anyone's guess. ;) Until Thursday, cheers!!


	60. Chapter 60

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW content ahead

               It was almost disappointing that the bed in the medbay was wider than the one in Kylo’s room. It wasn’t much wider, but considering how big Kylo was, even an inch of space made a substantial difference. You supposed it wouldn’t matter much, considering that Kylo would soon be sent away for his trial, but you refused to think about that. Kylo was ready to fight for himself now, and that was all you could have ever hoped for, really. You could understand why he didn’t want to betray the First Order, but you appreciated that he wouldn’t give up his life for them, as you had so often feared he would. No, he was putting aside his legacy in exchange for his family, continuing what you supposed would be a Skywalker tradition that Anakin would be proud of. You had no idea what that would mean for Ani himself, but you wanted him to be free to create his own legacy, much like you had. Kylo had his entire family history of reshaping the galaxy to look back on, but you didn’t know what substantial role your parents ever played in it, if any. You were an unknown, and to think about it in retrospect, the Force had to have been guiding you your entire life. It was not mere luck that Sadie’s father had found you, and you knew without a doubt that you had not crossed paths with Kylo Ren by chance. It was the will of the Force, for you to meet, to bond, to have a child, and you felt confident that if you trusted in the Force, it would not lead you to stray again. The Force had nothing to gain by taking Kylo’s life, and in that, you could be sure that he would be safe.

                Kylo’s lips press against the side of your neck and you can’t help but smile as he nuzzles your sensitive skin sweetly with the tip of his nose. “You sleep well?” you ask him, and he just nods his head forward.

               “The bed here is larger than the one in my cell,” Kylo tells you appreciatively. “I miss being able to sleep beside you again.”

               “I mean, we can both fit if we squish,” you tell him teasingly, but Kylo just shakes his head.

               “If the situation had been different, I might have insisted,” he offers. “But as it was, we were both critically injured and if you had stayed you only would have gotten angry with me.”

               “You don’t know that,” you say lightly, but even as you say those words you can’t help but admit that there might have been at least some truth to them. You would not have been happy scrunched against the wall each night, aching and in pain, and although you knew he’d never admit it, Kylo would have preferred solitude to that level of discomfort as well. “Well we’re together now. That’s all that matters.”

               “For now,” Kylo reminds you, but you just shake your head, refusing to let your conversation head down that path yet again.

               “Are you better?” you ask him quietly, and Kylo sits up slowly as he pulls off his shirt. The bandages are gone, although there is still a raw looking patch of red skin there that was in the shape of an almost completely perfect circle. You couldn’t help but shudder as the memory came back to you, and Kylo seems to sense your reaction as he makes a move to recover his shirt, but you hold out your hand to stop him.

               “Don’t,” you say firmly as you place your hand on his chest, albeit far, far away from his injury. Kylo looks down at you, and you can’t help but bite your lip as you lower your gaze, letting your eyes sweep over his muscles. “Don’t.”

               “What about you?” Kylo’s hand snakes around your waist and under your shirt, and suddenly your full attention is diverted to the way his fingertips move against your skin as they glide along your lower back. It feels nice, until a sudden thought occurs to you that makes you jump with alarm.

               “Wait, the bandages,” you say as you look up at him. “They must have taken them off.”

               “They may have had to,” Kylo offers, but this in no way makes you feel any better about, well, anything. You didn’t want to see it, you didn’t want Kylo to see it, you didn’t want it to be there at all. It hadn’t hurt you in quite some time, at least, not that you could recall, but yet you could be sure that you probably had some hideous scar that would forever be a reminder of Snoke and your fall to the dark side.

               “I don’t want you to see it,” you tell him quickly, and to his credit, Kylo only lets out a small laugh under his breath.

               “Why not?” Kylo asks. “Do you really think it will affect how I care for you in any way?”

               “No,” you say as you shake your head. “No, I don’t think that at all. I just don’t want to have to remember all of the terrible things that I’ve done every time I look down at myself, and I don’t want you to have to be reminded of how badly things could have ended up every time you look at me.”

               “Look at me,” Kylo says softly as he brushes your hair out of your face with one large hand, and you can’t help but jut out your lower lip in a gentle pout as you look up at him. “Nothing will ever change how I feel about you; I think I have proven that to you by now.” You just nod your head slowly as you lean into his touch. “I don’t care if you have scars. If anything, it’s a reminder of how strong you were, how strong you continue to be to keep fighting through it.”

               You bite your lip as you shake your head from side to side, a small smile surfacing on your lips. “You’re not going to stop until I show this to you, are you?” you ask teasingly and Kylo just grins as he rolls you over onto your back. He straddles you quickly, pinning your wrists to either side of your head, and you can’t help but jut out your tongue seductively, running it along your lower lip. You can tell that Kylo’s visibly affected by the way he lowers his head imperceptibly towards yours, and you can’t help but buck your hips up towards his, trying to urge him on.

               Kylo reclines his head slowly, and you continue to thrust your hips upwards into his, desperate for sensation. Just as Kylo’s lips are about to touch yours, however, he dips to the right, kissing the area to the right of your mouth, and you can’t help but let out a groan of frustration that quickly ebbs into a moan and then a stifled whimper as Kylo works his way down your cheek, jutting his tongue into the sensitive hollow just below your ear at the base of your jaw. Your hands immediately find your way to his arms, and you run your fingertips against his warm skin, trying to soak in every inch of him.

               Kylo’s lips dip down to kiss a vertical line along your neck, and as he does so, you can feel his hands gently reaching underneath your shirt, skimming your sides. You can feel his short fingernails scratching you lightly, and you screw your eyes shut as you embrace the myriad of sensations flowing through you, bucking your hips up again and again in a tight, constant rhythm. You can feel Kylo start to lift up your shirt slowly, and that’s when you realize you’ve lost his game and given into his distraction.

               “Just get it over with,” you groan, and you let your hips drop back into the bed as you squirm with needy frustration. “Not fair.”

               “In a minute,” Kylo tells you, but as he meets your eyes, you can tell he’s waiting for your permission.

               “Oh, get it over with,” you say as you sit up, lifting your arms straight up over your head, and less than a second passes as Kylo quickly yanks the thin med shirt up and off your head. You quickly drop back down onto the bed, covering your face with both arms, refusing to look down at yourself. “How bad is it?” You wait for a moment, wait for Kylo to speak, wait for him to touch you, but he does neither. “Kylo?”

               But Kylo isn’t answering, and you nervously pull your arms away to see Kylo glancing down at your abdomen, one eyebrow quirked as he stares down at you with a bizarre expression on his face. “Oh no, it’s bad isn’t it,” you say as you push yourself up on your elbows to get a good look at yourself, almost afraid of what gaping hole you expected to find there. But instead of any hole, there was just a slender long strip of red skin that varied in width along coarse, bumpy edges, but was never longer than two inches at its widest point. The area still looked fresh with a certain shine to it that revolted you when it caught the light, but it was at least smooth, flat against your skin, and it looked like the scarring would be extremely minimal, maybe not even noticeable, by the time it healed completely.

               “Oh,” is all you can think of to say, and Kylo looks up at you with clear amusement playing on his face.

               “Still concerned?” he asks, and you can’t help but let out a snort as you cross your arms over your chest. Almost immediately, though, Kylo grabs both of your arms again and pins them down by your sides, trapping them beneath his elbows as he bends down to kiss you, one hand running through your hair while his other hand cups your cheek, moving your chin so he can kiss you the way he wants to. You want to move your arms, want to touch him, but he’s holding you down and honestly, you don’t mind in the least. Instead, you arch your hips up and manage to pull your legs out from under him as you wrap them around his waist, pushing yourself up into him.

               Kylo lets out a sharp breath from between his parted lips as his hand trails down your neck and to your breast, grabbing it roughly with one hand as he pinches your nipple between his thumb and forefinger. You let out a gasp as you look up to see Kylo watching you intently, testing to make sure you still liked this. “I haven’t been with him.” The words are out of your mouth before you can stop them, but Kylo doesn’t reply as he moves his lips towards yours again, capturing your bottom lip firmly between his as he gently pushes his teeth against the tender area.   

               “I don’t care,” he tells you in a breathy voice as he pulls away slowly, and you can’t help but glance up at him, quirking up one eyebrow in confusion. His face is so close to yours you can almost reach up and kiss him again, but you need an answer to this, you need him to answer you.

               “Why not?” you ask softly, almost afraid of the answer.

               “Because you’re mine,” Kylo replies as he runs a finger down from your forehead to the tip of your nose. “And no matter what happens with him, you will always belong to me.”

               A quick gasp escapes your lips as Kylo grabs you roughly, and you can’t help but let your eyelids flutter as you feel him push a finger into you. Suddenly it’s too much for you to take as you push yourself up, pushing him back slightly as you climb into his lap, pressing your lips against his. He presses back with an equal amount of urgency, and there’s an immediate struggle of limbs, a desperate want of connection, as you run your hands through his hair, across his shoulders, over anything you can touch, wanting to feel as much of him as possible. Kylo seems to return the sentiment as he pumps a finger into you at a steady pace, making you buck your hips against his hand, urging him to go faster.

               “How do you want it?” Kylo asks, and it doesn’t take you more than a moment to answer.

               “Wall,” you reply, and through a sudden burst of the Force, there you are, against the wall, completely naked, and Kylo joins you no more than a moment later as he pins you there with his hips. This stirs something inside you, an old memory, and you can’t help but grin at him. “This feels familiar,” you tell him. “You’re not going to run away again, are you?”

               Kylo looks confused for a moment before he kisses you again, gently, cupping your cheek with one hand, and you can’t help but return it as you nuzzle him gently, being much softer with him than you had been only a few moments ago as you let the nostalgia of how your relationship developed on the Starkiller Base come over you. It had been extreme and dramatic and confusing and emotional but throughout all that, you had come to trust him, even with everyone on base telling you not to. But you didn’t listen to them; you listened to your instincts, you listened to the Force, and in doing so you fulfilled a purpose that you didn’t even know you had to complete. You had suffered through perilous, dangerous circumstances together, and it had only helped you grow closer. It had made you stronger, made him kinder, and you completed each other and helped each other grow in a way that you could never have experienced with anyone else in the galaxy. You could care for other people, as you did, but you knew implicitly that you would never be able to develop a connection with anyone else like you had with him.

               “No matter what happens, I’m always yours,” you remind him. It doesn’t need to be said, you know he knows this already, but you want him to hear it, want him to remember that no matter how bad things could become at his trial that he would never, could never, be replaced or forgotten. Kylo looks almost hesitant as he meets your eyes before he kisses you back with more conviction than ever before. This wasn’t something that you needed to argue about anymore; whatever would happen would happen and you had to trust in the Force that whatever happened would appeal to the ultimate good, and you knew deep down that Kylo was a good, at least for you. Others would disagree, but without Snoke’s constant manipulations and deception, Kylo was a different person. He was gentler, and whether it was you or Ani or simply time that had helped him mellow back into the part of himself before he became Kylo Ren, it didn’t matter. The years that you spent alone waiting for him to return were so far behind you now, it was almost as though they hadn’t happened at all. You remembered Naboo, remembered cuddling up beside him on cold nights and laughing as Kylo kissed you on the warm grass under the blinding sun. That was the person you belonged to, and that was the person who would make it back to you again, when this was all over, he would come back.

               You had to hope for at least that much.

               Kylo trails a vertical line of kisses down your jaw to your neck, applying a rapid burst of suction at the same time he pushes into you, making you gasp as you press yourself against him. He starts to move inside you now, slowly, making sure you were as wet and desperate for him as you could possibly be. You couldn’t have felt any closer to him in that moment, you honestly couldn’t, and as you rested your head against his shoulder and placed small kisses along his collarbone, Kylo started to increase his pace. You could practically feel goosebumps pricking on your skin as you could feel yourself building closer to your release, and you couldn’t help but stifle a moan as you bit into his shoulder, running your lower lip against his neck.

               “Kylo-“ you breathe as your release suddenly takes you, hard and fast, and Kylo keeps up his constant rhythm, pushing you further, and just when you think you can’t take anymore, the door opens.

               And Ladson walks through.

               “Fuck-“ You hiss under your breath as you bury yourself in Kylo’s chest, pushing your forehead into his shoulder. Ladson quickly utters his own cursing epithet as he shuts the door, but even still, you can still catch a glimpse of Ani behind him, although you’re not quite sure how much he had been able to see from behind Ladson’s broad shoulders.

               You can feel Kylo still against you, and you pause for what feels like a solid moment. You think you can hear voices out in the corridor outside the door, and suddenly it opens again, this time, only a crack. “Sorry,” Ladson calls through. “Glad to see you’re feeling better. We’ll, uh, stop by later.”

               “Thanks,” you call back, and as soon as the words leave your lips you know that’s the stupidest thing you’ve probably ever said to him. As the door snaps shut again, you finally will yourself to look back up at Kylo, biting your lip nervously as you look him over. He’s regarding you dryly, his dick still inside of you, and you almost think you can feel it twitch against your slick walls.

               “Um.” You find yourself shrinking under his gaze, and you’re not sure what exactly you should say to relieve his what you could only call a glare. “You came, right?”

               Kylo’s jaw drops imperceptibly, and you can’t help but offer him a small smile. “He’s my friend, Kylo, he just wanted to make sure I’m all right. Ani too.”

               Kylo regards you silently for another moment before he finally pulls out of you, keeping you steady against the wall as he places his hands underneath your thighs. “You know I did, you could feel it. Why ask?”

               “Trying to distract you so you don’t get mad?” you offer, and Kylo raises an eyebrow as he lifts you away from the wall and places you down on the bed.

               “Do I seem angry?” Kylo asks, and you can’t help but shrug uncomfortably as you make room for him beside you.

               “Not right now,” you tell him. “But you know how fast rumors and stuff spread on this base. Ani’s not going to tell anyone anything, obviously, but what if Ladson tells Asher? I don’t know if I can trust him to keep a secret. Or what if he tells Sadie? Then _everyone_ on this base will know that he just walked in on us fucking.”

               “And is that such a bad thing?” Kylo asks with light amusement in his voice as he trails his hand down your upper arm.

               “If you’re not upset with him, I’m not,” you tell him. “I mean, it’s embarrassing, but I don’t want you threatening to run him through because I’m pretty sure he’s the only person in the galaxy who’s seen your bare ass and lived to tell the tale.”  

               “He didn’t see much of you,” Kylo says as he presses his lips against your temple. “That’s all that concerns me.” You’re about to mention that you used to live with Ladson, that he had seen you stark naked plenty of times before, but you supposed that wasn’t really all that important to mention right now, especially considering the circumstances had been much, much different between just walking in on someone in their natural state of undress and seeing someone fucking.

               “It ruined our cuddling though,” you can’t help but point out, but Kylo doesn’t seem to mind as he runs his fingertips against your side, trailing a row of kisses from the inside of your wrist up your arm.

               “Doesn’t have to,” Kylo murmurs in his low, seductive voice, and you can’t help but purr as you press yourself against him, pressing your bare chest into his as he sweeps your hair back with one hand, using the other to angle your chin up towards his as he kisses you firmly yet passionately, giving you permission to lose yourself in him completely.

               You knew you didn’t have much time left, and he knew it as well. It was looming over you like a dark cloud, blotting out the fond memory of Naboo’s summer sky, and for a moment you stood there in the field of grass, facing the thundering waterfalls as the clouds blotted out the blue sky above you. The lake ahead of you fell into shadow, and the sparkling blue waters suddenly seemed murky and dark, as foreboding as the thundering waterfalls all around you. They were loud, louder than you had ever heard them before, and for a moment they seemed to drown out all sound, all sense of being, as they grew closer and closer to you in the darkness, threatening to suffocate you under their weight. You could feel the icy spray of cold water against your face, could feel the harsh sting of their pellets against your arms, and the only emotion that coursed through your mind was fear. It would drown you until it submerged you under its indomitable weight completely, and then it would refuse to kill you. Instead, it would force you to live in a paralyzed state, trapped under the dark waters as if you were trapped under a thick lake of sludge, letting it eat at your core from the inside out, filling your lungs to the brim with their noxious tar until you lost even the will, the desire to breathe. You would wish for death, but it would never find you, and you knew that besides losing Kylo, this was the one thing that terrified you most of all. Losing yourself to the dark side wouldn’t mean death, it would mean half-life, and as someone who had lost themselves already, losing yourself again without being consciously aware of it was the one thing that terrified you more than anything, the one weakness that you could not conceal, and as you pull away slowly, you can’t mistake the look on Kylo’s face as he recognizes your ever-living nightmare, plaguing even what should have been a happier moment spent with him.

               “No one will let that happen to you,” Kylo says softly as he cups your cheek in his hand, but the most you can manage is a shrug. You want to speak, but you’re worried that the words will be choked in your throat, and so you just manage a quick nod as you kiss him again, letting a single tear roll down your cheek. You were weak, and you were afraid, but you would not lose him. No matter what happened, you would not lose him.

               The next two weeks passed by quickly. Fortunately, because of the incident that happened in Poe’s room, the heads of the Resistance decided that you no longer needed to be held captive there, and while you were grateful to be once again free to walk around base by yourself, you couldn’t help but think that this gesture wouldn’t have even been necessary if they had just trusted you in the first place. The only reason you didn’t truly hold this against them was because you had been in the hangar looking to sneak off with a ship, at least for a short while, and though it was Asher who had actually gone through with the task, you had put yourself in that position to begin with.

               But now it looked like your punishment was done and no one considered you a threat, which was exactly what you wanted. You didn’t want to be feared. You didn’t want people to marvel at your power. You just wanted some degree of normalcy in your life, wanted to spend time with your family, and that’s exactly what you tried to achieve. Because of what you had done, you were still banned from the hangar, even with Poe’s accompaniment, but you still got to visit Finn and Rey, which helped distract you from what was to come. Now that you were more or less healed and familiar with your capabilities in Finn’s virtual world, he upgraded you to more advanced challenges that helped take you away from the base and distract you from the impending trial, at least for a while. Seeing Rey again was a sober reminder that it was impending, though, and the harder you tried to meditate and clear your mind, the more impossible the task seemed. Although Rey encouraged you to be patient with yourself, you found that slowly becoming more and more difficult to do. If anything, it was almost easier for you to avoid dealing with it altogether and simply push it out of your mind where you wouldn’t have to dwell on it.

               You didn’t know how healthy or unhealthy that was to do, but considering the circumstances, you were trying to cope with things in the best way that you could. Dinner times were always the best for you, and although you had to admit that you were nervous around being so many people and eating food that you didn’t see prepared directly in front of you, Finn, especially, made a big show of sniffing and tasting your food to make sure it was safe. Those times reminded you of what it had been like when you had been living on the Resistance base before, and considering those were the memories that you had cherished the most, you couldn’t help but take solace in them once again. With the inclusion of Asher and with Ani now being of age, it was like you once again had your own little circle where you could feel included in something greater than yourself, where you actually felt like you had people to rely on and to help support you.

               After dinner, though, you always went back to Kylo. Sometimes you would just tell him about what you did that day and he would listen, sitting on the bed while you usually paced the length of the room, talking animatedly with your hands. You seemed to need to say something, anything, to fill the silence that stretched between you with words, but he didn’t seem to mind it. He had been sent back to his cell the day after you had woken up, and neither you nor he had protested, quietly accepting the circumstances here on base. Regardless, you came to visit him every night, and while you had at first tried to sleep in the bed with him, even you had been forced to admit that it was simply much too small, and neither you nor Kylo could get comfortable. Instead, you sat by his bedside and stroked his hair or held his hand as he fell asleep before you headed back to Poe’s room.

               Poe, to his credit, didn’t make things weird, and that was something that you couldn’t quite figure out how to convey your appreciation for. You had decided not to ask him about whatever arrangement he had worked out with Kylo, preferring as little drama to get you through your days as possible, especially where Kylo Ren was concerned. You wanted to focus your mental energies either completely on the trial or not at all, and anything else that had to do with him was not a topic that you wanted to dwell on. That, in a sense, included Poe as well. Sometimes he was awake when you came back to the room depending on how late you stayed up with Kylo, but you would always fall asleep next to him, sometimes curling into the circle of his arm, sometimes not, depending on how he was sleeping, but you almost always woke up in the morning with tangled limbs anyway. He always left for the command center early, and by request, he woke you up with him so that you could go down to see Kylo as early as possible. He was always asleep by the time you entered, and so you would go back to stroking his hair or holding his hand, completing the illusion that you had never left his side.

               Eventually, though, you couldn’t keep prolonging the inevitable, and the day before the trial came upon you like an approaching shadow, blotting out everything in the distance. You couldn’t think about your future when you couldn’t be sure whether or not Kylo would be a part of it, and you knew that deep down Kylo entertained the possibility that he wouldn’t have a future at all. It almost seemed unfathomable for you to consider it, but now you were being _forced_ to consider it, forced to deal with the possibility that Kylo may be gone for good, and that was something that you still didn’t quite know how to handle. You supposed you wouldn’t know how to cope with it until it happened, and even then, you couldn’t help but let your mind run circles around the myriad of possibilities that could occur. If they did sentence him to death, would they execute him right there on the spot? Would he be allowed some time to say his final goodbyes? Would he be allowed visitors, and if he was, would you be allowed to see him? If you could, would you be able to convince him to escape with you? Would Ani come to? Would you be able to escape from the planet in time or would you be shot down together, going down in a flaming mess of debris until there was nothing left but stardust in your wake?

               Regardless of the constant barrage of thoughts swirling around your head like a dozen buzzing flies, you tried to push them away before picking them out of the air one by one as you crushed them between your fingertips. You knew these thoughts would only serve to distract Kylo, or make him uneasy, and that was not something that you would permit yourself to do. He had to be focused, and at his full attention, and that was why you assumed that they had invited you to the briefing even though you knew you were not going to be allowed to go to the trial. Considering that you had just been poisoned on their own base, the Resistance was not going to take a chance with letting you go about out in the open on a Republic world. Even Leia, who you knew implicitly had never planned to step foot on the planet, was going to have extra security forces implemented for her protection regardless. You didn’t know what such protections would be provided for Kylo, but you supposed that was the point of the briefing, to make sure everyone knew the role that they had to play.

               And fortunately for you, you knew the role you had to play. You had to make sure to keep yourself from becoming restless, from clouding Kylo’s mind with idle concerns, and so you remained steadfast in your resolve not to disappoint him like you had on the _Propitiate._ You hadn’t thought too much more about what you had done, leaving it in the past where it belonged, but with the uncertainty of your future looming ever ahead of you, you couldn’t help but wonder if the past would once again become your future if you didn’t keep a close eye on yourself. Indeed, you made sure to check in with your emotions more and more as of late, not just for Kylo’s sake, but for your own. If you were changing, if your thoughts were changing, you wanted to be the first to know of it. Rey had promised to make you aware of any changes to your personality that seemed to be more than a result of the stress of the pressing circumstances, but you wanted to be able to catch it for yourself this time, in the event that Snoke would come back to try to claim your life for good. You didn’t know if he truly had the power to bring Kylo back to life, but if he did manage to meet his end at the hands of the Republic, you knew it would be a tempting offer, and not one you were absolutely certain you could refuse. If that was the case, you could only hope that Kylo could become one with the Force, to warn you against falling down the same pitfall that he once went through, blinded by promises that the darkness would erase all of your current troubles while failing to mention the consequences that you would ultimately face in turn.

               Even still, Poe knew that you still wanted a certain sense of responsibility concerning the trial that was active instead of passive, requiring more from you than simply trying to control your thoughts, even though you both knew that that was no small task in itself. That was why Poe entrusted you with the all-important task of getting Kylo down to the conference room for the briefing in one piece, and while it made you seem like an over-glorified security guard, you knew how much more the task represented. If Kylo was to be escorted by anyone else, he would no doubt be led into the room in chains. At least with you by his side, Poe could be sure that Kylo wasn’t going to escape, and that you weren’t going to help him. It showed a basic level of trust in the both of you, and that was a trust that you were determined not to betray, especially considering that you both were about to head into a room containing the upper echelons of the Resistance who would no doubt be judging every step you took into the room, painstakingly searching each one for any sort of misstep that would serve to indicate any plans of betrayal.  

               “You ready to go?” you ask as you stand at the foot of his bed. Kylo was once again dressed in his familiar black armor, the one the Republic would no doubt be expecting him to wear. His trademark helmet had been lost somewhere on the _Propitiate_ , and while you knew that Kylo could have potentially made himself another one for the trial, you doubted that the Republic would let him wear it. They would want to see his face, would want to see whether or not he showed at least the slightest bit of remorse, and in that you couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for him. Kylo did not like to be noticed, did not like to be seen, and being surrounded by people who would be intensely scrutinizing every micro-expression that crossed his features would be intensely unnerving for him, and besides providing him with a placating source of energy, there was nothing else you could do for him.

               “Are you?” Kylo asks, and you simply shrug your shoulders in an attempt to brush off his deflection. 

               “Doesn’t matter if I am,” you say as lightly as you possibly can. “Unfortunately for you, I don’t think the Republic cares what I ate for breakfast, let alone what I think should be done concerning your war crimes.”

               “And I want to keep it that way,” Kylo says with steady resolve as he gets to his feet. “I don’t want you to be a part of this. The less they think of you, the better.”

               “But we’re a team,” you start to argue, but Kylo just shakes his head. Neither of you want to have this conversation right now, and so you just reach up and kiss him softly, pushing your lips tenderly against his. As much as you hated to admit it, Kylo had a point. You hadn’t been there to see most of the war crimes and atrocities that he had committed; he had kept that from you, and much like the murder of Han Solo, you had only found out about the terrible crimes he had committed long after they had already been done. At the very least, you had stopped wondering if you still would have been with him if you had known about his past before you met him on the Starkiller Base. That was one hypothetical that couldn’t be answered, and you refused to let yourself dwell on a reality different from the one you were subject to. Maybe there was an alternate reality where you were fortunate enough to have been able to resist the pull to the dark side, one where you and Kylo and Ani were free and living happily ever after, but that was not that reality you were presented with, and so you had to make the most of what you had right now. “In any case, you have my support. I’m here for you. If there’s anything I can do for you, or anything you need from me-“

               “I’ll ask,” Kylo says softly as he takes your face in both hands as he kisses you again. Kylo was nervous, you could tell it by the tentative way his lips moved against yours, seemingly unsure of how to convey his concern for what was going to happen next. It was a loving kiss, forceful yet passionate, trying to convey that no matter what happened next that he was thankful for all the time you got to spend with him, and you couldn’t help the burst of emotion that rose through your chest as you wrapped both hands around the nape of his neck, holding him firmly to you so that he could not pull away. Eventually you have to go though, you know you have to go, and so you quickly pull away as Kylo presses one final kiss to your forehead.

               “I’m here for you,” you breathe, letting your eyes slip closed momentarily. “No matter what happens, I’m here for you. Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh oh, the trial is getting closer and closer....what will this mean for Kylo and Reader and co? Probably not good things, but the Resistance has their own plan for what to anticipate at the upcoming trial, and their own plan of action that might be separate from what the Republic hopes to achieve. Find out just what they plan to do on Saturday when we attend the briefing and see a few more familiar faces. ;) Until then, cheers!!
> 
> PS: In PT today, I managed to pass a pen over my right shoulder. Does not sound like a lot, but that is huge for me. Again, very thankful to all the support and well-wishes, you guys are the best and I love you all. <3 *giant hugs all around*


	61. Chapter 61

               As you made your way down the hall, you could feel Kylo’s energy pulsing nervously, but it wasn’t because of the approaching briefing. If anything, he was worried about how you were going to react to what they were going to say, how visible you were going to make your presence there. “Don’t worry,” you tell him. “I know when to sit down and be quiet.”

               “And when to control your anger when they say something about me you don’t want to hear?” Kylo asks, and you can’t help but let out a snort through your nose.

               “I’ll try to be on my best behavior,” you tell him lightly, and as you walk you can’t help but feel Kylo’s hand graze your ass. “And you call that being on _your_ best behavior? Trying to turn me on before we even get in there?”

               “It relaxes you,” Kylo says simply, and you can’t help but make a small noise of mock indignation in the back of your throat as you turn down the hallway and head towards the room. At the end of the hallway, you stop as you see the same golden droid that had greeted you inside Leia’s quarters. You can see it standing outside the door waiting, although from the way it seemed almost nervous, from the way it seemed to be muttering to itself and awkwardly shifting its robotic limbs about. He looks up suddenly and swivels his head around, as if sensing you approach, and you don’t like the way its robotic eyes focus on you as he says your name.

               “Oh, thank goodness, you’re finally here,” he says as he walks towards you. He stops short directly in front of you, much too close for comfort, as he cocks his head to the side in a robotic, jerky fashion. “Everyone is inside waiting for you, though they do seem quite on edge-“ He stops suddenly as he turns to appraise Kylo, as if he’s only seeing him for the first time. His arms, which had been bent at his sides, suddenly jerk upwards as he arches his lower back up and forward in a forced exclamation of surprise. “Oh my! Master Ben, bless my circuits, you’ve survived! You must not even remember me. I am See-Three-oh…dear me, I’m getting ahead of myself. You have been gone so long and your mother is just worried sick about you.” He stops and points to a spot next to him as if he was addressing someone that wasn’t even there before he lets out a sigh of apparent frustration. “Where _is_ Artoo when you need him? He would know just what to say about this.” He looks down for a moment before his head swivels back around to face Kylo. “Master Ben, after the things you’ve done, it’s a wonder you’re not in chains! When we heard about Han Solo, well.” His voice immediately cuts off as his head swivels to the side and then back again. “Your mother deserves an apology, at the very least-“

               “Shut up, Threepio.” Kylo’s voice is automatic, and for some reason it sounds almost boyish to your ears, as if this was a response that came almost automatically to him. For a moment, you almost wondered if he had met C-3PO before. After all, Leia had said that she had the droid for a _long_ time, and you perhaps wondered if he had acted as an aide to her when Ben Solo was just a child. If that was the case, you could only imagine him to become ever increasingly frustrated with the droid’s awkward mannerisms and distasteful way of speaking. If that was the case, you could hardly blame him from turning over to the dark side if he was left under C-3PO’s care for long hours while Leia was away, busy with one thing or another while working as a Senator.

               Fortunately, C-3PO doesn’t say anything further as he looks back and forth between you. He holds up his arm as if he’s about to say something, then glances to the same vacant spot on the floor and lets out a heavy sigh before turning and walking towards the door, holding it open so you can enter the room with Kylo. _I don’t like that droid any more than you do,_ _Kylo, but I think you hurt its feelings._

               Kylo shrugs as if this is hardly one of his most pressing concerns right now as he stops to glance around the room. It’s moderately sized, and upon entering you can hear the vast din of a large group of people talking, immediately unnerving you. There were more people here than you felt comfortable with, and you couldn’t help but let your eyes sweep over them as you took them all in. They were all seated and chatting in curved rows that were centered around a holoprojector on the far wall that looked much like the one you had seen in the command center the last time you were on D’Qar. You hadn’t been to the command center since to know if it looked the same, and you doubted you would again get the opportunity, not that you had much of a reason to go in there anymore, anyway.

               As you glance around the various people, you can’t help but be unsettled by the thought as to how much this felt like how things were back when you were ready to duel Rey for the amusement of the Republic. You can see the orange flight suits of starfighter pilots, the olive and khaki of the Resistance Pathfinders, and even splashes of New Republic blue that concerned you most of all. Before you have time to back slowly out of the room, however, you can hear someone in the room shout, “Atten-hut!”

               Suddenly, the din immediately falls silent as all of the conversations in the room immediately cease and everyone stands to attention, facing the front of the room. You can feel the hairs on the back of your arm prick up uncomfortably, but Kylo seems to be more or less unconcerned by it. You remembered when people had a similar reaction to you whenever you entered a room back with Hux back on the _Propitiate_ , and you were seriously considering just running away just as soon as you could figure out how to work your legs when you notice that Leia is staring straight at you.

               “Good, you’re here,” she says, and although she’s across the room it sounds like she’s speaking right in your ear. “Now we can finally get started.” She looks back up to address the crowd in front of her. “As you were, everyone.”

               Everyone in the room sits and the conversations once again pick back up at a low murmur, but you can tell by the idle glances snuck your way that whatever their previous conversations had been about, they had shifted dramatically. Up ahead, you can see that Ani is already here, and Leia motions to two empty seats in the front by her, Poe, Wedge, and Ackbar. You just nod your head as you walk forward stiffly, putting one foot in front of the other, and as you walk up the aisle with Kylo, conversations around you completely stop as people turn to look. At first you think it’s you, think some people are trying to remember you or trying to place you, to see if they had ever met you before, but thankfully or unthankfully, they’re not paying attention to you, they’re paying attention to Kylo. They’re looking at him with an undefined sense of wonder, as if they truly didn’t believe that he was human underneath his iconic armor, as if they weren’t sure whether or not they could believe that the stories about him were true. The destruction he caused, the things he was capable of, most people only heard about his legacy through military accounts or stories told by other survivors, and now Kylo was here in the flesh, to confirm what people had already believed: that one man really could cause that much destruction and chaos to the galaxy as a whole and live to tell the tale. Or at least, that was the direction you were hoping the Force would guide him in.

               Regardless, you finally arrive at your seats, and a blue-uniformed lieutenant that you didn’t recognize rises to stand in front of the projector. You glance over at Poe on your left who shoots you a quick, tight-lipped smile, and you quickly glance to the right, past Kylo, at Ani, who was sitting straight up as he watched the lieutenant, his expression concealed as if he was wearing a mask of his own. All at once, the lieutenant begins talking, and as if on cue, the holoprojector comes to life, projecting the floating image of D’Qar and its extensive planetary defenses.

               “Welcome,” the man begins, and his voice is gruff, the voice of someone who you imagined had several years of military experience under his belt. You could tell by the way he held his shoulders that he had no problem addressing a crowd of this size, and you assumed that he must have been serving the New Republic for a considerable length of time. Idly, in the back of your mind, you almost wonder if  he had perhaps been there to watch your duel against Rey, but you supposed you would never know for sure either way. “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Lieutenant Commander Paolo Marek, Tactical Action Officer of the _Unyielding_ , and Colonel Ematt asked me here to brief everyone on the security details of the transport to Special War Tribunal Three Hundred Ninety-Four on Corellia.”

_The Unyielding?_ you ask Kylo silently in your head. _That’s still a Republic ship, right?_

_It is,_ Kylo confirms. _It’s Wedge’s personal flagship now that he’s Admiral of the Sixth Fleet._ You just nod your head forward, taking in this new piece of information. You weren’t sure how Kylo knew it when it hadn’t come up when you were on the _Propitiate_ , but you supposed that it was something Leia had probably told him about during one of their talks, especially considering that Wedge had been a personal friend to her for as long as you could remember.

               Behind the lieutenant, a cluster of ships replaces D’Qar on the holo. “The transport convoy consists of the following. Contributed from the Sixth Fleet, New Republic Star Destroyer _Unyielding,_ New Republic Star Cruiser _Naberrie,_ New Republic Star Cruiser _Bail Antilles_ , and New Republic Countermeasures Lanebreaker _Trailblazer_ , accompanied by Tierfon Legacy, Starfire, and Glantus Squadrons. Contributed from Resistance Command, Resistance Command Frigate _Vigilant_ and Resistance Escort Cruiser _Yarway_ , accompanied by Black, Blue, Red, Gold and Rogue Squadrons. Acting convoy commanders shall be as follows: New Republic Fleet – Admiral Antilles, New Republic Fighter Escort – myself, Resistance Fleet – General Organa, Resistance Fighter Escort – Captain Dameron.”

               You can’t help but blush as you hear Poe’s name, and Kylo turns his head slightly to regard you with interest. _This is real_ , you tell him finally. _This is really happening._ Kylo just lets out a breath and doesn’t respond, and you settle down further into your seat, trying to quell your rising sense of excited, nervous energy, for Kylo’s sake as much as your own.

               Regardless, something in the lieutenant’s tone changes a bit, as he glances at Leia before he commences his briefing on their strategies and overall plan of action. “General, is this room secure?”

               “In every respect, Commander,” Leia replies evenly, and the lieutenant nods.

               “Good,” he replies. “I’m sure you all received the action package from New Republic command, correct?” There’s a bit of stifled laughter and snorts from around the room, but you can’t understand why until you feel a pair of lips against your ear.

               “It’s Deso,” Poe hisses quickly in a low voice that only you could hear. “We don’t trust him not to try to blow us out of the sky; it’s why we added a lanebreaker to the convoy.” You just nod your head forward quickly, but don’t look at him directly, concerned at what expression you’d be giving him. At least the Resistance didn’t trust Deso any more than you did, and that helped you feel at least a little better about the situation. Back on the _Propitiate_ , you had come to believe that the Resistance and the Republic were still working together as closely as they did before, but more and more you were starting to see that this was no longer the case.

               “That’s what I thought,” the lieutenant replies to his vast audience. “Admiral Antilles thinks so as well, and so we disposed of the plan and formed one of our own. At 0300 hours, Ren, Anakin, Colonel Ematt and General Organa are to be transported to the _Vigilant_ under Pathfinder guard, while all other parties to the tribunal will be transported to the _Unyielding._ Regardless of the restrictions that Corellian Traffic Control has issued for the next ninety standard hours, anti-Ren sentiment is at an all-time high due to that damned _Fields of Tragedy_ series that the Holonet has been running, so every leg of the journey is being treated as transport through hostile territory.”

_You have your own ‘Net show?_ you ask Kylo. _Well, look who’s Mister Popular._ You meant it as a joke, but you can tell by Kylo’s clear nervous energy that not only was this something that he hadn’t known about, but this was something that made him extremely, extremely uncomfortable. _Hey, it’s okay, all right? It’s going to be okay. People can talk, okay, people can say whatever they want, but they don’t know you. Whatever lies they make up about you-_

_They don’t have to lie,_ Kylo points out, and you can’t help but shift uncomfortably in your chair as the lieutenant continues speaking.

               “The hyperspace jump path has been rerouted to avoid major Republic worlds,” he explains as he glances over in your direction. For a minute you think he’s looking directly at you before you realize he’s addressing Poe. “Have you made the necessary adjustments, Captain?”

               “Yes, Commander,” Poe replies without missing a beat. “We’ve loaded the fighters with the additional hypermatter as needed.” His voice was full, and authoritative, and this time you found yourself shifting in your chair for a whole different reason.

               “Very good, Captain,” the lieutenant responds. “Once all parties are aboard, prejump check-in begins at 0330 hours, and the jump sequence will commence at 0340 hours. The one part of Command’s action package that we did keep was the protection of unrestricted lanes. At 0100 hours, a galaxy-wide alert will go out on the HyperNet, warning that all who attempt to interfere with the transport of Kylo Ren will be subject to immediate destruction for contempt of tribunal in a state of war. As we speak, the _Trailblazer_ is fashioning hyperspace penetrators from suitable masses of D’Qar’s asteroid ring to enforce that policy, and preceding every jump leg, the _Trailblazer_ will fire a salvo of three penetrators through the hyperspace lane as a precaution against both minelaying and marauders lying in wait. Following the salvo, the sequence for transition will proceed immediately according to formation: _Trailblazer, Naberrie, Bail Antilles, Unyielding, Vigilant_ , then _Yarway_. Fighter escorts will jump with their host ships at a distance of thirty clicks, and Black Squadron will take rear guard. Once we cross into the Inner Rim, the last two legs of the journey will be preceded by salvos of _seven_ Class-2 penetrators as a precaution against rogue warships skimming the hyperspace lanes.”

               “Upon arrival within the Corellian system, the convoy will form up in Delta Formation for the transfer of Kylo Ren, Anakin, and Colonel Ematt to the _Unyielding._ Once the transfer has been completed, _Unyielding_ and all fighter escorts will proceed to the planet’s surface in Formation Senth to ultimately make landfall at the CorSec Fleet Parade Grounds. On approach, all fighters have prior authorization to engage and destroy all craft which come within fifty clicks of the convoy, whether autonomous or crewed. Landfall is scheduled for 1900 hours, whereupon Kylo Ren will be transferred to the custody of the Senate Elite Guard, and all other parties will proceed to the Corellian Hall of Justice to begin staging for the tribunal proceedings. Are there any questions?”

               From the far back corner of the room, a blue-sleeved arm shoots up.

               “Yes, Ensign Markov?”

               The ensign stands up so that he can be clearly heard throughout the room. “Sir, I know the penetrators are meant to be a deterrent, but what if they actually _hit_ something? Besides the multidimensional debris, won’t there be political ramifications if one of those rogue ships is one of ours?”

               “Your question is most interesting, Ensign Markov,” the lieutenant says, although you can’t quite make out his expression. “Academy class thirty-seven, correct?”

               “Yes, sir, with honors,” he replies.

               The lieutenant seems to consider this for a moment. “Perhaps your courses did not cover this, but with experience you will learn that when collisions occur in hyperspace, all bodies involved, including the debris, immediately drop out into realspace, leaving nothing behind in the lane. As to the political ramifications, should we hit a rogue Republic warship, I remind you of the oath you took upon commission, to protect and defend the New Republic’s citizens and its Constitution. Anyone seeking to take the law into their own hands by interfering with this tribunal in any way is no true friend to the New Republic and has been duly warned of the consequences, so there will be _no_ political ramifications if such a thing were to occur.”

_Well, this is fun,_ you can’t help but snark as you sneak a glance at Kylo. _Don’t you feel loved?_

_If I had known they would be so quick to defend me from the New Republic the first time, I wouldn’t have attempted to steal you away to Naboo,_ Kylo teases. You know he means it in jest, but a part of you can’t help but worry about how things would have played out for both of you if that had been the case. Kylo turns to you seriously now, his eyebrows knotted in concern, but you just shake your head. It was a meaningless hypothetical, and it wasn’t worth dwelling upon now that this trial was actually happening.

               “Any other questions?” the lieutenant asks brusquely, but the room has fallen suspiciously silent as people simply glance around at each other, silently willing no one to speak. “Good. Then if there is nothing further, I will turn the briefing over to Colonel Ematt.”

               Off to your left, Ematt stands up, shakes hands with the lieutenant and pats him on the back with an inaudible exchange before stepping into the center of the room, in front of the holoprojector. “Everyone, you all know who I am, so I’m not going to waste your time rehashing the obvious,” he begins, and you can’t help but hear Kylo’s humored snort. Behind Ematt, the three-eyed face of a Gran fills the projection, and he begins.

               “Once the transfer is complete, the Defense party is to make its way to the Corellian Hall of Justice by 2100 hours to begin the verification process, which typically takes two to three hours. During the process, your biometrics will be compared against known records, and you will be _interviewed_ by the Chief Pseudenacon of the court, a Tortutaru, to ensure you are mentally competent to give testimony at the tribunal. Once the process is completed, you will each be shown to individual waiting areas outside the tribunal, as reserve witnesses are not allowed to congregate, or collaborate, as a safeguard to neutral proceedings.”

               He turns to motion to the face displayed on the projection as he continues. “This is Senator Garak’hrath of Euceron, acting Supreme Commander of New Republic Forces, and he will be presiding as Chief Justice of the tribunal, along with twelve other prominent members of the New Republic’s majority races. He was chosen to sit as Chief Justice by mutual agreement between the Resistance and the New Republic Command, as he has a well-known reputation for facing the facts of a matter brutally, without bias. Normally, tribunals are decided by majority opinion, with the Chief Justice’s vote worth triple, but this is classified as a Special Tribunal, so any decision of the panel must be by unanimous consensus. This being the case, there will be no chaotic simultaneous cross-examination of witnesses by all members of the panel like other tribunals you may have seen broadcast across the HoloNet. Witnesses are to be examined only by the prosecution, defense, and the Chief Justice. All other justices of the panel are to maintain observant silence.”

_That’s good, right?_ you ask Kylo. _I mean, if they can convince at least one person that you should live, then they can convince everyone else that your life is worth something too, right?_

_Depends on that one person,_ Kylo responds, but he doesn’t sound altogether bitter. You wanted to reach out and take his hand, more for your comfort than for his, but it’s impossible to do that right here and so you just keep your hands in your lap, trying to keep them in as natural a position as possible.

               The image of the Gran fades, and Ematt continues speaking. “I am to be the lead defender, since the General will remain safely aboard the _Vigilant_ under heavy fighter guard given the events of the past few weeks. I have asked Admiral Antilles to join me as defense assistant since he’s much more knowledgeable in New Republic martial procedure than I am. Opposite us, the lead prosecutor will be Grand Admiral Throm, assisted by the newly promoted Admiral Deso.”

               There’s a bit of noted hissing coming from the lower Republic personnel in the room at the mention of the name, which was more than just slightly surprising to you. Wasn’t Deso one of their own? You had good reason to hate Deso considering he considered your very existence as a personal slight, but why was he so hated by the lower ranks of the Republic?

               “If you keep stepping on heads to get to the top, eventually there’s going to be no one left to catch you when you fall,” Poe notes in a sing-song voice in your ear, and you can’t help but smirk as you turn back to him.

               “Did he do something?” you whisper, but considering Ematt is still speaking, Poe just jerks his head over to Kylo, and you gently nudge his arm with a questioning look. _Wait, you and Poe talked about Deso?_

_We’ve talked about a lot of things,_ Kylo responds impatiently, as if your question was an unwelcome disturbance, and you can’t help but sulk as you drop your gaze. Kylo feels your disappointment as he turns back to you and points you back in Poe’s direction so that he can listen to whatever it is Ematt has to say.  

               You turn to Poe and pout as you cross your arms over your chest, and Poe just sighs as he leans closer to you once again. “When Deso attacked you on Naboo, he left Kuat underarmed and unprepared, so the entire Third Fleet was destroyed, with minimal survivors. New Republic Command swept in under the rug and chalked it up as an _acceptable loss_ and used it as further anti-First Order propaganda. People talk, though, and they know that Captain Trice would never have given the order that killed their friends. No, they knew it was Captain Deso, who _somehow_ was made Admiral after Admiral Taren was conveniently found dead under suspicious circumstances three weeks ago.”

               You just nod your head forward as you remember what Phasma had once told you about the people of Naboo being angry at the Alliance, not the Empire, for causing so much needless damage and destruction to her planet. It appeared that people were starting to have similar sentiments about the New Republic, especially with someone like Deso being in charge and giving questionable order after questionable order. You remembered how irate he sounded over the comlink, how absolutely desperate he was to capture you, and you could only imagine that that was something the lower ranks did not appreciate. They had their orders to eliminate Kylo Ren, but the destruction of Hosnian Prime had taken place over a decade ago and that insult was no longer fresh in their minds. They wanted to complete their mission, but they didn’t want to needlessly die for it, let alone meet a suspicious end if they were perhaps considered _inconvenient_ by the wrong people.

               You turn your attention back to Ematt, who is still speaking, but it doesn’t sound as though you’ve missed much. “Since this will be the first time in a long while that the Grand Admiral and Admiral Deso are present in the same city, contingency plans have been put in place should Kylo Ren’s execution be stayed and the Grand Admiral suddenly meets his end by a _terrorist action._ Captain Dameron, have you briefed the strike teams on their targets?”

               “Yes, Colonel,” Poe says as he gets to his feet. “Drake Squadron will be standing by at the rendezvous at 1730 hours, and Aran Team is already in place over Corellia with Commander Wexley. The _Vice Admiral Rancit_ hasn’t left orbit, and Deso has been confirmed to be on board as of one hour ago.”  

               “Good, good,” Ematt replies. “Moving on from military matters, however, Ren, there is the matter of key witnesses we have yet to determine. According to Article Seventeen of the Articles of War Tribunal, each of the three defense parties is allowed to designate one person from the witness pool as a key witness, to be allowed continuous presence in the chamber and exempted from combatant examination. They will only be subject to examination by the Chief Justice, and will be given the floor to speak freely at least once during the tribunal. Traditionally, they are given the floor just before closing arguments, but the Chief Justice may give the floor to one much earlier in the proceedings. Have you made your decision as to who will represent your interests as key witness, Ren?”

               A bolt of alarm shoots through you as you realize you hadn’t talked about this at all with Kylo, but he looks unnerved as he gets to his feet. He suddenly seems so much taller standing next to you as you’re slouched down in the low seats, and even you have to admit that he looked rather intimidating from this angle. Even still, Kylo looks completely composed and at ease as he faces Colonel Ematt. “I choose Captain Dameron,” Kylo says simply, and you can help but swivel around to look at Poe, who doesn’t look the least bit surprised. Was this a part of their arrangement?

“Who are the other two witnesses?” Kylo asks, showing absolutely no trace of your bewilderment in his voice.

               “I have chosen Sub-Lieutenant Ladson, and Admiral Antilles has chosen Master Skywalker,” Ematt informs him, and Kylo looks pleased to hear this as he nods and sits back down. He looks completely comfortable with the proceedings so far, but you, however, are sputtering with questions.

               _What?_ you demand. _Why? When was this decided? Why him?_

_You really want your friend Deso to cross-examine him?_ Kylo asks as he raises an eyebrow, and you consider his point. Despite the fact that Poe had already promised to do all he could to help Kylo, a promise you knew he was intent on keeping not just for your sake but for Leia’s, there was also the pesky matter of your relationship. Deso had assumed as much when he saw you together, and you had no doubt that he would ask all manner of personal questions about his relationship with you and how that translated into your relationship with Kylo. It was a complicated situation that even you had trouble explaining, and watching Poe get tongue-tied trying to explain his affairs with you and your affairs with Ren and the inherent implications was not something either one of them wanted to see happen.

               At first you had thought that you wanted to be in control of this, wanted to be in control of everything, but it was quickly becoming apparent that things were running smoothly without your interference, and you resolved to keep it that way. It looked like the Resistance had things pretty much under control, and you didn’t want to be the one to screw this up. You knew nothing about martial law or military tribunals or the fractured nature of the relationship between the Resistance and the Republic as of late, and you were at least slowly coming back to yourself enough to realize that things would be better for you if you simply didn’t get involved past the point of providing emotional support to Kylo when he needed it.

               Fortunately, you’re roused from your somber thoughts as you see Colonel Ematt addressing Ani. “Anakin, we have managed to arrange for special protection for you at the trial. You will remain with Mrs. Rede at all times, either in the armored witness chamber overlooking the main chamber, or in a shielded platform while she testifies and during final arguments. Since protocol necessitates that she be isolated from the tribunal proceedings, you will be given an earpiece to follow along through the window. Under no circumstances are you to relay information concerning the body of the tribunal proceedings to Mrs. Rede, or it will compromise the tribunal. Do you understand?”

               Ani nods, and then, with apparent silent prompting from Kylo, he adds, “Yes, sir.”

               _Wait, when did Sadie get here?_ you ask, reaching out to Ani with your mind.

               _Hasn’t,_ Ani replies quickly. _She’s still back on our home planet. They’re sending an escort squadron to take her to Corellia tonight._

_And she agreed to this?_ you demand incredulously, but you receive no answer from him as he turns his attention back to Colonel Ematt.

               “Good,” Ematt continues. “The Senator also offered the protection of the Senate Guard, but we declined for obvious reasons. Instead, you and Mrs. Rede will be under the protection of Lieutenant Asher and Master Sergeant Gart. Given the sensitive nature of the circumstances, we need experienced soldiers protecting you, and we’re not about to trust another family member to simulation-trained guards.”

               Your mind catches on the way Ematt refers to Ani as a _family member_ but you don’t have time to dwell on it further as Ematt turns back to Ren and continues. “Ren, once we arrive, a monitoring droid will accompany you everywhere, from turnover to the Senate Guard to presentation at the tribunal. This is to ensure that there are no _gaps_ in surveillance, to prove your continued cooperation with the proceedings. As a result of your cooperation, the Senator has suspended authorization to deploy an immobilizing field, granting you limited free movement, but you will still remain under heavy guard in the tribunal chamber. You have been allotted a standard defendant’s platform, equipped with a basic datapad to take notes and organize your final defense as is your right by Article Two. Since you are Force-sensitive, extra precautions are installed in the platform. Foremost, the platform will be plasma and ray shielded, and the Captain of the Guard will maintain a killswitch that will deploy a stun blast and a Meranian Steel cage, severely limited your ability to use the Force. I trust such precautions will not be necessary?”

               Kylo dips his head forward, but his expression visibly sours.

               “The final security arrangement is that once all parties are in place, the Hall of Justice will go into complete lockdown for the duration of the proceedings once the Master-at-Arms calls the tribunal to order at 2600 hours. After the justices file in, the proceedings will begin with the roll call of all continuously present parties. Once completed, you will be brought in by the Senate Guard, then the Senator will formally charge you with treason under Article 14 of the New Republic Constitution and notify you of all outcomes of the tribunal and all applicable rights you are afforded. The three outcomes allowed by law are execution, lifelong incarceration at the New Republic Maximum Security Detention in the Maw, or lifelong redemption by battlefield servitude. We will be advocating for the last option, as it is our best hope, while the Grand Admiral can predictably be expected to advocate for execution.”

               _But that’s better than imprisonment, right?_ you ask Kylo, and he imperceptibly nods his head. You have more thoughts on the matter, more you want to say, but you can at least recognize that now is neither the time nor the place to dwell on it further.

               “We do not have access to the prosecution’s list of witnesses, so we must be prepared for anything,” he continues. “The trial will begin with an opening argument from the prosecution, followed by my opening argument, then the testimony and examination of witnesses will begin as directed by the bench. Due to the extensive list of witnesses, the proceedings are expected to span at least two standard days, perhaps three. Once witness testimony has been exhausted, witnesses will be excused to the gallery, key witnesses will be granted the floor as determined by the bench, prosecution and defense will enter closing arguments, and then you will be given the floor to submit your final statement for consideration before the tribunal is called to recess for deliberation. Given the results of the last Special Tribunal, we expect the justices to take no less than ten hours to reach a decision, so pack accordingly. Once consensus has been reached, the notification will go out over the HoloNet, which will trigger an immediate override of all ongoing news carrier broadcasts. You will be brought before the Senator, and he will read the sentence to you. If the outcome is one of the first two, you will be immediately remanded to the custody of the New Republic Command, to be held on Corellia for thirty hours to allow any final visitation.”

               You can feel your heart skip a beat, and the knot you swallow in your throat is audible as you press your palms together to try to find some sense of relief. If that was what was going to happen, you knew exactly how long you had in order to get to Corellia and free him, or at least die trying. You can see Kylo glance over at you from out of the corner of your eye, but if he can hear your thoughts, he decides against commenting on them.

               “If the sentence is combat,” Colonel Ematt continues. “You will be immediately returned to the custody of Resistance Command, and placed directly under my charge as Auxiliary Commander in addition to several exacting terms of reparation. Are there any questions?” The room is completely and totally silent. “Good, then may the Force be with us. Escort detail will reconvene at 0230 hours. You are dismissed.”

               There is a shuffling as everyone gets up to leave, and you quickly get to your feet as you see Ematt and Leia approaching you. You’re trying to think of how you can introduce yourself or what you should say, when Ematt speaks first. “The prisoner is in your custody,” he says gruffly. “Get him back to his cell.” Your jaw opens and shuts as you try to figure out how to best respond to this, but he doesn’t say anything more as he turns to leave. Leia shoots you a quick glance and nods as she puts her hand on the side of Kylo’s arm before she walks off again, following behind Ematt. Poe mimics her motion with you, rubbing your upper arm comfortingly and offering you a tight-lipped smile before he turns to follow after them.

               “I actually have to ask Poe about something,” Ani says quickly to both you and Kylo. “I’ll catch up with you later.” And with that, he’s gone, and you’re left standing in the front of a quickly emptying room. You glance around for any familiar faces, Ladson or Rey, but they’re not there, and you assume that they’ve probably already been privately briefed as to their individual roles.

               “So,” you say to Kylo as you turn back to him. “If, uh, you still wanted me to help you escape, now’s a good a time as any.”

               Kylo offers you a weak smile, before he just gives his head a slow shake from side to side. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll let you hold my hand on the way back to the room.” You grab his hand immediately, squeezing it between both of your own as you try to focus on the warmth of his hands and the smallest bit of comfort it provided.

               “Yes, please.”

               Holding Kylo’s hand seemed like such a simple comfort, and yet you knew implicitly that it would be the simplest comforts that you would be missing the most once he was gone, and with the trial less than twenty-four hours away, you held Kylo’s hand just a little bit tighter, silently willing the Force not to let him leave your side. You had no idea if the Force was listening, but all you could do was wait, wait and see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the trial is slowly closing in, and it seems that the Resistance is actually going to great lengths to ensure that not only does Kylo Ren have a fair trial, but that they also do everything in their power to make sure his life is spared, possibly as a result of a souring relationship between the Resistance and the Republic. That may pose some interesting challenges down the line, but right now I'm sure the question on everyone's minds is how Kylo and Reader will spend what could be their last twenty-four hours together. Check back in Tuesday to find out. Until then, cheers!! 
> 
> PS: Sorry I haven't been replying to comments, I actually went back to my old uni to see some friends who couldn't visit me while I was in the hospital for a few days, and I didn't bring my laptop with me. But I'll be back before Tuesday and the next chapter will be posted as per usual. <3 See you then!!


	62. Chapter 62

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW content ahead

               Your emotions are surprisingly subdued as you walk with Kylo back to his room. Neither of you says anything, but then again, there’s nothing really that needs to be said. The trial was tomorrow, and no matter what anyone said, there was no way to tell with any real certainty how the Republic would respond to his plea. Leia was seemingly calling in every favor in the galaxy to save her son’s life, and while a part of you appreciated how seriously Leia was determined to rescue him, it only made a small part of you wish that you had that kind of influence and power, and that was not a path that you needed to go down again.

               Kylo seems to sense this, as he wraps you in his arms the minute you’re behind closed doors. “It’s going to be okay,” he tells you. His voice is soft, but you can’t help but scoff as you shake your head from side to side as you step away from him.

               “I should be the one who’s saying that to you,” you tell him quietly. “I’m just going to be sitting here on my ass while you’re the one whose life is in danger, and I can’t do a thing about it.”

               “Don’t,” Kylo says softly. “Not tonight.” He doesn’t have to say anything more than that. Words would just get in the way, working themselves into the space between you, and that was not something you wanted right now. No, you both knew what you wanted, what you needed, and you don’t waste any time as you push Kylo backwards onto the bed, straddling him so that you’re in his lap. Kylo kisses you back fervently, hungrily, wasting no time, as he grabs behind your thighs as he rolls backwards to pull you on top of him. You know what he’s trying to do, trying to give you at least some iota of control in a situation where you felt powerless, and you tried to fight through that bubble of emotion as you kiss him urgently, running your hands along his bare arms which are both relaxed beside his head. Your hands run over smooth skin, bumpy skin, skin still rough with scars, and for a moment you realized that you may never again have an opportunity to be this close and this intimate with him ever again.

               To his credit, Kylo doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t discredit your emotions or tell you to calm down, and you know it’s because he’s feels the same. As he reaches underneath your shirt to run his hands down your cool skin, you can tell he’s wondering if this is the last bit of contact he’s ever going to share with you, the last bit of human contact he was ever going to receive. Besides Ani and his mother, you were the only person he would ever allow to touch him with their bare hands, and you couldn’t help but let a small smile rise to the corners of your lips as you were once against reminded that he was yours, and you were his, and that was never, ever going to change.

               You sit up suddenly and pull your clothes off as quickly as you can, your arms struggling through the sleeves of your shirt before you work to remove your pants. You needed to feel him, needed to feel his warm skin against yours, and Kylo seems to echo these sentiments as he arches his back off the bed to pull off his own shirt. He had discarded his armor when he first came into the room, and now it lay scattered across the floor, a testament to what had become of his involvement in the First Order, scattered in pieces and devoid of all individual purpose. You knew that the Republic would only see him for his armor and for his role in the First Order; they wouldn’t even care to know the Kylo Ren that could be gentle, the Kylo Ren that could be good. Kylo Ren existed simply to fit their narrative as a traitor to the Republic and an enemy of the galaxy, and you could be sure that they would do anything in their power to try to complete that narrative, and force Kylo to take responsibility for every single misdeed that the First Order had ever committed.

               _Shhh._ Kylo’s warm voice fills your mind as he pulls you back down onto him, and you wrap one arm under his neck so that your hand can rest on his shoulder as you kiss him, running your free hand through his hair as you brush it back out of his face. Kylo’s large hands skim down the warm skin of your back, teasing you with his fingertips, and you can’t help but appreciate how nice this was, how gentle and soft and slow, and in such stark contrast to how you had started, when the kisses were force and rough, taken forcibly although still willingly given. You supposed back then it had been about physical release, a way for you each to escape from your unpleasant situations, before you eventually came together to realize that you could rely and depend on each other. In a way, you had been exactly what Kylo needed without even him consciously recognizing it, but his instincts had guided him towards you, much like yours had back to him in return. Whether instincts or the Force, you didn’t need to dwell on it: you were together now, and that was all that mattered.

               You force yourself to concentrate on the moment, on the feeling of Kylo’s hardening erection between your legs, and tried not to think about how many times you always feared were the last times. You remembered how quickly and how suddenly he had fucked you on the Starkiller Base before he sent you away, how you made a conscious effort to try to recognize and remember every detail that faded from your conscious recollection after the first few months. Even when he had first visited you on your home planet, it almost seemed like it had been something that happened in a dream, something that you had willed yourself to believe happened and nothing more.

               But this? You wanted this to be different. Before, Kylo was always going, but there was never truly the threat that Kylo would be _gone_. The galaxy had always been a dangerous place, and there were always inherent risks, but he had never been marched away from you by armed guards under the threat of execution before. He was being taken away with the sole purpose of finding out whether or not the Republic wanted to wipe his existence off the face of the galaxy, and you hated that the decision as to whether or not you would ever kiss him again would be left in the hands of people who only knew him for the destruction that he was capable of bringing instead of the good he could do.

               But you’re thinking too much again, and Kylo quietly tries to chide your wayward thoughts as he positions himself at your entrance, and you slide backwards onto him, still keeping as much skin to skin contact as you possibly could. You take it slowly, grinding your hips against his in a languid rhythm, and Kylo seems content to just let one hand rest in your hair as you work yourself against him, relishing the feeling of him inside you for what could possibly be the last time. You didn’t want to think about it, you knew it would only depress Kylo as well, but you couldn’t help the melancholy that seemed to latch itself onto your every thought.

               “No more,” Kylo says as he sits up, and you barely have time to reach as he pushes his hips into you with such force that you can’t help but cry out in surprise as he pushes himself as deep as he would possibly go. You can feel Kylo squeezing you to him now, pumping himself as fast as he can physically go, and you can’t help but try to match his rhythm, your breath coming out of your mouth in a series of quick gasps for air before Kylo seals your lips with his own. You moan against him as you run your hands through his hair, holding him to you, trying to preserve the feeling of him inside you for as long as possible. But he’s going too fast, and with the emotions of today, you feel yourself building much too quickly for your liking.

               _If you keep going like this, I’m going to come,_ you warn him, in no way trusting your voice to speak right now.

               _Then come,_ is Kylo’s reply, and you do, biting into his shoulder so hard you can hear Kylo grit his teeth and hiss as he braces against it. You apply a rapid burst of suction, looking to leave a mark, any sort of mark, although you’re not quite sure why. Regardless, Kylo seems to understand as he brushes your hair back out of your face and gently juts his tongue into the sensitive hollow between your jawline and your neck. A smile surfaces to your lips, but there’s something deeper that seems to have stirred within your core, and you don’t realize that you’re crying until you feel one heavy drop slip down the side of your cheek and crash against the side of your leg.

               “Here,” Kylo says as he takes you in his arms again. “Here, it’s okay, it’s going to be okay.” You don’t want to cry like this in front of him, it’s not how you want to spend your last night together, and thankfully it doesn’t have to be. There’s a knock on the door, and you quickly wipe your face with both hands as you wait for the person on the other side to announce themselves.

_Can I come in or should I come back in an hour?_

You can’t help but bite your lip to suppress an awkward grin of embarassment as Ani’s voice runs through your and Kylo’s minds instantaneously, and he quickly pushes you off his lap so that he can start to dress himself, and you begin to do the same. _Two minutes_ , you tell Ani, and you can’t help but feel a small bit of annoyance coming from him, and you could picture him standing on the other side of the door with his arms crossed over his chest as he rolled his eyes and sighed. He understood, you knew he understood; the complicated nature of your relationship with Kylo right now wasn’t something you could really put into words, but Ani could feel it, and through that, he could sense and he could understand.

               The door opens without you letting Ani know that you were ready, and you assumed Kylo must have said something as you scoot onto the bed beside him. Ani comes into the room as Kylo puts an arm around you, and you can’t help but take his large hand in both of yours, playing with it absent-mindedly as Ani walks over and slouches against the opposite wall. “How are you doing?” you ask him as you cross your arms over your chest.

               “I’m concerned,” Ani says quietly. “I know we’re doing all we can, but it just feels like it’s not enough.”

               “It’s not,” Kylo agrees. “There is no way to prepare for this. The Republic will have already reached their decision long before anyone has had their say.”

               “You mustn’t give up hope, Father,” Ani says imploringly. “You still have information that they need, and you can help them take out the First Order once and for all.”

               “Is that what you would have me do?” Kylo asks, and you can’t help but glance down. “You would have me betray them in exchange for my life?”

               “Yes.” Ani’s answer is firm and immediate; he doesn’t even flinch. You can see them staring each other down, an intangible tug ebbing back and forth between them, each of them trying to get the upper hand. You had no idea when they had had such a disagreement, but you supposed that it had happened some time while you were in the med bay resting up. Finally, it’s Ani who speaks first. “This isn’t supposed to be easy for you, and I think it’s better if it’s not. That’s the point of making amends. I know you don’t want to turn your back on all you’ve done, but it’s what you have to do so you can come back and be with me and mom again. Isn’t that worth whatever it is you have to do?”

               “It is,” Kylo confirms softly. “But this is more complicated than you understand. Considering with Snoke gone, Hux dead, and my incarceration, that leaves Phasma as acting head of the First Order, and you know she will never surrender.”

               “I know she won’t,” Ani insists. “And I know what you have to do and it’s hard, not just for you but for all of us. She helped raise me, she taught me how to wield a blaster and she helped us escape. Who knows what would have happened to us if she hadn’t?”

               “She was a good friend to us,” you admit quietly as you glance towards Kylo. “It feels wrong to just betray her.”

               “I know,” Ani says imploringly. “But if the Republic gave you the option of sparing either her life or my life, who would you choose?”

               “It’s not your life they want,” Kylo says quietly, but you just shake your head, unable to take much more of this conversation.

               “The First Order is never going to disappear with Phasma around,” you tell him bluntly. “She’s said that, you know she’s said that, she won’t just disappear, she’ll go down fighting. If there’s some other way, we’d take it, but as it stands you need to do this, Kylo. Don’t think about it as you’re doing this for the Resistance, because you’re not. You’re doing this for us.”

               “I know,” Kylo says quietly as his lips brush against your temple. “I know.” He looks back towards Ani and seems to steady his resolve. “Phasma’s resourceful. If she hears that I am willing to fight for the Resistance, she’ll avoid me at all costs. Hopefully my concerns will never be realized.”

               “But then she’s still out there,” you say quietly. “Give it a few years and she might be able to work up another army, or at least a considerably sized militia and who knows what she would be able to do with that.”

               “She doesn’t have the numbers,” Kylo says with a quick shake of his head. “I don’t know what she would do, but I can think of at least half a dozen places where she could be hiding right now.”

               “But like you said, she’s resourceful,” you say encouragingly. “If she hears that you’re fighting for the Resistance, she’ll know it’s because you don’t have any other choice, and she’ll make sure to abandon those areas and find somewhere new to go, some place where you would never find her.”

               “Perhaps,” Kylo says, but he still doesn’t seem convinced.

               “I don’t mean to argue on your last night here,” Ani offers quickly. “But I’m just…concerned. About a lot of things.”

               “And you have every right to be,” you remind him as you rub Kylo’s arm comfortingly, trying to show your support. “This is a bad situation, for all of us, but so was leaving the _Propitiate_ , and we got out of that one okay, right?”

               “Because we had help,” Ani points out, and you nod your head quickly.

               “And we have help here,” you insist as you look towards Kylo. “They may not like you all that much, but they love your mother, and they’ll do anything she asks. They _owe_ her, and they want this war to be done and over with just as badly as we do. The galaxy just wants this all to be over, everyone just wants to _rest_ , and we can do that, Kylo, _you_ can do that.”

               “Even if it means working with my mother’s Resistance?” Kylo asks dryly, and there’s a brief moment of quiet where no one knows quite what to say.

               “My place is here with the Resistance,” Ani says suddenly, and you can’t disguise the look of alarm on your face as you glance up at him. You had already known this for quite some time, and assumed Kylo knew it as well, but it wasn’t something that you felt the need to talk about directly, instead deciding to subtlety exchange these idle ponderances by thought instead of speech.

               “Ani, this is _not_ the time for-“

               “If not now, then when?” Ani asks as he turns back to Kylo. “I know what you’ve done for the First Order, and I know that the Resistance is supposed to be its enemy, but I remember what it was like for me here as a child. I felt safe here, I felt happy here, and I had friends that, as it turns out, still missed me. But they’re all grown up now. They’re all pilots and mechanics and tech experts and they’re doing all this cool stuff, and I just feel left out. But I don’t want to be. I’m glad that I got to grow up with you on Naboo, but now I need to set my own course and I want to do that here, with Asher and Ladson and Rey and everyone else. I know that you were encouraging it before when you weren’t really sure you had a chance, but things haven’t changed for me. I don’t just want to be safe here. I want to help the Resistance fight against the First Order, with or without your approval.”

               “Fine,” Kylo says quietly, and even Ani looks a bit taken aback. “You have your mother’s heart, and you will do well here.” He pauses for a moment. “I can imagine that you’d be kept out of the fighting for quite some time, but ultimately it’s safer for you, for both of you, here than anywhere else in the galaxy. I may not be able to return, but there is still a chance that Snoke might. If he does, I need you to be prepared. I need you to watch out for each other.”

               “We will,” Ani says before you have time to respond, and you supposed that was fair. Last time you had been the one who had needed looking after, not Ani, and you hoped that your slow descent to the dark side was something he would never have to watch you suffer through again. “But right now, Snoke isn’t around.”

               “And in his place, other evils may arise,” you say pointedly as you glance over at Kylo again. “But you’re going to be there to help us if it ever comes around. You are too powerful for them to just put you down. If you can make them think that they can control you, that you’ll listen to them and follow orders, then they might just spare your life.”

               “My power is one of the main reasons they would _want_ to put me down,” Kylo tells you. “Short of threatening you or Ani, there is no way for them to know that I would never turn against them again, and I can’t imagine how willing they would be to take that risk.”

               “We’ll see,” Ani says softly.

               “Trust in the Force,” you say as you rub Kylo’s arm again. “It’s gotten us this far, hasn’t it? This is scary, for all of us, but maybe this is what needs to happen. Maybe you need to go and be pardoned by the Republic so that we can live together, so we don’t have anything to fear from being on the run anymore.”

               You know it sounds far too optimistic, even for your own ears, and Kylo regards you dryly. “For that to happen, they would first strip me of my connection to the Force,” Kylo tells you as he looks away. “I choose death.” You sit there quietly, but you had to admit that he had a point, and even Ani nods his head in understanding. At least with his connection to the Force, Kylo could hope to live on after his death, to be united with his grandfather and the other spirits on the other side. He could still communicate with you, and while it wouldn’t be the same, at least part of the man you loved would still be preserved in the Force so that you never had to be alone. If Luke did manage to siphon the Force from his body, though, you weren’t sure what would happen to him after he died. He’d be stuck on the other side with no way to reach out to you, or worse, he would just cease to exist entirely, and it would almost be as if he had never existed at all. That was something you couldn’t deal with, not now, not ever. At least with the Force you’d be able to be reunited with him when you died as well, but you didn’t know how you could handle it if you just saw a steady sea of blackness where your future should have been.

               “You should get some sleep,” Ani says quickly. “They’re going to want to extract you from base as early as possible so not a lot of people see you go. They’re going to try to do it as quietly as possible, but at least they’re letting me ride over with you.”

               Kylo just nods his head as he looks up at Ani, letting a silent communication pass between them. After a few moments, Ani looks back towards you and pushes a small smile to his face. “You’ll be okay on your own here, right?”

               “Of course,” you reply. “I’ve got Finn to keep me company, after all. He’ll just, I don’t know, lock me in his virtual world if I start to get nervous. At least it will give me something to do.” You scoot away from Kylo as you get to your feet and quickly pull Ani in for a quick hug, silently reaching out to him with your mind.

               _Take care of him. He won’t show it, but he’s scared too. Just let him know you’re there for him._

_I will._

With that, you release him, and Ani heads over to the door. He glances back quickly before he finally nods his head and heads through the doors, leaving you and Kylo alone once again. “I’ll take care of him,” you tell Kylo quietly, but Kylo just raises an eyebrow in response.

               “Or he’ll take care of you,” Kylo responds, but just shrugs off your scandalized look. “Someone has to.”

               “That someone is going to be you,” you tell him, but neither you nor Kylo seem eager to have this conversation again, and so you just scoot into his lap and curl up against his chest, tucking your head underneath his chin. Neither of you knows quite what to say, but you don’t want to sit in silence with him any longer than you have to. You wanted to make the most of the rest of the time that you could still spend with him, but you weren’t sure just how to go about doing that.

               “I’m going to miss you,” you say quietly as you press yourself deeper into his chest, and Kylo runs his hand up and down your arm.

               “I know,” he says quietly as he pulls away slightly to plant a firm kiss against your temple. There’s more you want to tell him, but the words just won’t come and so you allow your eyes to slip closed as you try to connect to him with your mind. He returns it immediately, and so you just lie there in his arms, for potentially the last time, willing yourself to be comforted by this one simple gesture until you drifted off to sleep.

               You didn’t know if Kylo slept, but as soon as you opened your eyes, you could feel him lowering your head down against his pillow, smoothing down your hair with one hand to brush it back out of your face. You could hear someone’s voice, and you murmur to yourself as you roll over onto your back, kicking your legs out dramatically as you subconsciously searched around for Kylo.

               “She’s cute when she’s sleeping.”

               “That she is.”

               _What-?_

               You blink sleepily and force your eyes open only to see Poe and Kylo looking down at you as you rub the sleep from your eyes with the side of your arm. At first you were momentarily confused to see Poe standing in Kylo’s cell in a different state of military dress than he usually wore until the reality of the situation finally takes hold and you sit up with a start, adrenaline flooding through your veins.

               “No, not now,” you say quickly as you look frantically between Poe and Kylo. “Not now, not yet.” There were so many things you wanted to tell Kylo, and yet you had just fallen asleep in his arms like you had all the time in the world. You wanted to reminisce about what life had been like back on the Starkiller Base, you wanted to remind him about how much fun you had on Naboo and fill him with happy memories, you wanted to tease him about how you had been able to capture him on the _Resolute_ , how after all those years had passed, he couldn’t get rid of you so easily. He had pretended he didn’t care for you for all of about ten minutes, but you wanted to ask him if he regretted those ten minutes, if he would do anything to take them back. He would have, you know he would have, you know he would tell you that he would have kissed you instead of trying to intimidate you, but none of that mattered now because Kylo was about to be gone.

               “Don’t do this,” Kylo says quietly, and you can feel your lower lip quiver dramatically as you nod your head, although it does nothing to prevent the tears that are pooling in your eyes.

               “I love you,” you remind him, and you quickly spring to your feet without waiting for his reply. You throw yourself at him, jump into his arms as you wrap your legs around his waist whether he’s ready or not, kissing him with all the force you can humanly muster.

               _I love you,_ Kylo tells you, kissing you back just as fiercely, and for a moment Poe might as well have not been in the room. _I love you. I love you. I love you._

 _Don’t go,_ you plead with him silently. _Please? I’ll kill Poe, okay? I’ll do it. I’ll kill everyone and we can just escape this base together._

Kylo just chuckles to himself, quietly appreciating the sentiment as he pulls away and lets you hop down off of him. He brushes a single strand of hair away from your face, tucking it behind your ear before he reaches down to kiss you a final time. _Be strong for me._

_I will, I mean, I’ll try._

               Kylo just nods to show that he heard you and gives your hand a final squeeze before he turns to Poe and gives him a curt nod. Poe just looks between you nervously, perhaps unnerved by the silent communication he could always sense between you, but you just wrap your arms around yourself to try to give yourself some semblance of comfort. You weren’t going to attack anyone, you weren’t going to hurt anyone; right now you didn’t even feel as though you would be able to. You felt weak, and drained, but you knew you had to be strong for Kylo. You couldn’t risk depleting his energy simply because of how you felt, and for a moment you subtly hoped that maybe at least your connection to him would be tempered by distance so that he wouldn’t feel the full force of your grief.

               “You ready to go?” Poe asks, and Kylo nods his head again, seemingly not willing himself to say anything more. Nonetheless, Poe looks back at you nervously. “It would probably be best for you to stay here. Is that okay?”

               Kylo looks back at you, clearly letting you make this decision on your own. You knew he wouldn’t want you to make a scene before you left, and you assumed that was probably what Poe was worried about too. “Yeah,” you say quickly, silently frustrated by the audible crack in your voice. “Yeah, no, that’s um, that’s fine. I’ll, uh, I’ll stay here and, uh, you know, uh, wait it out. I mean, we already said our goodbyes, so uh, this is uh, this is fine.” You’re gesturing forcefully with one hand as if physically trying to force the words out of you, and you can’t help the tears that are spilling down your cheeks. Kylo won’t meet your eyes, he can’t, you know he can’t, but Poe just swallows nervously like he wants to provide you with the comfort you so desperately needed, but there was nothing that he could do.

               Regardless, Kylo turns around suddenly and takes your face in both hands as he kisses your forehead, and you can’t bring yourself to look at him. “I’m fine,” you squeak, the state of your voice declining with each passing second. “I’m fine, I just, I’m fine, okay? I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, just, you’ll be fine.” You mean to hit his arm lightly, but you can tell by the resounding smack against his armor that you are in no way able to properly coordinate your movements right now. “You’ll be fine, and, uh, I’ll see you soon, okay?”

               _No matter what that means, I’ll see you soon, Kylo. I mean it._

               “I’ll see you soon,” Kylo repeats with warmth in his voice, and he quickly turns around and leaves the room before you can say anything more. You can see the armed guards follow after him down the hall, and Poe looks back at you with more concern than ever.

               “You sure you’re going to be okay?” he asks, and you nod your head.

               “You should go with them,” you say quickly, gesturing out into the hallway, not wanting to leave Kylo alone with anyone who could potentially be a double agent for either the Republic or even the First Order. “I’ll uh, I’ll wait here, you know, uh, wait this out, but I’ll be fine, just please, please take care of him.”

               “He’s going to be fine,” Poe tells you quickly, and he reaches out to give your hand a firm squeeze before he hurries after Kylo out the door and down the hall. You can hear his footfalls clicking against the tiled corridor as he strides away, and you quickly put both hands over your mouth to try to suppress the inevitable choked sob that rises to your lips.

               “I’m okay,” you tell yourself, trying to say anything to ease the silence around you that took the shape of where Kylo once stood. “I’m okay, I’m fine, he’s fine, Kylo’s fine, he’s going to get past this. He’s going to be fine and he’ll come back.” But your words are quickly becoming an unintelligible mess, and you can practically hear your heart beating louder and louder in your chest as you tried to figure out what you could do. You had to _do_ something, you couldn’t just sit there and let Kylo possibly succumb to the hands of the Republic. He was right, they were looking for a scapegoat and they were going to kill him without even hearing him out. This whole tribunal was just a sham; they would kill him and you had just _let him go._

               With a muffled cry that crossed the line from despair to anguish, you quickly rushed out into the corridor after them. You didn’t know what you were going to do or where you were going to go, but you had to do _something._ You would not sit by and let Kylo die, you wouldn’t even let him get in that position to begin with. If the situation had been reversed, he would _never_ have just let you go, and you were not about to let him suffer the same fate. You were not going to let them take him. You were going to find him, sneak on board, take over the ship and-

               Suddenly you felt yourself crashing into the opposite wall, and you couldn’t help but struggle to move your arms and legs as a lithe figure approached you. You quickly looked up in time to see Rey standing in front of you, a visible frown etched into her features. “I am so sorry about this,” Rey tells you, and you don’t even have time to ask what she means as she places both hands on either side of your head. A dark cloud bursts into view in front of your eyes and refuses to relinquish its hold on your vision as a burst of pain shoots through your mind, and you can’t help but feel as if someone was trying to drive a fork through the very center of your skull. It’s too much to take, it’s unbearable, and you can feel your legs give way as you drop unceremoniously to the floor. You think you can feel Rey grab you by your shoulders, trying to pick you up, before everything goes blank.

               The next time you open your eyes, you find yourself in another familiar bed, Poe’s bed, and he is sitting at the end of it, running his hand up and down the side of your leg with one hand. “What’s wrong?” you say immediately as you sit up, almost bumping your head into the top bunk as you do so. Your mind is still foggy from Rey’s mental attack, but your concern for Kylo far outweighed your drowsiness. Even still, the room seemed to spin a little bit, and you quickly pulled one knee to your chest as you pressed your forehead into it, covering your head with your arm in an attempt to recover yourself.

               “Rey knocked you out,” Poe explains in a quiet, patient voice. “She said things got too much for you to handle, and-“

               “Yeah,” you say quickly, not wanting to hear anything more. “Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s fine. I understand.” You pull your arm away from your face as you will yourself to glance up at him. “What about Kylo? Where is he? I thought you were going with him?”

               “I’ll head over shortly,” Poe tells you. “He wanted me to be here when you woke up, make sure you were okay.” You blush as you glance away, completely unable to conceal your embarrassment. Of course Kylo had been able to feel your distress, and he hadn’t even made it off the planet before you had a complete and utter breakdown. You had always thought that you were strong, in charge of yourself and your destiny, but faced with an unfortunate scenario and you were just about as weak as anyone else.

               “Who’s with him?” you ask immediately, more concerned for Kylo’s safety than your own well-being. “What if something happens to him?”

               “The General is with him,” Poe tells you. “As is Luke, and Ani, and Ladson. They’re not going to let anything happen to him.”

               “They better not,” you tell him fiercely, and Poe just chuckles at this, as if he finds your antics endearing. “I’m serious, Poe, if something happens to him-“

               “What will you do?” Poe asks, as if he genuinely wants to know the answer. “If something happens to him, what will you do?”

               “I don’t know,” you reply, letting your voice come out as no more than a whisper. “I don’t know what I’ll do without him, I really don’t.” You’re not exactly eager to talk about this with Poe, of all people, but to his credit, Poe doesn’t seem to mind.

               “Ani seems to be doing okay, all things considered,” Poe tells you, and you don’t know if he’s trying to distract you from thinking about Kylo, but you decide to follow his lead anyway.

               “He is,” you reply as you nod your head up and down quickly. “I mean, at least, I think he is. He’s trying. He wants to be here with the Resistance, he told us as much last night.”

               “And Ren was okay with that?” Poe asks, his eyebrows raised in surprise, and you just shrug your shoulders.

               “What choice did he have?” you ask him, and Poe tilts his head to the side as he considers your point. “If something does happen to him, and nothing is going to, but if something does, Ani has a safe future here, and Kylo knows that. He has people here that will look out for him, and protect him if Snoke or any other evil decides to rear its ugly head again. He has a future here, a much safer one than just trying to scrape by on some shady planet in the far corner of the galaxy.”

               “As do you,” Poe reminds you. “You have friends here too. You’re not alone in this.”

               “I feel like I’m alone in this,” you say as you look up at him. “And I know that sounds horrible considering what you all have been trying to do for me, but none of you can really understand what this feels like. Kylo is literally part of me, like he is literally _half_ of me, and if something were to happen to him, I don’t know how I would deal with it. I already lost myself once to the dark side, and the only reason I didn’t lose myself entirely was because I stayed attached to the part of me that was still bound to Kylo. If he’s gone, there would be nothing holding me back.”

               “I know,” Poe says quietly. “But nothing is going to happen to him, or you. Don’t forget, he sacrificed himself to save our lives back there, and I’m not going to forget that. I haven’t repaid that debt yet, but I plan to.”

               “I still don’t know why he did that,” you say as you shake your head. “I mean, I doubt there was ever a chance of Snoke keeping his word, but if there was, I just, I don’t know. I would have thought he’d kill you to save us, but I guess it was as much a question of saving me and Ani as showing Snoke that he didn’t have control over him anymore.”

               “He’s the General’s son,” Poe tells you after he seems to struggle with himself a moment. “I can believe a lot of things. I can believe that Snoke manipulated him into doing a lot of terrible things, but he’s Leia’s child, all right, and if she believes that there’s still goodness in him then I can _try_ to believe that, despite what he’s done to me.” He manages a glance over at you. “And you love him, and I’d like to believe that you have at least somewhat good taste in men-“ You can’t help but scoff to suppress a laugh as you hit his arm lightly. “-so I’m going to trust her judgement, and I’m going to trust yours. If you both say that there’s good in him, that he can be redeemed, then I’ll defend him.”

               “That, and because you’re _ordered_ to,” you point out, but Poe just shrugs it off. “But I do appreciate it, and I know he won’t say anything, but deep down he appreciates it too. He’s, it’s weird, but he’s glad that you’re here for me, just in case something does happen.”

               “Nothing’s going to happen,” Poe says firmly as he takes your hand and squeezes it. “He’s going to be fine. We’re going to go over there, tell the Republic to go fuck themselves, and then we’re going to come back so we can keep this situation as awkward as we can for you.” You can’t help but laugh as you shake your head, but return his steady grip nonetheless.

               “What would I have to do to get you to tell me about that agreement you worked out with him?” you ask suddenly as you let a sly smile slide over your features.

               “Nice try,” Poe says with a shake of his head. “But that you’re not going to get me to tell you. Ren may be playing for our team now, but I still know who he is and what he’s capable of.”

               “He wouldn’t hurt you,” you say firmly. “He knows what I would do to him if he did.”

               “And in time you’d forgive him,” Poe says dismissively, as if that wasn’t even his point. “I’m not looking out for Ren’s interests, I’m looking out for mine. We’ve been fighting this war for so long and if he can tell us what we need to know, if he can help us take out the First Order, then the galaxy will be at peace again.”

               “And the Republic goes back to taking advantage of innocent people,” you say pointedly, but Poe just shakes his head.

               “That’s why we’re here,” Poe tells you. “The Resistance is here to safeguard the galaxy from _all_ threats. Remember, Emperor Palpatine rose from the Senate. We’re going to make sure that something like that never happens again.”

               “And I bet that’s exactly what everyone said when they destroyed the second Death Star,” you tell him idly. “Back then everyone swore they’d do what they had to do for the good of the galaxy, to make sure the war was over for good, and yet the First Order rose to power anyway.”

               “People forget,” Poe says with a shrug of his shoulders. “Other people just decide it’s easier to live in denial, and there’s not much you can do to help those kinds of people.”

               You can’t help but let a smirk pull to the corners of your lips as you think about who he’s referring to. “Are you thinking about your old friend, Deso?” you ask lightheartedly, and you can’t help but laugh at the bemused expression that crosses Poe’s face. “You think he’s going to give you a lot of trouble there?”

               “Oh, I know he will,” Poe says, his expression darkening as his voice turns serious. “He wants to make life difficult for me, and for you and Ren by extension, but we’re not going to let that happen. We have a few things planned for him, just you wait.”

               “I trust you,” you tell him as you squeeze his hand reassuringly, but it seems Poe’s solemn expression is here to stay.

               “Finn won’t forgive anything Ren did,” Poe says firmly. “And he shouldn’t, I’m not saying that, but he doesn’t want any part of this, and I respect that. That being said, he’s going to stay here and keep an eye on you. He’ll watch the trial with you, but I’m warning you in advance, don’t get upset if he says something you don’t want to hear.”

               “Why would I-?” you start, but Poe just shakes his head.

               “You’re both hoping for two separate outcomes,” Poe says narrowly, and you can’t help but drop your gaze.

               “That’s fine,” you say quickly as you look up at him. “I know what Kylo’s done to him, I understand that, and I’m not holding it against him. He wants to see Kylo in the ground.”

               “He wants him to pay for what he did to him,” Poe says evenly. “But more than that, I think he just wants to make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone ever again.” You try to speak, but Poe keeps going. “He can’t be sure that Ren isn’t going to just snap one day and turn against everyone in the Resistance and destroy all that we’ve worked for here. We’re his family and this is his home, and he’s afraid that Ren might take it all away for good if given the chance.”

               “I know,” you say quickly. “He doesn’t know Kylo like I do, so I can see why he’d think that, but Kylo doesn’t _want_ trouble. He just wants to go away quietly, away from everyone else, where he doesn’t have to be caught up in this war anymore.”

               “He wants peace,” Poe agrees. “And that’s not something everyone will agree that he deserves. Think about what he’s done. Think about how many people he’s killed, or have been killed because of his actions. Those people have lost family members, loved ones because of him, and they are never going to have a single day of peace because of what he’s done.”

               You can’t help but pull away from him as you draw your knees into your chest. “This is how you really feel?” you demand, as Poe sighs and looks away. “No, tell me, is that what you really want? You want him to just suffer the rest of his life for what he’s done?”

               “I’m trying to see both sides,” Poe tells you firmly. “You told me yourself once that he only saved Sadie because of what she meant to you. If it had been anyone else, she would be dead now, and it wouldn’t even register on his conscience.”

               “I’m not the only one who has nightmares,” you say softly, but the venom in your voice is palpable.

               “Look,” Poe says firmly as he gets to his feet. “Despite how I feel, I have my orders, and I’m not going to let anything happen to him if I can help it. The General wants us to spare his life, and I’m not going to defy a direct order because of personal sentiments.” You just huff as you look away. “But if it makes you feel any better, I think people can change. I think Snoke was a big part of why he did what he did and now that he’s gone, I don’t want him to _suffer_ , but I want him to make reparations for the harm that he’s caused to the galaxy, and that’s something we both agree on.” You bite your lip as you fiddle with the hem of your shirt, not willing yourself to say anything more. “I should go.”

               “Wait,” you say quickly as you jump to your feet, and you quickly scoot yourself off the bed as you take two quick steps towards Poe and pull him in for a quick kiss, planting both hands on either side of his face. He kisses you back, but when you pull away, the confusion in his face is palpable, and so you just wrap your arms around his chest as you hug him to you. He hugs you back, pulling you in for a firm embrace as he wraps his arms around you, and you can’t help but take comfort in him, at least momentarily. “Thank you.”

               “For what?” Poe asks, burying his nose in your hair.

               “For doing this,” you tell him. “I know it’s an order and you have to do it, but you don’t _have_ to do it. Whatever reasons you have for protecting him, I don’t care. You’re still protecting him, still trying to keep him alive, and I can’t thank you enough for that.”

               Poe just smiles as he pulls away, putting both hands reassuringly on your upper arms. “You’re going to be fine here,” Poe tells you. “You should get some rest now, but Finn will be by later, okay?”

               “Yeah, I’ll be fine here,” you say, echoing his sentiments, hoping to siphon off some of his confident energy, just like you used to do, as you reach up and kiss him again, just a bit more firmly than before.

               “Thanking me again?” Poe asks with a light chuckle, but you just shake your head.

               “No,” you tell him. “That one was for luck. You’re both going to need it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it. Kylo is officially gone. But will he be able to make it to the Corellian Hall of Justice in one piece? We've seen how far the Resistance has planned this out, but will they actually be able to follow through with their plan in order to keep everyone safe? Check back on Thursday to find out. ;) Until then, cheers!!
> 
> PS: At PT, apparently I've grown fond of saying, "I know what I have to do, but I don't know if I have the strength to do it" and my PT guy finally asked me if I was quoting something or if it was just a personal motto. I told him it was a bit of both. ;)


	63. Chapter 63

               “What do you _mean_ they were _attacked_?” You stand with your arms crossed tightly over your chest, as if to keep yourself physically held together. Internally, that wasn’t far from the truth. Your pulse was racing and your nerves felt as though they had shattered into a million tiny pieces.

               “They were attacked,” Finn repeats as he spreads his hands by his sides. “I don’t have all the information myself, but I’m supposed to let you know that Ren’s okay. Ani’s safe, Sadie’s safe, and everyone’s more or less okay.”

               “More or less?” you demand. “What about everyone else? Ladson? Asher? Poe?”

               “Ladson and Asher are fine,” Finn tells you with a quick nod of his head.

               You hesitate for a moment, waiting for Finn to answer, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything. “And Poe?” you demand, unable to conceal the impatience in your voice.

               “We’re not sure,” Finn replies, and you can’t help but gape at him.

               “Not sure?” you demand incredulously. “What do you mean you’re not sure?”

               “Look,” Finn says quickly, and you can tell he’s as frustrated with the situation as you are. “That’s all I know, okay, but Poe is fine. He has to be. He’s Captain Dameron. He’s been through much worse than this and lived to talk about it. There’s no way the First Order is going to be able to take him out this time.”

               “Never say never,” you mutter under your breath. “I’m sure they went all out to try to rescue Kylo again. They’ve probably been waiting for this, planning this out for ages.”

               “And so have we,” Finn tells you firmly. “We planned for this, and we were prepared. They didn’t get to him. He’s still in our custody, where he belongs.” You can’t help but make a face as you look away, but for whatever reason, you decide you’re not going to let this go. You know Poe wouldn’t be happy about it, but right now Poe wasn’t here to help rein in your frustration. If anything, his disappearance only added to the current stress of the situation, and you felt like a boiling pot about to steam over the edge.

               “What is your problem?” you demand harshly. “I know what he’s done to you, but why do you hate him so much? He’s changed since then. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone anymore.”

               Finn just lets out a scoff as he shakes his head, as if he doesn’t want to have this conversation any more than you do. Regardless, he’s not about to back down either. “He doesn’t need to,” Finn tells you, his voice surprisingly even. “He’s hurt enough people as it is. You know what he’s done, Rey showed you firsthand…or have you forgotten all of that already? Has he really brainwashed you that well?”

               “I’m not brainwashed,” you say through gritted teeth, struggling and failing to control your anger. You idly wondered if Kylo could feel it through the Force bond across the distance between you or if had been tempered, but that was hardly one of your main concerns right now. “I just forgave him for what he’s done to me.”

               “Yeah? Well I can’t,” Finn snaps. “He abandoned you, and I get how hard that must have been with a kid and everything, but he almost _killed me_. If he had, I wouldn’t be standing here right now and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.” You try to say something, but he doesn’t give you the chance. “And what about, Rey? Huh? He tried to kill her too. He’s tried to kill her so many times I think I’ve lost count.”

               “But he left her on Tatooine,” you start, searching for at least one redeeming moment that Finn would have to admit was at least uncharacteristically noble for him.

               “Left her to _die_ ,” Finn retorts, his voice flaring with anger. “You did too, even Ani, although at least he’s apologized for it.”

               “It was complicated,” you snap back. After your talk with Anakin and Taro, you had decided you weren’t going to feel guilty about this anymore, and you didn’t appreciate Finn throwing it back in your face as if you didn’t care about Rey. He knew you did, and he also knew that you weren’t in your right state of mind at the time either, your thoughts just as disordered by Snoke’s manipulations as hers had been. “And I have apologized for it. Several times. Snoke was controlling me at the time, and I wasn’t thinking things through. Kylo could have killed her, it would’ve only taken two seconds, but he didn’t.”

               “Because of you,” Finn points out. “Just like he saved Sadie and Ladson back on Starkiller, you remember that? Do you know how many times I’ve heard that story? As if it makes him a good guy just because he’s saved two people that you care about. If it had been anyone else, two innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire, he wouldn’t think twice.”

               “He saved Poe,” you insist. “Back on the _Propitiate_. He had no reason to do that, and I mean no reason. Snoke asked me to kill either Poe or Ladson. Kylo could have just killed either of them right there, but he helped me figure a way out of it and it almost cost him his life. It _did_ cost him his life, and it’s only through a miracle of the Force that he was able to come back.”

               “The only reason the Force let him come back is so that he can pay for what he’s done,” Finn tells you. “Because as much as you keep trying to convince yourself otherwise, Ren is a bad guy. We can all see it, but you can’t. I know you can’t let yourself, but that only makes it worse.”

               “Everyone?” you ask with a scoff. “Because I highly doubt Ani thinks his father is a bad person; he understands that Kylo only did what he thought was right at the time, and even then, it was because he had been manipulated by Snoke. Even Poe seems to be able tolerate him every now and again, and-”

               “Tolerate,” Finn repeats, as though you’ve just proved his point for him. “And why do you think that is, huh? Why do you think he tolerates him? It’s because of you.”

               “It’s _not_ just because of me,” you insist, although your voice sounded about as far from convincing as you would have liked it to. “It’s because he knows how important Kylo is to the Resistance. If the Republic pardons him, then Kylo will be able to help take out the First Order and he’ll get to live; it’s a win-win for everyone.”

               “That’s part of it,” Finn admits. “But you have to know that part of it is because of you, you have to know that.”

               “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you insist as you cross your arms over your chest and look away, but Finn isn’t going to back down any more than you are.

               “Poe _cares_ about you,” Finn tells you, as if this wasn’t obvious to pretty much everyone by now. “He spent so long looking for you, trying to find you, and he never gave up on you, not once, not ever. But instead of talking to him and trying to work something out, you decided to follow Ren over to the First Order.”

               “Like I said, I wasn’t thinking straight,” you snap back, although you feel as though your hold on your anger is slipping and right now you just feel _tired_. You didn’t want to keep going over the mistakes you had made in the past; your apologies would only carry you so far, and there wasn’t anything else you could really do about the less than stellar choices that you had already made. “I don’t know how much of it was Snoke and how much of it was me, but I screwed up, okay, is that what you want to hear? I screwed up and joined the First Order. I went to the _Propitiate_ and I should never have done that. If I had just gone back with Sadie and Ladson, Ani would never have been in that type of danger.”

               “And neither would Ladson or Poe,” Finn continues. “You know you screwed up, I don’t need to hammer that home, but I don’t think you realize just how much Poe cares about you.”

               “And what exactly am I supposed to do about that?” you ask in frustration as you spread your arms by your sides. “I care about him, you know that, I never _stopped_ caring about him, but I don’t know what to do. I belong with Kylo, we’re bonded, we’re _supposed_ to be together. With Poe, it’s like, well, I don’t know what to call it.” You know exactly what to call it, but it’s not something you’re willing to admit to Finn, and he seems to sense this as he glances over his shoulder.

               “I’m going to ask if they heard anything back from him yet,” he tells you. “Just sit tight here, okay? Don’t go wandering around base.”

               “Not like there’s anywhere for me to go,” you call after him as you watch the doors slide shut behind him. You can’t help but shake your head as you collapse onto the floor, idly considering heading back to Poe’s room even despite Finn’s orders to sit tight. But no, you weren’t going to make matters worse for yourself, and so you just sat up straight as you glanced around the room, trying to take stock of your new surroundings.

A few hours ago, Finn had brought you to a small, circular recreational room with rounded white panel walls where you were supposed to be watching Kylo’s trial. There was a dip in the center of the floor for the holo, but right now the HoloNet channel was only serving to increase your frustrations more than anything, simply displaying a steady _Disconnected_ message accompanied by a periodic beeping pattern. You could bet that the trial was inevitably going to be delayed, not only to make sure that the proceedings would be as secure as they could possibly be, but also so that they could track down Poe, whose safety was paramount, not just to the impending trial, but to the Resistance overall.

               He was fine, part of you was at least sure of that much. He _had_ to be fine; even though he wasn’t as Force-sensitive as you were, you were close enough to him that you felt certain that you would have felt something if something had happened to him. But you hadn’t felt anything, not even in regards to Kylo, and so you could be sure that they were both more or less safe. Unless, of course, you were too far away to actually feel anything from anyone, and in that case, you were just as uncertain about what had happened to Poe as you were five minutes ago. It was more than possible that he had been able to crash land on another planet like he had back on Jakku, and he was still alive, albeit wounded and severely injured.

               And if that was the case, then the First Order may have set out to do more than they had actually hoped for by testing what measures were already set in place and determining how far the Resistance and the Republic would go to in order to try to protect Kylo Ren. If they were trying to rescue Kylo, there would be ample opportunity to schedule an attack plan on the New Republic Maximum Security Detention in the Maw before his execution, and although the Republic would no doubt beef up their security, the First Order had been able to break him out of his cell on D’Qar which was once thought to be impenetrable as well, and so it was reasonable to assume that they’d be able to pull it off again given the right coordination and planning.

               Then again, there was also the risk that they didn’t _want_ to rescue Kylo, that they wanted to take him out before he even got into the hands of the New Republic. In a way, it made sense. They knew that if Kylo was captured by the Republic that he would inevitably be forced to betray them and reveal the locations of numerous secret bases that only Kylo and a select handful of others knew the location of, and even if Kylo didn’t want to divulge that information, Luke or Rey could always forcefully draw it out of him. Perhaps the First Order was banking on the fact that they hadn’t yet, that the secret bases were still safely hidden way, and planned to try to take Kylo out before he could talk. Either that, or maybe they thought that they were giving him an honorable death, faster and more merciful than the one that would no doubt be provided to him by the New Republic.

               Or what if they just simply wanted him dead and gone? After all, he had been the one who was visibly seen fighting Hux on the _Propitiate,_ and although Hux wasn’t really Hux, you weren’t sure how many other people actually knew that they were obeying Snoke and not him. After all, you and Kylo had left the base, had sought shelter on Tatooine, and the second that you came back, the _Propitiate_ had gone down in flames. You didn’t know how many people knew the truth behind what had happened, but you almost wondered if Phasma suspected that you and Kylo were behind its destruction and considered you traitors to the First Order. If that was the case, perhaps she considered that you and Kylo were now actively working against them with the Resistance, and wanted you both taken out in retribution for destroying what the First Order had worked so hard and struggled so long to achieve. She, you knew implicitly, had sacrificed more than most, and you could understand why she might opt for revenge if she thought that you had both had decided to betray the First Order.

               You had no way of knowing what she was actually thinking, of course, but you couldn’t help but let the thought depress you nonetheless. You had always considered Phasma more or less to be your friend, and now you weren’t sure what she thought of you. She had thought you were no good for the Order, that much was clear, but you didn’t know how much she knew about Snoke. Did she know that Hux was no longer Hux? Considering how much time she spent around him, she had to know that something was wrong, and yet you couldn’t imagine why she would send you away if she knew. She liked Ani, at least that much you knew implicitly from how much time they spent together growing up, and maybe once she saw how much you were affected, how drastically you had changed under his influence, that she wanted to send the three of you away for your own good in order to protect him from suffering the same fate that you had been headed towards. Perhaps that was why Phasma had no longer been on the _Propitiate_ when you had confronted Snoke for the final time. Perhaps he knew that, given the choice, she might not have sided with the First Order, and thus prevented her from making that decision. She may have pledged her fidelity to their cause up until her death, but she was still human under that chrome armor, and you could imagine that at least some part of her would put the people she cared for above her commitment to the First Order.

               Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but at least it was a hypothetical that served to distract you from your current state of uneasiness. You didn’t know what you could do to help aside from sitting there silently and trying not to think negative thoughts, but even that in itself made you feel quite useless. You could _do_ things, you had the Force, and yet suddenly all anyone seemed to want you to do was to sit down and shut up before you made things worse. Perhaps you would get a chance to redeem yourself, perhaps not, but you wanted to serve at least some purpose, you wanted to _help._ You could use the Force, you could fly, you could fight, and yet you were just sitting here doing absolutely nothing. What was the point of having all of this training if your skills just atrophied away?

               Fortunately, you’re shaken from these dismal thoughts as Finn walks into the room, looking in considerable better spirits than when he had left. “Hey,” he says as he looks towards you, and you can’t help but offer a small smile back up at him. “You doing okay?”

               “Yeah,” you reply, but your voice is soft. “Any news?”

               “Yeah,” Finn answers. “Yeah, Poe’s okay. I got them linking up with our holo so he can talk to us here; I figured you’d want to hear him tell you what happened himself.”

               “You didn’t have to do that,” you say with a quick shake of your head. “He’s probably busy, the trial-“

               “Pushed back by another two hours or so,” Finn tells you. “He’s got time.”

               “Oh,” is all you can say as you look down and away but Finn puts a hand on your shoulder as he silently urges you to look back at him.  

               “Look,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry about what I said before. I know this isn’t an easy time for you-“

               “It’s not an easy time for any of us,” you say as you return his same somber tone. “But you’re right. It’s wrong for me to just brush off what he did to you, and Rey, and, well, everybody. I had to do it, I had to forgive him, but what he did to me isn’t anything compared to what he’s done to you.”

               “Didn’t he try to kill you back on the _Resolute_?” Finn asks, and you can’t help but snort.

               “See, I totally forgot about that,” you admit as you shake your head. “But you’re right, about what you said before. I can’t let myself dwell on the bad things he’s done, because we _are_ bonded, and if I do, he’ll be able to sense it, and neither of us wants to dwell on that pain. If I allow myself to focus on it, it’s only going to make us both miserable, and it’s not going to help anything. As awful as this sounds, what’s done _is_ done. He can’t take back the lives of any of the people that he’s killed any more than I can take back the mistakes that I’ve made, and so we both have to just learn to live with it. I don’t think we really have any other options.”

               “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he’s sorry,” Finn tells you. “Up until a few years ago, I had been a Storm Trooper basically my whole life. I’m not going to say things changed the moment he stepped onto the Starkiller Base, but a lot did. I had been working in sanitation, and although I didn’t like it, I wasn’t hurting anyone. I had been trained just as much as anyone there, but it was always in the event that we ever needed to do it. Phasma had her missions, but it was for a select group of top fighters that didn’t bother much with us anyway. As soon as Ren stepped on board, that changed. He had plans, he wanted us to get this map for him, and suddenly he wanted every last soldier to be a part of it. I may have worked in sanitation, but he wanted everyone on that base to have their own taste of blood. No matter what our roles were, he wanted a blaster in every one of our hands and he wanted each of us out on the battlefield to have our own experience. I still don’t know why, maybe he wanted everyone on base to feel as bad about themselves as he did, but I watched him do terrible things. I watched him order the slaughter of an entire innocent village in my first real battle, just because he could, just because they got in his way.” He shakes his head as he looks up at you with such a sad expression behind his eyes, as if he still felt guilty that he hadn’t done more to be able to help them. “Did you know that he had a table of ashes? After a battle, he would order us to go through the bodies, to find the ones he struck down with his saber and to have their ashes collected and scattered over this basin until it was filled. Do you know how many bodies it takes to fill an entire _table_ to the point where it was so compact that it could be used as a display for his helmet?”

               You close your eyes, trying to block this out, but Finn keeps going. “I had friends on base, friends he _killed_. He didn’t have to, but if you did something, anything that displeased him, you were gambling with your life. One of my friends accidently bumped into him when he turned a corner too fast, and Ren _snapped_ his _neck_ right there on the spot.”

               “I know,” you say quietly as you shake your head back and forth, and Finn seems more or less sympathetic as he looks at you again.

               “I’m sorry,” he offers. “I know we’ve had different experiences with the guy, but I just want you to see why I can’t forgive him. This scar on my back? It won’t heal. All the bacta on the planet didn’t help me, and every time I look in the mirror it’s a reminder of how I would be dead right now if his lightsaber had been an inch longer. I have seen the destruction and the chaos and the pain that he’s caused, and I don’t think for a second that a person like that can change.”

               “So you don’t believe it was Snoke?” you ask him, your voice sounding far more timid than you would have liked. “You don’t think it was Snoke who brainwashed and controlled him into doing all of that?”

               “Do you?” Finn asks, and you can’t help but shake your head.

“Not all of it,” you admit. No, you knew how Snoke operated. You knew he could get in your mind and control what you thought, make you doubt yourself, but he never physically _forced_ Kylo to do anything. Kylo just did what Snoke had convinced him to do, and then watched himself rapidly spiral down into bad decision after bad decision until he had no one left to turn to _but_ Snoke. He manipulated by thought, not by deed, and you couldn’t be sure which one was worse. In the end, it didn’t matter if Snoke had been the one pulling the strings. Kylo still followed orders, still did what he was told, and that was what had led him into the situation he was in now. Then again, if he hadn’t fallen victim to Snoke’s influence, you probably wouldn’t have met him, but you weren’t really in the mood to travel down that rabbit hole of hypotheticals right then.

               “To be fair,” Finn continues. “I know that Snoke was the one pulling the strings. I know what it’s like to have someone mess with your head, and I saw what Snoke did firsthand when it happened to Rey. It was like she changed into someone that I didn’t recognize anymore, and I wasn’t sure when it happened or how I couldn’t have noticed it. She was confused and she wasn’t thinking straight, but she was still _Rey._ That’s how I know Ren didn’t change that much. Rey may not have been herself, but she isn’t capable of committing mass murder.”

               “I know,” you say as you shake your head. “And you’re right, he’s not exactly sorry about what he’s done. But he’s good to me, and he’s good to Ani, and he does regret at least some of what he’s done. It’s not like he doesn’t have remorse about what he’s done; he just doesn’t show it. He doesn’t think about it, or at least, he tries not to. When Snoke was manipulating me, he blamed himself, for all of it. He was miserable, and guilty, and he felt like everything that I did was his fault, that I fell to the dark side because of him.”

               “Didn’t you?” Finn asks, eyebrows raised, and you can’t help but sigh.

               “Okay, maybe,” you admit. “I doubt I would have joined up with the First Order if he hadn’t taken me off D’Qar, but none of that matters to me.” You look up at Finn now, really look at him, trying to put yourself in his position. “But none of that really matters, does it? He could be the greatest person on earth to me, but that’s never going to excuse or erase what he did to you.”

               Finn nods his head forward in silent appreciation. “And for the record,” he begins. “I’m glad that he’s at least good to you and Ani. When he first took you off base, we were all really worried about what would happen to you both, but I’m glad that he’s been treating you all right.”

               “Thanks,” you say quickly. “And I’m sorry that you have to go through all this. I mean, it can’t be easy being on the same base with him, especially when all anyone is talking about is him and the upcoming trial.”

               “That’s not so bad,” Finn says with an idle shrug. “But he’s dangerous to everyone around him, and I don’t think I need to convince you of that. Rey and everyone else are in serious danger just by being near him, and look what almost happened to Poe because of it. If something happened to him because of Ren-“ His voice trails off as he shakes his head, and you nod your head in understanding.

               “If I almost lost my best friend because he was trying to protect the guy that almost killed me, I don’t think I’d be able to take it either,” you tell him, and Finn can’t help but let out a little laugh.

               “Yeah,” he says with a firm nod of his head. “You get that, but I also don’t think you get just how much he cares about you. He was basically in the same position that you were in with Ren last time you were here, wondering if he was going to come back, wondering how much he changed, but he never gave up hope that you’d come back.” He shakes his head. “You’re bonded to Ren. He gets it, I get it, we all get it, but I just don’t want to see him get hurt.”

               “I don’t either,” you say quickly, your words coming out in a slight whine as you cross your arms over your eyes and shake your head back and forth against the crook of your arms. “Okay, I don’t know what to do. I like him, I think that is pretty much obvious to everyone, even Kylo, but there’s no way I could be with him because if something does happen to Kylo, I’ll never be able to get over it. And if nothing happens to Kylo, then he’s still here, we’re still bonded, and I can’t be with him anyway. So, really, it’s not even worth thinking about.”

               “So you two are just going to keep awkwardly skirting around each other and sleeping together until…?” Finn asks, raising his eyebrows and you can’t help but groan.

               “Shit, I don’t know,” you tell him. “Until Kylo gets his own room here, I guess? Then again, that’s pretty much dependent on him coming back, isn’t it?” You shake your head. “And we’re not _sleeping_ together, I mean, okay, we are _sleeping_ together, but-“

               _“Who’s sleeping together?”_

The holo suddenly changes to Poe’s form beside you, and you instinctively jump away from the holo as you can feel heat rising to your cheeks. He’s grinning that stupid shit-eating grin, gnawing slightly on his lower lip, and Finn can’t help but laugh as he sees the look on your face. “Guess you heard your name?” Finn asks, and as Poe turns his head to wink at you, you think you can just make out the shadow of a scar down the side of his face.

               “What happened to you?” you demand, rushing back towards the holo as you drop to your knees beside it so that you’re level with him. “Seriously, tell us everything. You left later than everyone else because of me, and the next thing I know you’re being attacked?”

               “By the First Order,” Poe confirms. “I had just caught up to the convey at the rendezvous over Ord Vaxal only to notice that a small fleet of First Order corvettes and TIE Fighters had arrived with a light carrier only minutes before. BB-8 started engaging right away, and the _Trailblazer_ had made quick work of the carrier…” You can’t help but feel a _but_ coming on, and your fears are confirmed as he turns towards Finn. “…but Dare and Caps were shot down in the engagement. The _Unyielding_ was able to pick them up, but only barely.”

               Finn just lets out a sigh as he shakes his head, and you can’t do much more than offer them both a sympathetic look. “I don’t know why they thought they ever had a chance of succeeding in whatever they came to do, since we knocked out the corvettes within a minute of the carrier,” Poe continues with a light smirk as he winks in your direction. “They don’t fly ‘em quite like you did.”

               Your jaw drops as you realize Poe was flirting with you, now, of all times, and as Finn laughs you can’t help but let your face go red as you shoot Poe a scandalized look since your words seem to have failed you. “Jess, Sang and I chased the remaining fighters to a strike base on Genon,” Poe continues. “They’re building something _big_ out there in the middle of nowhere. We destroyed the fighters and got out of there before we could find out what it was the hard way, but we were a little late making it back to the rendezvous. Sorry I didn’t call sooner, I wanted to make sure that everyone was safe before I notified Command.”

               “Just glad you all made it back in one piece,” you say to distract yourself from the fact that the phrase _Propitiate Two-Point-Oh_ was running through your mind like a foreboding chant.

               “Anything you need us to do?” Finn asks as he leans in a little closer to the holo. “Because I could have a team assembled and-“

               “No,” Poe says quickly. “No, they may have been trying to bait us into a trap, and we’re not going to fall for it. We need to have all of our extra resources focused around Corellia and protecting our main bases. Besides, I’ve already got the intel guys analyzing our cams and signal intercepts, but if anything goes wrong and they try to attack D’Qar, I’m going to need you there, Finn.”

               “Understood,” Finn says with a quick nod of his head, and Poe looks between the two of you.

               “What about you guys?” Poe asks. “How are things looking back on base? You two getting along?” You and Finn both glance at each other nervously before you both break out into awkward laughter. “I take it that’s a yes?”

               “Yeah, we’re getting along all right,” Finn tells him as he claps you on the shoulder, and you can’t help but beam at him. In the light of the First Order building another mega-ship, this one perhaps even bigger than the _Propitiate_ had been, the realization that you had to be united in this stood out more than ever. Poe just smirks and nods his head in understanding before he turns around and glances at a shadow that seems to appear in the corner of the hologram.

               “Hey, I got to go,” Poe says quickly. “The trial’s being delayed a bit, but this thing is still on. Ren and the others are safe, and-“

               “I know,” you say quickly. “I know, just take care of yourself, okay? No more daring acts of bravery unless you’re trying to save my son or something, all right? I already have enough to worry about with Kylo, and I don’t want to have to worry about you too.”

               “You know me, you got nothing to worry about,” Poe tells you, and Finn lets out a snort of amusement from beside you.

               “That’s why we’re worried,” Finn replies, and Poe can’t help but laugh openly at this.

               “Take care of her, okay, buddy?” he asks, and Finn nods his head as the holo cuts off. You can’t help but blush and shake your head as you cross your arms over your chest.

               “Take care of me?” you repeat incredulously. “At least I’m finally listening to orders for once and sitting tight.”

               “And we’re all very surprised,” Finn says teasingly as you roll your eyes. In front of you, the holo flips on to show a countdown starting, and you can’t help but sit back on your haunches and raised your clasped hands to your lips as you stare at the flickering green numbers.

               “Why do I have a feeling that things are only going to get worse from here on out?” you ask, and Finn shakes his head.

               “They’ll make it back okay,” he offers as he gives your arm a reassuring squeeze, but you don’t feel reassured. No, you still felt nervous, over what had happened, over what was to come, and over just how little control you seemed to have over any of it.

               “Can we go back to arguing about Kylo?” you ask as you shake your head. “We still have plenty of time until the trial starts.”

               “Yeah, but not _that_ much time,” Finn teases, and you can’t help but smack his arm lightly. “You want to head down to the blasting range? I know it’s been a while, but I don’t think there’s enough people around to care about your clearance right now. Everyone that matters is either off on Corellia with Ren or working on the information that Poe discovered about whatever’s out there.”

               You shrug your shoulders absent-mindedly as you stare at the flickering numbers that seemed to tick by slower with every passing second. If you sat there and just stared at them, you knew your mind would inevitably start to run rampant with hypotheticals, and that was not what you needed right now. You needed something to distract you, something that required your focus, and heading down to the blasting range seemed as good of a way to do it as any. With a sigh, you get to your feet and take his hand as you gesture towards the door.

               “Lead the way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is definitely one of those chapters that I'm going to need to rewrite from someone else's perspective in part four of this little saga, because while Reader and Finn were just sitting by idly waiting on D'Qar, the First Order came extremely close to capturing Kylo Ren and everyone else on board (and that would have been very, very bad for all involved.) But they didn't, the Resistance defenses prevailed, and the trial is going to continue as scheduled. 
> 
> A quick note about the trial, it's really long. I put my all into this chapter, and even when so far as to shadow a legal interpreter so that I could sit in on a real court room setting and see just how things are done, not to mention watching about two dozen hours of documentaries and historical fiction, mostly centered around the Nuremberg Tribunal Rules of Procedure, which you can find and read for yourself by clicking [here](http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/imtrules.asp) if you're interested. Thanks Yale!! So the trial is set to start off on Saturday...and then? Then the fun begins. ;) Until then, cheers!!


	64. Chapter 64

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((Sorry for the delay in chapter posting. My mom is in the hospital and with today being September 11th, combined with the fact that I'm still on bedrest, is making things really tough for me right now and I appreciate all the good vibes you guys are sending my way. Much love. <3 Today's chapter is a bit of a shorter housekeeping chapter in preparation for the trial, which will definitely begin on Tuesday.)) 
> 
> “If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”  
> ― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

**SPECIAL WAR TRIBUNAL NUMBER THREE HUNDRED NINETY-FOUR**

**NEW GALACTIC REPUBLIC ARMED FORCES COMMAND**

**CONVENED BY AUTHORITY OF HON. GARAK’HRATH, SUPREME COMMANDER, ACTING.**

**ARTICLE 14, KYLO REN**

 

 **DRAMATIS** **PERSONAE**

 **Kylo** **Ren** – Human. The Accused, presented to the chamber under elite guard. Charged under Article Fourteen of the New Republic Constitution, treason. Afforded restricted privileges under Article Nine of the Articles of War Tribunal and Special Convention for his cooperation with Resistance forces and compliance with the terms of his confinement while in their custody.

 **Senator Garak’hrath of Euceron** – Gran. Presiding Chief Justice of Tribunal, heading twelve other judges representing the New Republic’s dominant races. Chosen by compromise of the Resistance and the New Republic for the fact that his world was left untouched by the Second Galactic Civil War, thus reducing the inherent instinct for vengeance found in most other Republic worlds. He was additionally chosen for his solid reputation for facing facts of war brutally in his post as acting Supreme Commander of New Republic Forces, making strategic decisions without regard to potential political backlash or public perception.

 **Marshal Pers’ Lontak** – Twi’lek. Master-at-Arms to the Tribunal. Responsible for procedural compliance and the maintenance of order in the chamber. One of the select few officers of the court required to carry weapons on duty. When not serving as an officer of the court, he is the commanding officer of the personal security detail for Senate Command staff, primarily the Supreme Commander.

 **Sub-Lieutenant Ladson** – Human. Recently promoted to First Officer of the _Bantha’s Folly_ , a heavy armored transport of the Resistance Logistics Corps under Lieutenant Sam Farthing. Responsible for the operation of combat support systems to support the safe delivery and retrieval of strike teams in hot zones, and has gained a trusted reputation among the Pathfinders for his commitment to supporting them on the ground, often at great personal risk. Key witness to the defense. Selected as key witness by Colonel Ematt as eyewitness to the events of the _Propitiate._

 **Captain Poe Dameron** – Human. Director of the Resistance Strike Command, composed of Starfighter Corps, Logistics Corps, and Ground Operations. Unlike his Republic counterparts, he never left the Starfighter pilot mentality behind and is frequently found among his men on the front lines, rather than nested in the command center. Frequently at odds with the Operations Director, Colonel Garruk, concerning this matter, but has fortunately received the unquestioning support of General Organa. Key witness for the defense. Selected as a key witness by Kylo Ren.

 **Master Luke Skywalker** – Human. Grand Master of the New Jedi Order. Recently returned from a meditative retreat to discuss the future of the Jedi Order with those who had passed Beyond. Key witness for the defense. Selected as key witness by Admiral Wedge Antilles.

 **Colonel Caluan Ematt** – Human. Commander of Resistance Auxiliary Forces, the primary participant in joint operations with Republic Forces. Lead Defender to the Accused.

 **Admiral Wedge Antilles** – Human. Admiral of the Sixth Fleet, captain of the New Republic Star Destroyer _Unyielding_. Assistant to the Defense, procedural expert.

 **Grand Admiral Uraya Thorm** – Cerean. Posted six years ago after the retirement of Grand Admiral Lian. Seen by many to be overcautious in his prosecution of war, with his deliberate, slow manner costing the New Republic Starfleet several crucial tactical opportunities during his tenure. Lead Prosecutor, representing the New Republic Command.

 **Admiral Lonno Deso** – Human. Promoted to Admiral under suspicious circumstances, slated to become the next Grand Admiral. HoloNet conspiracy theorists’ rumors fly as to when the current Grand Admiral will be killed in a suspicious _terrorist action_ and Deso will be named Grand Admiral. Assistant to the Prosecutor.

 **General Leia Organa** – Human. Supreme Commander of Resistance Forces, and Commanding Officer of D’Qar’s Delta Base. Due to the fatigue caused by the lasting effects of Kohun venom, her command is effectively shared with Colonel Ematt, Colonel Garruk, and Admiral Ackbar, though everyone unquestioningly recognizes her as surpreme. In orbit over Corellia aboard the Resistance command frigate _Vigilant,_ remotely joining the trial by authorization of Special Order 1138, issued by Senator Garak’hrath. Witness for the defense.

 **Sadie Rede** – Human. Current citizen of the New Republic by marriage to a native of Yavin’s fourth moon, and now by residence after your home planet was annexed by the New Republic in response to plebiscite petition. Finally persuaded to accept Admiral Antilles’ invitation to take part in the tribunal by Lieutenant Commander Asher and Sub-Lieutenant Ladson, partially as someone you trusted to watch Ani, but primarily to provide unique testimony and perspective on the merits of Kylo Ren even in his darkest hours aboard the Starkiller Base. Witness for the defense.

 **Admiral Gial Ackbar (ret.)** – Calamari. First Grand Admiral of New Republic Command. Came out of his retirement on Mon Cala at the request of General Organa, and now serves as Fleet Operations Commander and a senior strategic analyst for the Resistance. Witness for the defense.

 **Chewbacca of Kashyyyk** – Wookiee. Semi-retired to his home on Kashyyyk after the death of Han Solo, but participates in certain Resistance missions requiring a high level of trust as a favor to Princess Leia. Witness for the defense.

 **Master Rey** – Human. Knight of the New Jedi Order, and newly appointed master over Anakin’s advanced training. Witness for the defense.

 **Captain HF-6749** – Human. Former right-hand man of Kylo Ren, Osik Company Commander in the 23rd Fleet Regiment, widely known by its nom de guerre, the 501st Legion. Captured in the remains of Nar Shadda and turned over to the New Republic before the First Order’s retaliatory strike. Compelled to testify before the Tribunal in accordance with Article Ten of the Articles of War Tribunal and Special Convention, concerning the captivity of senior enemy combatants. Noted witness for the prosecution.

 **Jedi Acolyte Ainlee Rath** – Ualaq Aqualish. Acolyte of the Faith of the Jedi, responsible for traveling the galaxy to search for and train Force-sensitive youth in the ways of the Jedi in preparation for the rebuilding of the Jedi Order. Sole survivor of the infamous Mygeeto Massacre ten years prior, featured heavily in a key segment of the _Fields of Tragedy_ HoloNet series. Noted witness for the prosecution.

 **Assorted witnesses for the prosecution** – Gathered by Deso to elaborate on Kylo Ren’s older atrocities, as his later actions either left no witnesses alive, or adopted covert surgical methods. Assorted races.

 **Anakin Solo** – Human. New apprentice to Rey, committed to resdiscovering the old masteries lost in the Great Jedi Purge. Audience to the trial, joining Sadie in the shielded platform and armored viewing box while armed by authorization of Special Order 1139, issued by Senator Garak’hrath. Son of the Accused.

 **Dran Holl** – Human. Chief News Anchor for the Corellian Galactic News HoloNet. Corellian citizen, known for his ultrazealous views of New Republic righteousness in what has come to be known as the Second Galactic Civil War. Leading up to the trial, hosted a weeklong special entitled, _The Fields of Tragedy_ , featuring a mix of interviews, dramatic recreations, and speculative analysis, all concerning the atrocities of Kylo Ren and designed to tilt public sentiment overwhelmingly in favor of execution. Considered by many senior military staff to be a danger to New Republic security due to his clear ability to sway public opinion on a number of issues by showmanship alone. Additionally, he has a propensity to include privileged classified information from an anonymous source in his reports, supposedly in the name of “keeping the public informed,” endangering the safety of both Republic and Resistance operations. His danger has only grown with a certain sense of invincibility granted by a rumor born in a popular HoloNet conspiracy theorists’ forum, the rumor being that he hasn’t yet been assassinated due to his ties to the newly-promoted Admiral Deso. The rumor started with a barely-decipherable message posted by user Naboox282, providing circumstantial evidence of Holl having covert dealings with the Office of the Admiralty and an unknown independent third party, theorized to be a senior member of the First Order. The user’s profile has since shown no activity, sparking a chain of instructions on secure use of the HoloNet due to suspicions that the Admiral had the user traced and assassinated. Providing live intermissionary commentary and analysis on the tribunal.

 **Master Sergeant Finn** – Human. Assistant to the Commandant of Resistance Training Command, responsible for overseeing the proper training and discipline of new recruits for the Resistance. Watching the trial by HoloNet feed on D’Qar. Keeping Reader ~~under supervision~~ company between training cycles.

 **Reader** – Watching the trial by HoloNet feed on D’Qar. Supposedly Human.

**COMMENCE.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Background Notes: 
> 
> The events of Nar Shadda: 
> 
> About five months before the trial, back when Reader had no idea what Kylo did day to day onboard the Propitiate, the First Order began reviewing its alliance with the Hutt Empire, which was negotiated and formed shortly after Major Dorska’s death. The key feature of the arrangement was unlimited free trade on certain approved commodities between the two territories. Unfortunately, the Hutts could not control their cartel completely, since the various kingpins were used to conducting independent businesses as usual. Spice, farstim, and tox were unequivocally banned by the First Order in its territories as immoral, yet a growing faction of breakaway Hutt leaders were subverting that ironclad clause of the treaty, the clan chiefs doing nothing about it all the while. Reader advised that the Hutts were never really a centralized species, their tribal feudal origins giving rise to their suspicious, independent nature. Additionally, she looked into the details of the deposition of Xim the Dictator, so widely celebrated during the Boonta’s Eve festival on Tatooine, and realized that so long as the First Order pushed human supremacy, Hutt betrayal was inevitable. As a precaution, Reader recommended picket “embassy” fleets be stationed at nearby Hosko and Toydaria, also allied worlds, to monitor the dealings of the Hutts. 
> 
> After an entire First Order colony was wiped out by a smuggled batch of tainted farstim, the shipment was traced directly back to the governor of Nar Shadda, essentially the Vice President of the Hutts, and several other breakaway leaders. In cooperation with the Hutt Council, Hux ordered a smash operation on Nar Shadda in retaliation, where the Hutt Resistance, a hawkish political bloc not to be confused with the Resistance, backed by certain individuals of the central Hutt Council, had already set plans into motion that involved sacrificing the Hutt rebels and violently assuming power during the ensuing confusion. The capital district of Nar Shadda had secretly been loaded with live pyronium space mines by the Hutt conspirators, ensuring that when the Indomitable trained its turolaser banks and fired, the ensuing explosion would completely level the capital district, taking out all the opposition to total Hutt independence. With the old regime cast down, the conspiracy leader began making covert preparations for war against the First Order in a bid to gain independence from a new round of human oppressors. 
> 
> In a holoconference with General Hux, the new leadership of the Hutt Council informed him that the massive collateral damage seen on Nar Shadda was an “unfortunate necessity, but that the Hutt Council would be conducting the investigation alone, as it was an internal Hutt affair.” Shortly thereafter, a councilor looking to screw over an old enemy transmitted a sensitive portion of the Council proceedings to the Propitiate. Within were indications that the Hutt Council was taking advantage of Hux’s respectful distance to organize its network of security cartels in preparation for inevitable war with the First Order. Naively, the Hutt expected to be rewarded for his assistance, and Hux played along, promising him protection while subtly manipulating him into staying on Nal Hutta and feeding him updates on their progress. Two months later, when Reader, Kylo Ren, and Ani were leaving Tatooine, it was determined that all of the leaders of the plot were in place, and Hux ordered the system destroyed to crush the conspirators as a pre-emptive example of what happened when you defied the First Order. 
> 
> The informant died on Nal Hutta.


	65. Chapter 65

               “I’m okay, I’m totally okay. I got this, I’m good, I totally got this, I’m fine, I got this, I’m good, I’m-“

               “You sure about that?” Finn asks, his eyebrow raised in good humor, and you can’t help but roll your eyes in his direction. You’re sitting with your knees drawn into your chest and your arms wrapped firmly around your legs as you rock back and forth slowly on your haunches, waiting impatiently for the trial to begin.  

               “Not really,” you admit openly as Finn selects the feed on the holoprojector, and suddenly the sight of a Twi’Lek in a Republic ceremonial uniform standing silently on a platform pops into view. “Is this it?” you ask quickly. “Is it starting?” You nudge his arm impatiently, but Finn doesn’t answer as an analyst voice narrates over the projection.

               “And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, we take you live to Special War Tribunal Three Hundred Ninety-Four in the Corellian Hall of Justice, where Marshal Pers’ Lontak is about to call the tribunal to order as Master-at-Arms.”

               “I can’t take this,” you say as you bury your forehead in your knees, and you can’t imagine the look that Finn is giving you right now.

               “It hasn’t really even started yet,” he offers, but you just shake your head and refuse to say anything more. “Would it make you feel any better if I let you hold my hand?” You immediately reach out and take his hand, squeezing his fingers between your own. “Why are your palms so sweaty?”

               Fortunately, you don’t even have time to answer him as you turn your attention back to the Twi’lek, who had now begun speaking. “Attention, attention! All rise for the honorable Justices.” Behind the Twi’lek, a door opens and a line of thirteen black-robed figures files in and begins to take their seats on a large structure that had been placed before them. The hushed conversations in the background suddenly go silent as the Master-at-Arms steps forward and detaches his platform from the wall, bringing it to the center of the chamber, in front of the large central platform where a black-robed Gran sits at the center of thirteen judges, one from each of the major races represented by the New Republic.

               “The chamber will come to order,” Marshal Lontak begins. “Let the record show that Special War Tribunal Number Three Hundred Ninety-Four was called to order two hours delayed at twenty-eight hours Republic Universal Time, Senator Garak’hrath of Euceron presiding as Chief Justice, pursuant to the Articles of War Tribunal and Special Convention. The accused, Kylo Ren of the First Order, Article Fourteen, charged with treason against the New Republic during a state of war.”

               “Thank you, Marshal.” The senator briefly considers the screen in front of him before continuing. “War tribunal three hundred ninety-four. Marshal, dress the proceedings.”

               “Aye sir,” he responds. “Representing the New Republic, Special Prosecutors Grand Admiral Uraya Thorm and Admiral Lonno Deso of the New Republic Command.” The holo zooms out, and another platform floats into view of the holo, bearing the relatively new Cerean Grand Admiral and the unmistakable, unpleasant figure of Deso, clearly flaunting his new Admiral’s stripes without any regard as to how undeserved they were. In the back of your mind you could almost _feel_ Poe cringing, and you can’t help but snort as the mental image comes unbidden into your mind.

               “Is the part where we boo?” you ask, angling your head slightly towards Finn. “Can we boo now?”

               “Boo,” Finn shouts at the holo, and you can’t help but laugh as you jeer at the screen and use your free hand to make an obscene Tortutarune gesture at the small holographic version of Deso. To be fair, it did make you feel at least a _little_ better, and you supposed you were going to have to take the small victories when they came. After all, this was going to be an extremely long trial, and you had no idea if things were going to work out in your favor. You could hope, but that would only get you so far. You had to trust in the Force that Kylo’s fate was in good hands.  

               “Present, your honor,” both Deso and Thorm say in unison before they recede from view, and you couldn’t be happier to see them go.

               “Representing the accused, Admiral Wedge Antilles of the New Republic Command and Colonel Caluan Ematt of the Resistance Auxiliary Command.” Finn drops your hands to clap twice, letting the sound resonate around the small room, but you just mimic his gesture with considerably less enthusiasm. You liked Wedge, there was no mistaking that, but you weren’t quite sure how you felt about Ematt.

               In a similar manner to Deso and Thorm, Wedge and Ematt float into view of the holo, offer a quick, “Present, your honor,” and then float back out of view.

               “Selected key defense witnesses, Grand Master Luke Skywalker of the Jedi Order, commanding, Captain Poe Dameron of the Resistance Strike Command, commanding, and Sub-Lieutenant Ladson of the Resistance Auxiliary Wing.” As Finn cheers and whoops beside you, you watch as a larger platform than the last two floats into view. Luke is standing there in his typical dark robes, Poe is in a different dress uniform than the one you had remembered him wearing last, and for a moment you almost didn’t believe it was Ladson standing there in an officer’s uniform, his hands clasped behind his back and his chin jutted out slightly as he stood at parade rest. It made sense, considering that he had been working with the Resistance for the past several years, but for some reason, you had always thought that he had just been _helping_ the Resistance without any official ties to them, much like you had been. Either he hadn’t been totally up front with you about just how involved he had been, or you hadn’t been paying much attention. To be fair, you suspected it was probably an even combination of the two.

               The three of them offer a customary, “Present, your honor,” before their platform recedes from view. Still, before it does, you can’t help but notice the fresh scar along the side of Poe’s face, and you can’t help the frown that twists against your lips. Finn seems to sense your unease as he looks towards you, his voice filled with reassurance.

               “They’re there,” he tells you. “They made it. They’re okay.”

               “Yeah,” you say quickly with a nod of your head as you force a smile in his direction. “So, uh, when did Ladson become a Sub-Lieutenant, like, when did _that_ happen?”

               “You’ve been gone a long time,” Finn says with no malice in his voice, but you can’t help the sobering effect this has on you as you glance back towards the holo. “He’s been involved with us ever since you left, and now he’s a troop transport co-pilot and a close-air-support expert.” You consider this for a moment before you decide that this is a topic that you didn’t want to dwell on any more than you needed to. It was only a constant reminder to how much you truly had missed while you had been away, hiding away with your family while the rest of the galaxy continued to live their lives without you in it. Sadie had gotten married to someone you had never even met, Ladson had been seriously involved with someone in the Resistance and had risen through the ranks to become someone of note, and the hierarchy of the Resistance and their place in the galaxy, especially in regards to their relationship with the New Republic, had changed considerably since the last time you were here. So much had changed in that time, and yet those were just the big, life-altering milestones that you had missed out on. What about the little moments you missed, like Sadie trying to figure out how to tell you that she suddenly found herself having the biggest crush of her life, thinking that he might be _the one_? Who did Ladson talk to when he decided to seriously join the Resistance for good? Was it a decision that came naturally to him, or did he deliberate it for months and months, trying to figure out if he was doing the right thing by getting involved in a war he never wanted any part of to begin with? These were the little things that you missed out on while you had been away, and those were the things that you missed most of all.

               Still, you didn’t have much time to dwell on these thoughts as the Marshal speaks again. “Sir, the chamber is dressed.”

               “Thank you, Marshal,” the presiding senator says. “Please show in the Chief Pseudenacon.”

               An extremely well-dressed Tortutaru walks in through a side door, closely followed by someone who you assumed to be an interpreter. “You ever do stuff like this?” Finn asks as he pokes your arm, but you simply shake your head. A part of you had almost forgotten that you had once been an interpreter; it seemed so long ago, as if it had been someone else’s life that you had been living and not your own, as if you had hijacked the memories and past of some other, random girl that you had passed on the street. If not for the fact that you had been compelled to reveal your past to Kylo Ren during one of the first times you had met him on the Starkiller Base, you would almost be sure that you had. Any memory that didn’t pertain to Kylo or your son seemed completely foreign to you in a way that you couldn’t quite describe.

               Regardless, you watch as the Tortutaru and the interpreter are shown to their seats in the lower ring of the center platform, just beneath the Chief Justice. The interpreter seems to be wearing some sort of black steel crown, and you had never seen anything like that before in your entire life. You were about to ask Finn if he knew the purpose of such a device when the senator speaks again. “You have all been briefed on the conditions of this tribunal, but I must emphasize again the gravity of the situation. Due to the capital nature of this tribunal, all proceedings are being audited by the Chief Pseudenacon and his assistive interpreter. I must remind you that you will be held to your oaths, and any hyperbole or distortion of the truth _will_ be instantly detected and prosecuted to the fullest extent possible in accordance with Article Forty-seven of the Martial Justice Code. As a precaution against bias, his interpreter is shielded from his perception, and is interpreting only when directly addressed by the bench, as a Tortutaru does not need to follow a conversation to detect a falsehood. If you cannot abide by these conditions, you may take your leave now.”

               The room is absolutely silent. No one moves, and no one makes a sound as the senator turns to the Master-at-Arms. “Marshal, note that no objections were entered, and that all entering oaths are now binding,” he says as he turns to address the chamber. “This tribunal is now in session. All representative parties are bound by their oaths, and the facility shall be sealed until the conclusion of proceedings. Captain of the Guard, bring forth the accused.”

               The holo cuts to another Twi’lek, this one wearing pale blue armor and an officer’s cape around his broad shoulders. He quickly thrusts his hand forward in a quick salute before he turns and motions to a doorway. You can almost feel your heart jump into your throat as you watch Kylo enter the room, surrounded by six guards in full commando armor. You can’t quite make out his expression as you watch them get on a platform equipped with a plasma bubble generator that floats up to the center of the chamber, briefly stopping in front of the Senator.

               “Something’s wrong,” you whisper to Finn, grabbing hold of his forearm as you lean forward to get a closer look at Kylo, who still has not lifted his head to regard those around him. “Just look at him.”

               “You sure?” Finn asks as he glances first at the holo then back at you. “Looks the same to me.”

               “He’s pale,” you say, your heart heavy in your chest with dread. “Look at him, he looks, I don’t know, he doesn’t look _well_.”

               “Maybe he’s nervous?” Finn offers, but you can’t help but feel as though something else was going on. There were no visible bruises as far as you could see, but there wasn’t a doubt in your mind that the New Republic had been mistreating him in some way. You wanted to swear revenge against the guards that hurt him, but at the same time, you knew that Kylo would only want to brush it off and let it go. If anyone had hurt him, it was only because he had let them.

               “Kylo Ren, you stand before us charged with treason against the New Republic, making war on its citizens, and multiple counts of atrocity. In accordance with New Republic protocol, with Corellia as the capital, you also stand accused of the murder of a decorated Corellian subject, Han Solo. In keeping with Article Three of the Martial Justice Code concerning capital crimes in wartime, the highest charge, treason, supersedes all others, and you will have no personal contribution at any point during the tribunal until your closing testimony in keeping with Article Nine. Unlike a civil trial, the purpose of this tribunal is not to explore the validity of the charges brought against you, but to evaluate the strategic necessity of your execution and its alternatives. There is no possibility of pardon in this tribunal, and the only outcomes permissible by law are death, lifelong incarceration and redemption by combat. As such, the finding of this tribunal is supremely binding, and may not be appealed or revisited. Do you understand?”

               Kylo nods stiffly, but there’s something in his movement that’s awkward, although you can’t quite put your finger on what it is. Even still, there’s an untold expression on his face, and while you were sure it wasn’t fear because Kylo Ren was never afraid, not now, not ever, you didn’t know quite what else you could call it. Whatever had happened, it was something that was clearly weighing on his mind, and a part of you almost wondered if you or Ani had been threatened in some way. If that was the case, the best you could do was to simply close your eyes and try to instill him with as much positive energy as you could muster, trying to silently assure him that you and Ani were, and would be, okay.

               “Concerning the matter of witnesses, in keeping with Article Seventeen, those designated as key witnesses of the defense are only to be questioned by the bench and are exempt from cross-examination, though they may be questioned by the bench at any time during the proceedings. Supporting witnesses are subject to cross-examination, but may not be recalled after they have given testimony. Your platform is equipped with a basic datapad for your use, and you are entitled to make note of and personally address the arguments entered by tribunal parties during closing testimony.” He doesn’t even give time for Kylo to say anything. “Captain, station the accused.”

               Without waiting, the Twi’lek captain nods and retreats the platform to an armored dock along the back wall as he continues. “The bench opens the floor at this time to the prosecutor’s first argument.” As soon as the words leave his lips, the prosecution platform undocks from its place on the wall, and floats to the center of the chamber. Deso seems to cut in front of the Grand Admiral, and his grating voice immediately fills the room.

               “Before the opening argument, I must ask: why is Kylo Ren, a dangerous traitor by all accounts, not in a stun field like all other defendants to treason, Senator? Surely it puts the lives of all of us at risk.”

               “Asshole,” you snap as you roll back into a cross-legged position, pounding your fists into your knees with such force that Finn flinches beside you.

               The Gran stops for a moment before he fixes Deso with his steely three-eyed gaze, and you’re glad that you’re not the only one who’s offended by Deso’s insolent comment. At least while you could only protest from a far, there was at least _someone_ in charge who saw Deso’s incivility for what it really was. “Admiral Deso, I must remind you once again that this is not a civil trial. Kylo Ren was brought to us under full cooperation, and as such Article Nine prohibits the use of material restraint as an obstacle to neutral proceedings. Grand Admiral, I must ask that you maintain control of your assistant and see to it that he observes proper protocol of tribunal.”

               Deso makes a face as he stands up straighter and adjusts one of his stripes, while you and Finn exchange a high-five so hard that your palm feels though it’s been burned as you pull away. “Noted, your honor,” Thorm says evenly, as if he was completely indifferent to Deso’s outburst. “At this time, the prosecution submits that although all lesser charges are superseded in keeping with Article Three, their supporting exhibits remain admissible to the tribunal, and we request that these exhibits be readmitted to the evidence for cross-examination at this time.”

               “Granted, Grand Admiral,” he responds, and you can’t help but feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up in alarm.

               “Granted?” you hiss at Finn. “What does he mean, _granted_? That sounds bad, is that bad?”

               You wait eagerly for a response, but Finn just hushes you as the senator continues speaking. “Let the record show that the prosecution special exhibits thirty-three through seven hundred twenty-seven were reentered into the evidence archive for cross-examination use only. Continue.”

               “Your honor,” Thorm continues. “Kylo Ren stands before us a traitor, enemy commander, and murderer of billions. By his lead, thousands of atrocities were committed and dozens of worlds destroyed. Thousands have felt the vicious bite of his lightsaber-“

               “I don’t want to hear this,” you tell Finn as you grab hold of his arm, squeezing it tightly to show that you meant it. Finn looks at you, and you can only imagine the look on your face by the way he pulls his attention away from the holo completely as he looks at you.

               “You okay?” he asks, but you just roll your shoulders as you shake your head.

               “I _can’t_ hear this,” you say as you can hear Thorm reciting a list of what Kylo has done in the background. You’re not sure where your sudden trepidation is coming from, but Finn just nods his head in understanding. You knew Kylo murdered Han Solo. You knew he killed people, tortured others, but that wasn’t who he was anymore. Although you had thought you had come to terms with all of that, you supposed you had only come to accept it because you knew that those deeds were in his past, but now he was being forced to pay retribution for them, forced to be held accountable for them, and if you had thought that taking your life was justice to repay the one life that you had taken back on the _Propitiate_ after you had experienced your first taste of blood, you weren’t sure how they would respond to the billions they claimed Kylo had. In the back of your mind, you wondered how Ani was doing hearing all of this, or if perhaps Luke or someone else had prepared him for what he might hear prior to the start of the trial. You almost wished that you had had the foresight to discuss it with him as well, but it never seemed to be a topic that either of you was eager to revisit, and so you had just let it go.

               Finn taps you on the shoulder as he points back towards the holo, and you can see Thorm finishing up his list. “All the crimes far outweigh any restitution that could be achieved by provision of enemy intelligence, and as the records of the former Galactic Republic show, redemption is impossible for those who fall to the so-called _dark side_ , thus training in the Force was heavily regulated under the watchful eye of the old Jedi Order. The records of the old Jedi Council indicate that no Force-wielder ever renounced the ways of the dark side, and that once lost, the only remedy for such a state was death. Thus, it is the recommendation of the prosecution that execution is the only strategically viable option, as Kylo Ren can have nothing more to offer us besides closure.”

               “Fuck him,” you snarl as the platform retreats from the center of the room and redocks on the wall. “Fuck him, talking about the Jedi Order and the Force like he knows something about it. He doesn’t know _anything_.”

               “I’ll agree with you on that,” Finn says as he shakes his head. “I can’t imagine Rey was too happy to hear that either.”

               “I hate these people,” you snap viciously. There’s more you want to say; you want to continue your tirade about how the Republic doesn’t know what it’s talking about and has no business interfering in the ways of the Force, but it was a little too late for second chances now. Kylo was there, like it or not, and you could only hope that the Force would protect him, much like it had on the _Propitiate._ You couldn’t believe that the Force had brought him back to watch him die, you just couldn’t accept that. You wouldn’t. If the Force worked towards the ultimate good, then Kylo would stay alive to help achieve his redemption through whatever means necessary. If the Force leaned towards entropy, then it didn’t matter what you or he or anyone did; the purpose of the galaxy was to crumble and collapse at your feet and there wasn’t a thing you could do about it.

               “The prosecution’s opening argument has been noted,” the Senator continues. “Before allowing the opening of the defense, the bench calls upon Master Luke Skywalker to testify on the matter of Jedi records concerning the dark side. Marshal.” He turns and gives a nod to the Master-at-Arms, who opens a doorway, but you’re momentarily distracted by the way you and Finn are excitedly whooping and jumping up and down on your knees like giddy schoolchildren.

               “Yeah, Luke,” Finn cheers. “You tell them what’s what.”

               “Yes,” you echo as you pull one fist in front of your face and clench it. “Yes, Luke, yes.”

               Luke walks through the doorway, his cloak billowing by his feet, and the Master-at-Arms stops to swear him in. “By the Force, do you swear to give full and complete testimony, and to submit to the tribunal with no evasion or omission?”

               “I so swear,” Luke replies, and you can’t help but let a giddy murmur escape your lips, unable to help yourself from anxiously rocking back and forth in apprehension as you watch as Luke boards the small witness platform, which rises to the center of the chamber.

               “State your name, rank, and organization for the record.”

               “Luke Skywalker, Master, New Jedi Order.”

               “Master Skywalker, you are called forth to testify on the matter of the dark side of the Force and the capacity to renounce it,” he begins. “Jedi records indicate that once fallen, all who are influenced by the dark side are lost. As the records understandably end with the Great Jedi Purge, do you have any further input on the matter of Kylo Ren’s ability to be redeemed? The bench asks in response to assertions that the influence of the dark side is irreversible.”  

               “Your honor, that assertion is, in fact, false. Before his death aboard the second Death Star, my father, Anakin Skywalker, renounced the ways of the dark side and destroyed Emperor Palpatine, his seducer and master, henceforth ceasing to be Darth Vader. The records of the Jedi Order reflect this view due to a failure to recognize the necessity of a bondmate in renouncing the hold of the dark side, thus by enforcing total detachment in the name of balance; the Jedi Order doomed those who fell to inevitable death or incarceration at the Citadel before they even took the first step along the dark path. Anakin was only able to resist the dark side due to his tie to me as his son, and so Ben Solo may yet be redeemed by his bond to his wife and son.”

               “Thank you, Master Skywalker, that will be all for now.”

               “That was good, that was good,” Finn mumbles under his breath as Luke’s platform returns to the waiting Master-at-Arms, who shows him back through the doors and closes it behind him. You can’t help but pull your eyes away from Luke’s retreating form as you glance over Finn, who seemed to be mulling over Luke’s words carefully.

               “I thought you were pulling for execution,” you say lightheartedly, and Finn seems to reluctantly pull his eyes away from the holo to glance at you.

               “I’m trying to be optimistic, for your sake,” he says teasingly. “After all, I’m the one who’s going to have to deal with you until the rest of them get back, aren’t I? I don’t want to risk you going dark side on me.”

               “I can control myself,” you say, letting mock offense mask the fact that you had absolutely no confidence in your voice. If something happened to Kylo, you could say that you would be able to handle it, in theory, when in reality you were almost sure you would knock Finn out and run to the hangar with your first prerogative to free Kylo Ren from his captivity at the Hall of Justice. Then again, you weren’t _that_ great a pilot, and you’d probably be shot down before you even made it out of D’Qar’s atmosphere, but at least that way Kylo would have someone waiting for him on the other side.

               “The bench will hear the argument for the defense at this time.” Wedge and Ematt’s platform detaches from the wall and rises to the center and as it steadies into position, Colonel Ematt begins speaking in his strong, commanding tone.

               “Thank you, your honor. We have only one thing to say, and that is that the prosecution would do well to remember that we are gathered to determine the strategic value of an alternative to Kylo Ren’s execution. This is not a trial to convict and sentence the First Order in effigy. To view it as such is to stoop to the lowest contempt of the law and blindly ignore the ineffectiveness of such an action. At the end of these proceedings, when we walk out through those doors, the execution of Kylo Ren will do absolutely nothing to deter the remaining might of the First Order from systemically destroying everything we hold dear in retaliation. If this war is to be won, Kylo Ren must live. Choosing to execute Kylo Ren is to commit to bleeding the galaxy in the name of peace, and the galaxy simply cannot afford to lose the billions of lives that might be saved by sparing the one.”

               “Yes,” you yell at the holo. “Good.” Ematt’s speech didn’t sound particularly persuasive, but it was filled with cold logic as opposed to the heartfelt plea and human emotions that Thorm wanted to indulge. You had no idea which would be more beneficial in the long run, but you could only help that the judges as a whole were more rational than the New Republic seemed to be.

               “The defense’s argument has been noted,” the senator says. “Is there anything you wish to add at this time?”

               Wedge consults the panel in front of him before he begins to speak, his voice warm and yet filled with his unmistakable authority. “Yes, your honor. As a matter of procedure, I would like to review and strike inaccurate testimony from the record. I submit that the complete sentences of record lines three hundred twenty through four hundred seven be struck from the record to reflect the evidence submitted in Defense Exhibit Twenty-three. Contrary to the Grand Admiral’s belief, recent analysis of records recovered from the remains of the _Finalizer_ show that Kylo Ren was not party to the actions named in record, as he had abdicated his command duties to take an extended leave of absence with his family on Naboo.”

               “Wait, what’s he talking about?” you ask urgently as your eyes dart back and forth across the holo.

               “Very well, defense, the bench concurs. Let the records show that lines three hundred twenty-one through four hundred six were struck in full as inadmissible for consideration, along with relevant sections of lines three hundred twenty and four hundred seven.”

               “Guess it doesn’t matter,” Finn says with an idle shrug. “Looks like you and Ani kept him out of at least some trouble while you were laying low back on Naboo.”

               “I guess,” you say with a grateful laugh, and you settle back into yourself as you continue to watch the proceedings.

               “If the defense has nothing to add, we will commence with the body of the proceedings. In accordance with Article Seventy-five, the bench calls on the prosecution to present the merits of exhibits one through thirty-two…”

               The proceedings start to dissolve into talk of Republic procedure and things that were admissible and inadmissible, and a whole stream of legal jargon and New Republic procedures that you didn’t quite understand. Finn seemed more or less interested, but you can’t help but lie back on the ground as you let a heavy groan rise out of your chest. “This is so _pedantic_. Couldn’t they have gotten this out of the way before the trial _started_?”

               “Something tells me Ren probably doesn’t feel the same way from where he’s sitting,” Finn offers, and you can’t help but shuffle uncomfortably as you lie back and stretch out your muscles. You had been sitting in the same position for so long, your neck and your lower back and your legs were beginning to cramp from disuse, and you lazily pedaled your feet in the air as you tried to push as much positive energy as you could muster in Kylo’s direction. You had no idea if he could feel it or not, but at least it helped you feel as though you were doing something useful.

               “Wake me up when something interesting starts to happen,” you mumble as you roll over onto your side, and Finn arches an eyebrow as he turns back to face you.

               “Does Ladson getting up to speak sound like something that would interest you?” Finn asks, and you can’t help but sit bolt upright as you turn to look at the holo, which has zoomed in on Ladson. He’s standing at attention, shoulders square, with one hand raised in front of the Master-at-Arms.

               You miss the first part of his introduction, but you do at least manage to catch his “I do so swear,” as he steps onto the witness platform, which rises to the senator’s level.

               “State your name, rank, and organization for the record.”

               “Ladson, Sub-Lieutenant, Resistance Auxiliary Wing Logistics Corps.”

               “Lieutenant Ladson, I have called you in to shed light on the confusion surrounding the issue of General Hux and his alleged… _possession_ by the late Supreme Leader Snoke. Could you repeat for the record your account of your reception aboard the _Propitiate_ and your subsequent escape with Captain Dameron, Anakin Solo, Kylo Ren and his wife?”

               “Yes, your honor,” Ladson begins in a voice that sounds much too professional and controlled to be his. “As I stated in the affidavit I submitted, the fact that _something_ had taken over General Hux was unquestionable, as he used the Force, and the notion that it was Snoke is further supported by the fact that Hux, or Snoke, was stronger than all three of the others combined. After Snoke finished a sadistic monologue about control and power and the unconscionable choices that had to be made to achieve both, Kylo Ren managed to enact a ruse to free both myself and Captain Dameron. In the confusion, Ren began channeling some kind of a Force attack to cover our escape, but unfortunately his concentration broke and Snoke overpowered him and struck him down with his own lightsaber. After she left to pursue Snoke, Captain Dameron and I helped Anakin get Ren to a shuttle, and after Captain Dameron went back and rescued her from the command center, we headed back to D’Qar. By all measures, both died en route despite our best efforts, but both were revived by some miracle of the Force and we were able to stabilize them upon our return to headquarters.”

               “Good,” Finn says with a firm nod of approval. “Exactly as rehearsed.”

               You can’t help but laugh as you shake your head. “Okay, good, because I was going to say, I think we need to worry about something possessing Ladson next, because I can’t remember a time when he’s spoken so eloquently, ever.”

               “He’s come along way,” Finn informs you. “Although he and Poe still step on each other’s toes all the time.”

               “Don’t think it would be Ladson if he didn’t,” you reply teasingly as you both turn your attention back to the holo.

               “I see,” the senator says. “In your affidavit, you mentioned that you yourself had prior experience interacting with Kylo Ren. Could you please elaborate on those experiences and what they entailed?”

               “My first contact with Kylo Ren was during a special assignment aboard the Starkiller Base,” Ladson explains. “I was part of a party of six, working as an interpreter for Tortutaru agents of the fledgling Resistance. The fact that they were Resistance agents was revealed to us later, only made known to us when the First Order imprisoned us as spies once the operation was discovered. I was singled out among my companions to undergo rapid conditioning as a Storm Trooper after our imprisonment. During that time, Kylo Ren came to me and made me swear to defend my one remaining companion on the base with my life, before informing me that he was sending us away for her safety and that I was to be trained to provide autonomous transport. After that, I saw Kylo Ren no more than a handful of times on my home planet when he came to visit his infant son. As tensions in the war increased, the next time I saw him was a few years later, during his capture aboard the _Resolute_ and subsequent imprisonment on D’Qar. After his escape, I saw him only one more time before Tatooine and the _Propitiate_ , and that was when I went to Naboo on orders from General Organa to retrieve his son.”

               “What happened on Naboo?”

               “Can we skip past this part?” you ask nervously, but Finn just shakes his head dismissively, as if it’s nothing to be concerned about.

               “After showing us in and hearing out our proposal, Kylo Ren was nothing but practical, simply choosing to render Sadie and I unconscious before immediately evacuating the planet,” Ladson says without so much as blinking an eye. “When I came to, we were on board a Resistance transport, heading back to D’Qar.”

               “Thank you, Sub-Lieutenant, that will be all for now.” You watch as the platform retreats to the Master-at-Arms, who shows Ladson out the door again. You sit there wordlessly, your mouth opening and closing of its own accord, trying to figure out the right words to say.

               “What the _fuck?_ ” you explode after a few brief moments had passed, and unfortunately there’s nothing around for you to strike. You briefly consider just pulling your lightsaber into your hands and leaving a mark of your frustrations on the opposite wall, but you didn’t want to put Finn in the unfortunate position of having to subdue you.

               “What’s wrong?” Finn asks immediately, clearly alarmed by your sudden outburst. “He said everything he was-“

               “He just told them that Kylo was the one to knock them unconscious,” you snap as you jump to your feet and point at the holo with one outstretched finger. “But he didn’t. Kylo shouldn’t take the fall for that, that was me, I’m the one-“

               “Actually it was Ani,” Finn tells you, and your temper is gone almost as quickly as it had come as you blink at him, dumbfounded, waiting for him to explain. “Remember, Rey looked into Ani’s memories for the trial. Ani was the one who suggested knocking them out, and then Ren said, what was it, make it quick? Or something like that? So technically, you and Ani may have physically done it, but if you want to get down to the gritty technicalities, Ren gave the order.”

               You open your mouth then shut it again as you rub your temple. “I, I don’t-“ But you have nothing more you can think of to say and the trial is continuing whether you want it to or not, and so you just slump miserably beside Finn, your obvious unhappiness radiating into the air around you like a dark cloud of gloom.

               “At this time, the bench releases reserve witnesses to be called for testimony and cross-examination. I must remind you that a reserve witness, once dismissed, cannot be recalled for any reason. Defense, by law, the first witness is one of your choosing.”

               Wedge and Ematt edge their platform towards the center of the room as they announce their decision. “Your honor, at this time, we would like to call General Organa to testify.”

               “Oh, this is going to be good,” Finn says appreciatively, possibly trying to distract you from your earlier outburst.

               “Noted,” the senator replies. “Marshal, establish the orbital link.” As he speaks, a tiny hovering droid darts towards the center of the room and projects a larger than life hologram of Leia that fills the chamber. “General Organa, the connection is established. The tribunal proxy will administer the oath, and then we may begin.”

               Leia raises her right hand, and from somewhere outside the holocam view, you can hear a disembodied voice speaking. “… _Force, do you swear…full and complete testimony, and to submit to the tribunal with no evasion or omission_?”

               “I do so swear.” Leia drops her hand, and the senator speaks again.

               “State your name, rank, organization, and authorization for remote appearance for the record, please.”

               “I am General Leia Organa, Supreme Commander of the Resistance Forces, appearing remotely by authorization of Special Protection Order One-One-Three-Eight, issued by Acting Supreme Commander of Republic Forces, Senator Garak’hrath, due to the recent attempt on my life.”

               “Thank you, General. Prosecution, you may begin.”

               Deso steps up to speak first, and you can’t help but roll your eyes as you let out a sigh. “Don’t worry,” Finn says reassuringly. “Leia is going to eat him _alive_.”

               “General Organa,” Deso says smoothly as he runs a hand down the front of his uniform. “It’s so good to see you well.”

               “Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for you, Admiral, given recent developments,” Leia replies, just as smoothly. “Stick to protocol.”

               You let out a laugh as Finn claps his hands together and lets out a small whoop of appreciation. “What’d I say?” he asks happily. “What’d I say?”

               “Ah, yes,” Deso responds simply, as if he’s completely unfazed by Leia’s comment. “Your honor, if I might, this segment of questioning is classified.”

               “Noted,” the senator replies. “Suspending uplinks. You have five minutes.” Suddenly, the holo of the trial is replaced by the symbol of a spinning New Republic starbird with the words, _Classified Testimony in Progress, Please Wait_ written underneath.

               “Classified?” you echo in shock as you stare at the screen. “What do they mean _classified_? You mean we don’t get to hear any of it?”

               “Looks that way,” Finn says with a sigh, and you can’t help but pout as you cross your arms over your chest.

               “Deso’s more of a dick than I realized,” you snap irritably, and Finn gives you a lighthearted punch on the arm.

               “Don’t worry,” he reminds you. “Leia still gets to be questioned by our guys, and you _know_ they’re going to want the whole galaxy to hear what she has to say. Remember, the Senate may have mixed feelings about her, but the rest of the galaxy still regards her as a kind of war hero after what she did for the Alliance, and they’re going to want to hear what she has to say.”

               “Yeah,” you admit idly as you dig the heel of your boot into the floor. “But it still sucks though. What do you think Deso’s asking her?”

               “I don’t know,” Finn admits with a shake of his head. “But whatever it is, it’s probably meant to rattle Leia enough to unnerve her before our guys even have a chance to ask her anything.”

               “Not going to happen,” you say confidently as you lean back on your hands. “I don’t think I’ve seen Leia rattled, not once, not ever. Her will is made of more iron than the hilt of my lightsaber; she’s unbreakable.”

               “True,” Finn says before dropping his voice down to a conspiratorial whisper. “They may ask her about her father, though.”

               “Anakin?” you ask as you arch one eyebrow quizzically. “What-?”

               “Not Anakin, Darth Vader,” Finn reminds you. “Luke may have forgiven his father for chopping off his hand, but Vader tortured her for I don’t know how long, and he was complicit in the destruction of Alderaan. He destroyed her home, and her father along with it. Vader may have been her father by blood, but she only ever recognized Bail Organa as her father, and that’s never changed.”

               “I can see how Vader would be a sore subject,” you mutter under your breath, but you can’t help but think about Anakin Skywalker. Throughout all of your interactions and conversations with him, he had always seemed, well, not cold and logical, but rational in a way that he seemed to be able to truly measure the weight that your consequences could have on the future. Maybe that was a benefit that he had gained through becoming One with the Force after he had passed, or maybe it was a dormant trait that he had abandoned when he became Darth Vader; you couldn’t say. Maybe it was just easier to see the situation more clearly from an outsider’s objective point of view.

               Fortunately, you don’t have to dwell on this much more as the distinct voice of the senator interrupts your train of thought. “Restoring uplinks. This session has returned to unclassified status. Continue, prosecution.”

               “That will be all, your honor,” Deso says, but you can’t quite make out the expression on his face and whether he looks pleased or not with what he attempted to accomplish. As he and the Grand Admiral redock, Wedge and Ematt’s platform quickly takes center stage.

               “Defense, bear in mind that uplinks have been restored and any response to the prosecution requires reclassification of the session,” the senator reminds them, but Ematt just nods dismissively.

               “Noted, your honor,” he says smoothly. “Though we do not intend to pursue the prosecution’s line of questioning.”

               “Definitely about Vader,” Finn whispers to you as Ematt turns to address Leia.

               “General, as the leader of the Resistance, you have seen your fair share of combat with the First Order. In the last ten years, how many engagements occurred between the Resistance and the First Order, whether by ground or fleet?”

               “In the last ten years, seven thousand, four hundred ninety-three,” she says, and then, almost as if knowing where the question was heading, “and three hundred seventy-two of those saw the personal presence of Kylo Ren on the battlefield, with one hundred percent victory rate after he entered the skirmish.”

               You can’t help but let out a small noise of appreciation in the back of your throat as you beam with pride, and Finn turns aside to cast you a weary look. “What?” you ask, not altogether unkindly. “Okay, out of seven thousand, three hundred doesn’t sound like a lot, but he had a one hundred percent win rate-“

               “If you don’t count the fact that he was unable to capture BB-8 and get the map that led to Luke Skywalker,” Finn points out. “I would consider Starkiller Base a pretty big loss.”

               “Don’t,” you warn him as you shake your head. “Please? Think about this from my side. If the Resistance is trying to prove that Kylo Ren is an invaluable addition to taking out the First Order, then the fact that he’s never really lost a _battle_ has to count for something, right?”

               “I’ll give you that much,” Finn relents, and you can’t help but sigh as you turn back to Leia’s testimony.

               “Of those battles,” Ematt begins. “Would you say that it was his personal effectiveness that contributed to the tide of battle?”

               “No,” Leia responds, and Finn can’t help but burst out in laughter, either because of her terse response or because of the look on your face, you can’t be sure of which. “As powerful as he is, he’s still only one person. His most valuable contribution to every victory was the inspiration he provided his Storm Troopers, no matter the odds of battle.”

               Finn coughs loudly into the crook of his arm. “Fear of death,” he manages before coughing into his sleeve again. To be fair, her statement sounded strained even to your ears. You couldn’t imagine Kylo Ren providing much inspiration other than the fact that if you were a Storm Trooper fighting beside him, you were likely to accidently end up severed in two by his lightsaber if you fired an inaccurate shot, got in his way, or did any number of things to incite his temper.

               Even as she says this, Leia still seems to have a plan set as she turns to the senator. “Your honor, I’m still a little unclear about the recent revisions to Article Thirty-two. As a witness, might I request a record from the archive?”

               “Yes, you may, General, but only in direct support of your testimony,” the senator replies.

               “Thank you, your honor,” Leia says with a brief nod. “I request that defense exhibit fifty-three be displayed.”

               You can’t help but furrow your brow as you stare down Leia through the holo. Her confusion _seemed_ sincere, so sincere that you doubted most people from the Republic could tell that it was rehearsed beforehand. Or maybe it hadn’t been rehearsed, and Leia was just that good at maintaining her image on the spot. You were inclined to believe either one, really, but you were absolutely certain that Leia knew Article Thirty-two both backwards and forwards, and was hoping that her seeming inexperience with the new articles the New Republic had set in place made her more relatable, more sympathetic, and thus more likeable by default. You knew implicitly that Leia couldn’t care less what people thought of her, but she was smart enough to know that if people liked you, they paid a heck of a lot closer attention to what you had to say, and she intended to use that to her full advantage.

               Five floating holoprojectors assemble to form a ring in the center of the chamber next to Leia’s form, and they display the last minutes of a battle, showing Kylo charging a fortress with a sea of Storm Troopers at his back under heavy blaster and artillery fire. Kylo wastes no time cutting through the wall with his lightsaber and jumping through, followed by a steady stream of Storm Troopers.

               You can’t help but let out a little squeal as you bite the fleshy part of your index finger, and Finn can’t help but turn to you, the disgust clearly evident across his face. “Really?” he demands. _“Really?”_

               “I can’t help myself,” you snap, unable to conceal the bit of laughter in your voice as you grin and stare at the holo like an infatuated girl with a bad crush. Seeing Kylo in the midst of battle, taking charge and clearly being, not only victorious, but also so in control of the situation despite their dire circumstances, did strange things to your insides, and left you with absolutely no way to control your shit-eating grin.

               “That is why every battle was a victory,” Leia narrates. “Under such brutal fire conditions, Storm Troopers have only ever charged with Kylo Ren in the lead.”

               “How recent was the last such instance?” Ematt asks.

               “Seven months ago,” Leia informs him. “Against an unimportant target.”

               “In your interactions with him since his surrender, has he made any indication of intent to leave the First Order?” Ematt asks, and Leia pauses for a moment before she answers.

               “I believe the key witnesses’ testimony has spoken adequately on that issue,” Leia responds.

               “For the record please, General,” Ematt replies, and Leia nods her head in the affirmative.

               “Yes,” she says as clearly as she can, letting the word ring out through the chamber. “With Snoke gone and no designated successor to General Hux, the only remaining command figure who could inspire the loyalty of officers and soldiers alike is Ren, but he does not wish to lead the First Order. He wishes to disband it, and no action speaks more to that than his attempt to destroy the resurrected Snoke.”

               “Wait, what about Phasma?” you ask as you turn to Finn, but his forehead creases as he shakes his head from side to side.

               “No, she’s a military captain, but she wouldn’t lead the First Order,” Finn says dismissively, and you can’t help but shrug as you silently reject his statement. Phasma had told you that she would have given her life for the First Order, and you couldn’t imagine her just sitting by idly and letting the scattered fractions go unchecked. She had been trying to band everyone together from her base back on Naboo, but even then you had to admit that those had been under Hux’s very specific orders. After everything she had done, you rejected the notion that Phasma was simply a glorified soldier. Finn seems to see the troubled look on your face and seemingly decides to make some attempt to console you. “Leia has to say that; if they think that the First Order is without a leader right now, they can argue that they pose a greater threat to the galaxy, one that Ren may be able to stop.”

               “Thanks,” you reply, forcing a small smile his way before turning back to the holo.

               “Should the decision of this tribunal be execution, instead of an alternative, what would the strategic implications be?” Ematt asks. “Please keep your answer to unclassified knowledge, General, as the entire galaxy needs to know.”

               “Within the first year, the New Republic and the Resistance will quickly lose the propaganda war, as the factions of the First Order leadership will spare no expense in promulgating the image of the New Republic executing those who peaceably surrendered, angering a galaxy weary of conflict,” Leia explains. “Over the next several years, the New Republic will collapse under the attempt to unite a fractured galaxy, just as the Old Republic did ages ago. The final outcomes of such an action are galactic bankruptcy followed by multi-faction civil war; in short, there is no possible victory that can be gained by execution.”

               “And the outcome of employing him to disband the First Order?” Ematt asks.

               “Storm Troopers will desert by the thousands for the same reason they were willing to fight suicidal odds behind him,” Leia says calmly and clearly, as if she is simply stating fact. “The First Order survives only by the strength of its dogma, and if its leaders are seen to no longer believe in it, no amount of coercion can make up for the doubt that will spread through their ranks. Sparing Kylo Ren will not only guarantee victory against the First Order, but will greatly reduce the bloodshed necessary to obtain it.”

               “And what of the deserting Storm Troopers?”

               “Unlike the New Republic, after the destruction of the Starkiller Base, the Resistance made efforts to rehabilitate Storm Troopers who had left the First Order, and was greatly rewarded in doing so,” Leia continues. “Many will not wish to return to combat, but Storm Troopers possess many more skills than killing, and the former might of the First Order might be used to great effect in healing the galaxy.”

               “Good job,” you whisper to Finn as you poke him in the ribs, and he just smiles as Ematt asks his next question.

               “So choosing not to execute Kylo Ren establishes the conditions for both military and moral victories?”

               “Yes, that is exactly my point,” Leia replies.

               “Thank you, General,” Ematt says as he turns back towards the Gran. “That will be all, your honor.”

               “Does the prosecution wish to bring any further questioning?” the senator asks as he turns towards the platform still docked against the far wall.

               “No, your honor,” the Grand Admiral replies simply, and the senator simply nods as he turns back to Leia.

               “General Organa, you are dismissed. Sergeant, secure the link.”

               As the holo fades from view, Deso and Thorm waste no time as they call another witness. The Master-at-Arms opens the door specifically for reserve witnesses, and out walks an Aqualish wearing robes that looked suspiciously like Luke’s, followed by a floating droid that you recognized as a Corellian protocol droid. After he is sworn in, he takes the witness platform and awaits the senator’s mandated inquiry.

               “State your name, rank, and organization for the record.”

               After a few seconds speaking what sounded like a blend of Aqualish and Huttese, the voice of the protocol droid took over. “My name is Ainlee Rath, Acolyte in the Faith of the Jedi.”

               “This isn’t going to be good, is it?” you ask nervously, but Finn doesn’t reply as the senator nods to Deso and Thorm, who immediately begin their line of questioning.

               “As the sole survivor of the massacre on Mygeeto ten years ago, could you describe the events that transpired there?”

               “Doesn’t look that way,” Finn finally replies, and you can’t help but sit back and gnaw on your lower lip as a nervous whine escapes your throat.

               “The Faith was establishing a temple for the Lurmen in Naribun, and the town was attacked by a wave of First Order dropships,” Ainlee explains. “The few of us who had weapons managed to slow down the advancing Storm Troopers and get people safely inside the fortified center. It seemed like the best thing we could do to protect ourselves at the time, but we later learned that this would prove to be a costly mistake. Once the Storm Troopers killed the defenders outside, Kylo Ren’s command shuttle landed just outside the blast doors. Kylo Ren got out and proceeded to methodically cut through the door until he made a decent sized hole, then melted the blast doors to the frame so that there would be no escape. One by one, the Storm Troopers approached the hole and tossed in a thermal detonator, then coordinated them all to explode at the same time. There was nowhere to run, as Kylo Ren had us sealed in and thereby cut off our only chance of escape.”

               Finn grabs your shoulder reassuringly, but you weren’t even aware that you had made a sound. For some reason, your first reflex was to jump straight to denial, to try to convince yourself that this wasn’t true, that this didn’t actually happen and was simply a fabrication thought up by the New Republic to try to make Kylo seem more villainous than he truly was. But this story was real, and you knew it was, and so you had to opt for another approach. “That was mostly the Storm Troopers,” you say dismissively as you shrug your shoulders. “Kylo made the hole, but he didn’t really _do_ anything.” Finn just shakes his head, like he’s decided to not even honor this statement with a response, and you decide that that may have been for the best.

               “How did you survive?” Throm asks, as if he genuinely cared for this alien’s well-being.

               “There was a child among the Lurmen who exhibited signs of strong Force-sensitivity, the reason we were there,” he explains. “At the time, Master Skywalker had not yet returned from his sojourn, so we came to do our best to teach her the ways of the Jedi, although we lacked the ability to train her to properly harness the Force, only to control what she had discovered on her own. The First Order must have come to kill her especially, since they had been destroying Jedi communes all over the galaxy in an attempt to eradicate anyone they deemed could be a threat to them. She used what little she knew to at least stop my bleeding before the toxic gas the Storm Troopers threw in killed her.”

               “Since you yet live, how did you escape the gas?”

               “I didn’t,” Ainlee responds. “The Storm Troopers threw in canister after canister to ensure that anyone who survived the thermal detonators did not live to escape. By some purpose of the Force, they chose to use a dioxin, a poison that does not affect the Ualaq. I survived by laying still, and I lost consciousness after a while, so I must have been mistaken for dead when the Storm Troopers made their sweep after the gas cleared. Unfortunately, they discovered that my partner had survived, and Kylo Ren personally cut him down outside the center. After I was sure they had left, I eventually made my way outside. There I found Miala’s body hanging from the highest spire of the temple.”

               You squint your eyes shut and allow yourself to feel a momentary burst of sympathy before you let it go. “You doing okay?” Finn asks as he looks towards you, but you just nod your head nonchalantly as you turn back to the holo, trying not to let it affect you.

               “Why go to all that trouble simply for a girl?” Throm asks.

               “Because a Force-wielder trained in the ways of the Jedi has always been a true threat to the Empire and its successor,” he explains. “It has been this way even since their leaders were decidedly persuaded by the Dark Side, first Palpatine, then Snoke, albeit after his death. The Dark Side cannot stand against the balance of the Jedi Way, and we had discovered that it was the First Order’s policy to destroy such novices before their powers developed enough to pose a threat, a policy Kylo Ren personally enforced in those days.”

               You can’t help but dip your gaze as you consider that it was more than just slightly possible that Kylo Ren could have killed you back on the Starkiller Base after he had first met you, but instead he had first told you to go back to your home planet and lie low so that no one ever discovered who you were or learned that you were Force-sensitive. You wonder if he had been so interested in you because he truly couldn’t get into your mind back then and saw it as a challenge, or if he had been interested in you for other reasons, and your dormant Force abilities just gave him a reason to act on them. Not that it mattered now, but these thoughts provided you with a brief respite from reflecting on what other atrocities Kylo had committed so many years ago.

               The room falls into utter silence as the Acolyte finishes his tale, and the senator clears his throat before he speaks again. “Defense, do you wish to examine the witness?”

               Wedge and Ematt look at each other before they seem to come to an unspoken, unanimous decision. “No, your honor. We have no questions for the witness.”

               “Very well. Brother Rath, you are dismissed.”

               As the Aqualish walks out, you can’t help but sit up on your haunches as you lean forward again. The Accolyte’s account sounded incredibly damning from a moral perspective, but then again, you couldn’t think of any questions that you yourself would have asked in order to try to spin things in a positive light for Kylo either. No, this person had witnessed Kylo Ren take the life of his partner, and had almost his own life, and there wasn’t a chance that someone like him could ever see past the evil that Kylo was capable of. Asking him any more questions would have probably only served to prolong the sympathy for Kylo Ren’s victims, and so it was probably best to leave well enough alone and let the horror of Ainlee’s tale fade into distant memory, pushed away under the weight of the rest of the trial.

               The next witness to be called in is a Trandoshan in a Republic uniform. You start to listen to what he has to say before it quickly becomes apparent that he’s one of Deso’s stooges, intent on saying anything and everything to make Kylo sound as bitter and unremorseful as possible. He isn’t fabricating any of his accounts, per say, but everything that he brought up happened over a decade ago, and neither he nor the prosecution seemed to take the time to consider how much Kylo had changed in that time. No, they had only one goal, to make Kylo look as terrible as possible, and given Kylo’s record of violent misdeeds, it wasn’t exactly difficult to portray him as a reckless, unhinged villain. Thankfully, at least nothing he says carries any more emotional weight than the shock of the massacre on Mygeeto.

               There’s a few more witnesses called to the stands, but it’s only prosecution witnesses that again serve to make Kylo sound as heinous as possible. You could see a certain sense of strategy in this, though. At least the accounts of Kylo’s atrocities would all blend together after a while, and nothing he did would sound any more depraved than the last account the judges had heard. At least by allowing the prosecution to go first, the defense could save their witnesses for last so that their accounts and inspired logic would be fresh in the judge’s minds while they deliberated their decision.

               The trial continues on for hours and hours, one Republic stooge after another, and you don’t even realize that you’ve fallen asleep until your eyes slip closed and your head falls against Finn’s shoulder, the various voices of Kylo Ren’s sympathetic victims droning on and on in the back of your mind, pulling you into an uneasy rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know some of the jargon can seem a little hard to understand, so if there's anything, anything at all, that you don't quite understand or want me to clarify, please don't be afraid to let me know!! Stay tuned for Thursday, where you'll get to hear the testimony of Captain HF-6749 and get to hear first-hand about some of the missions Kylo embarked on for the First Order, and some of our friends with the Resistance will take the stand as well.... Until then, cheers!!


	66. Chapter 66

               You wake up with a start only to realize that you’ve fallen asleep against Finn, leaving a trail of drool running down the front of his jacket. You sit up quickly only to realize that Finn had also fallen asleep, his head against yours, and he stirs groggily with your sudden movement. You blink a few times and rub at your eyebrow with the side of your wrist as you turn back to the holo of the trial, which has been replaced by a man talking _about_ the trial. He goes on for a bit, mentioning a few key witnesses and that “chances for Republic justice looked good.” For a moment you’re worried that the trial had ended while you were asleep until he says, “And for our viewers just joining us here on the Corellian Galactic News HoloNet, I’m Dran Holl, bringing you analysis of Special War Tribunal Number Three Hundred Ninety-Four during the daily recess, slated to end in twenty minutes.”

               You quickly check the time in the bottom of the holo to see that you’ve been napping for about four hours. You quickly grab Finn’s shoulder, carefully positioning your hand around your trail of drool, as you shake him awake. “Hey, hey Finn? Hey, wake up. I think it’s about to start back up soon.”

               He mutters something under his breath before his leg gives a sudden spasmodic jerk, and then, just like that, he’s awake. You give him a few moments to collect himself as he blinks sleepily at the holo, taking stock of who’s on the screen. “Ugh, not Dran,” he murmurs as he stretches his neck to one side. “He’s a bigger sycophant than Deso when it comes to the Republic. Have you heard any of his analysis?”

               “Not really,” you say as you shake your head. “I just woke up too.”

               “Don’t,” Finn says as he shakes his head and gives his back a quick stretch. ‘It’s not worth listening to.” At the moment, Dran appeared to be talking about the testimony of some former Guavian pirate named Yaren Cohl who was dragged off after the Tortutaru flagged him, but Finn just leans over to the projector and mutes it. “I’m going to get some food,” he tells you. “You want anything?”

               “Whatever,” you say dismissively with a wave of your hand as you stifle a yawn, and Finn just nods as he leaves the room. You take the time alone to get up and stretch, heading into a nearby bathroom to relieve yourself and splash cold water on your face. You look considerably more tired than you feel, although, considering the circumstances, you shouldn’t have felt as surprised as you were to see the dark circles under your eyes. You had hardly slept, and, considering the stressful nature of the trial at large, you could only imagine the fatigue that you were putting your mind and body through even without realizing it.

               You eventually meander back into the room to see Finn sitting in front of the holo with various plates of food in front of him. “Please tell me none of this smells like Ewok shit,” you tell him as you plop down beside him, and Finn just laughs.

               “Happen to know from experience?” he asks, and you can’t help but smack his arm lightly.

               “And this is how I know you’ve been spending too much time around Ladson,” you say as you pick up a plate of food, nudging one small red berry-like orb with the tip of your finger.

               “Think of it this way,” Finn tells you as he picks one of your plate and pops one in his mouth. “If I was going to give you rotten food, I’d be stuck in here smelling it all day, wouldn’t I?”

               “Fair point,” you concede as you glance back at the holo. Dran is thankfully gone, and in his place is the New Republic logo, emblazoned with the words, _Tribunal 394, Corellian Hall of Justice, Day Two_ underneath.  Finn unmutes the projector, and the logo is shortly replaced by the Master-at-Arms calling for quiet.

               “The chamber will come to order. Special War Tribunal Number Three Hundred Ninety-Four is now reconvened, the Honorable Senator Garak’hrath presiding. In the reserve witness pool, three prosecution selections remain, and twenty-three defense selections remain.”

               “Holy _shit_ ,” you mutter under your breath, and from beside you Finn lets out a good-natured snort of agreement.

               “Thank you, Marshal,” the senator replies. “Reserve witness testimony will resume at this time. Prosecution, do you wish to call a witness?”

               “Yes, your honor, at this time we call our last witness of the proceedings, Captain HF-6749,” Throm says, and from out of nowhere, you can feel the pit of your stomach drop and you feel lightheaded and nauseous all by the same hand. At first you think it’s the food as you push the plate away from you, but the feeling gets worse a blue-clad Senate guard comes through the witness door, closely followed by a dark-haired man wearing chains and a First Order Army Captain’s uniform and another Senate guard.

               “Oh no,” you murmur as you lean back, pressing your fingers against your temple.

               “You doing okay?” Finn asks as he looks between you and the food, but it’s all you can do to just shake your head.

               “I don’t know,” you say as you look back towards the holo, watching as they lead him to a special platform and fix field binders to his waist and ankles, then activate the field before removing his chains. “Do you know who that guy is?”

               “No idea,” Finn says as he shakes his head. “Do you?”

               “I don’t think so,” you reply as you stare him down through the holo. “But I think Kylo definitely does, and whoever he is, he’s not happy to see him.”

               They step back, and the Master-at Arms provides a much different oath than the one he gave the others. “Raise your right hand, Captain. By your honor as a commissioned officer of the First Order Army, and upon penalty of death, do you swear to give full and complete testimony, and to submit to the tribunal with no evasion or omission?”

               “I do so swear, and may the Supreme Leader strike me down otherwise.”

               “ _Shit_ ,” you hiss under your breath, and Finn just nods his head in stunned agreement.

               The Captain salutes the Marshal before he turns to the guard. “I’m ready, sir.”

               The Captain floats up to the center of the chamber before the senator speaks again. “Let the record show that the witness in custody was administered an alternate oath consistent with Convention Article Six. State your name, rank, and organization for the record.”

               “My name is HF-6749, alternatively known as Jet, Captain, Osik Company, Twenty-third Fleet Regiment, First Order Army.”

               “Prosecution,” the senator says before sitting back. “You may begin.”

               Deso and Thorm glide up to the center of the chamber, taking their time before they pose their first question. “Captain, how is it that you came to be in our custody?”

               “After an operation on Nar Shadda, I was picked up by a Resistance response team after being incapacitated during the demolition of the Hutt stronghold,” the Captain explains. “At least, back when the system still existed.”

               “And what was this _operation_ , Captain?” Deso urges.

               “My orders were to quell the rebellion in Nar Shadda’s capital district, as per the alliance with the Hutt Empire,” the Captain explains. “A faction of the leaders on Nar Shadda had declared independence from Nal Hutta, so as traitors, our orders were to put them down and establish deterrent against similar future attempts.”

               “And who gave these orders?” Deso asks, his tone far too aloof for your liking.

               “He’s standing right there,” the Captain says, turning his head slightly. “Kylo Ren, the best commander I ever had.”

               “No,” you scream at the holo, and your hands are practically shaking at your sides as you lunge towards the screen until your face is almost an inch away from the holo. “No, Kylo had nothing to do with Nar Shadda, he had _nothing_ to do with that.”

               “Hey, hey, hey, easy,” Finn says quickly as he puts a hand on your shoulder, but your arms are literally quaking with rage and you jerk your arm away from him before you can even stop yourself. You make no attempt to apologize, or even look at him, as you glare through the holo.

               Deso suddenly looks at the console on his screen, and you can see through the holo that something on it has just started flashing urgently, but you have no idea what it means and the trial seemingly continues. Did they know he was lying? Did they detect a mistruth? If that was what the console indicated, Deso made no attempt to acknowledge it. “Captain, there’s something that seems to be missing from the record, something that we only discovered yesterday. While your unit’s formal designation was Osik Company, what was _your_ designated combatant title?”

               “Commander, Five Hundred First Legion.”

               The crowd in the gallery, or at least, whatever audience was privileged enough to view the trial beyond the holo’s scope collectively gasps and begins chattering as the Master-at-Arms swiftly rises to the center of the chamber. “Order,” he shouts. “There will be order in the chamber.”

               The clamor of the crowd quickly quiets as suddenly as it had started, and the senator resumes his post. “Thank you, Marshal. Prosecution, you may continue.”

               “For those who don’t know, what other name is your company known by?”

               “Vader’s Fist.”

               “And your motto?”

               “Smash disorder and rebellion, wherever it is found.”

               “This is not good,” Finn says quietly, and you can’t help but nod your head forward in silent agreement, too stunned to be able to form any sort of coherent thoughts on the matter.

               “Thank you, Captain,” Deso says smoothly. “I will now turn the examination over to the Grand Admiral.”

               As Thorm briefly consults his console, you can’t help but wonder if perhaps Kylo did have something to do with Nar Shadda, at least, before Snoke destroyed it. You didn’t think he had, but then again, hadn’t you recently discovered that Kylo had been gone for long stretches of time without your awareness of it when you were still back on the _Propitiate_? Was he really still causing more havoc and destruction than you had realized? You didn’t want to lose faith in him, not now, but you couldn’t shake the unfortunate sense of doubt that had seemed to take over your thoughts.

               “Returning to the account of Nar Shadda, could you recount the events which led to the suppression operation?” Thorm continues.

               “The Hutt underground presence objected to the First Order prohibition on spice, and began smuggling it from the primary warehouses on Nar Shadda onto planets in our control,” the Captain explains. “This was in direct violation of the treaty with the Grand Hutt Council, which directed the governor of Nar Shadda to take care of the issue, but he declared independence from Nal Hutta instead.”

               “And that’s when you were sent in?” Thorm prompts.

               “Yes,” the Captain replies. “We were sent in with the order to destroy the spice stocks and remove the governor from power by any means necessary. We destroyed the stock overnight in a firebombing raid, a terrible choice in hindsight. No amount of filtering could cut through _that_ much smoke, and the spice rage severely impacted all of my troops. I took what able troops I had remaining and laid siege to the central government block, with orders to destroy all trespassers in the surrounding skylanes with maximum prejudice. After a day of siege, I managed to get a small number of troops through an undefended breach, and cleared the way for Ren to make his way straight to the governor. He cut down everyone in his way and my troops and I cleaned up the stragglers along the way until we reached the governor, Ragadda, I think was his name. Ren gave him the option to surrender or die. Like a typical Hutt coward, he ordered his _troops_ to surrender over the comms and offered Ren five million credits for his own ransom. Ren cut the fool down for even offering. Good riddance. After vacating, I called in the orbital strike to level the building, but the building must have been rigged to blow, since the last thing I remember is the laser hitting and the detonation being much stronger than it should have been. After that, I came to in stuncuffs on the back of a Resistance sled, in the middle of a crater where the capital district used to be.”

               You sit for a moment as you consider everything he had said before you cross your arms over your chest. “Dude had it coming,” you reply with finality. “Kylo was given an order, and he followed through with it, end of story.” Finn looks over at you as if he wants to say something, but eventually decides to say nothing.

               “Does Kylo Ren make a practice of leaving his top officers behind?” Thorm asks, and you can hear the snarl in the back of your throat before you realize you’re even making any noise.

               “Normally, no,” the Captain admits. “But the First Order doesn’t practice casualty retrieval like the New Republic either. If you’re dead, you’re dead, there’s nothing to be done about it. No one should have survived a blast like that, so perhaps it was simply the _will of the Force_ , as General Hux became so fond of saying on the _Propitiate._ ”

               You can’t conceal your triumphant smirk as Thorm shifts a bit, before he decides to pursue a new line of questioning. “Moving on from Nar Shadda, how many operations have you conducted with Kylo Ren?”

               “Personally, over three hundred, seventy-four as commander after Threes bit it on Mygeeto.”

               “Offhand, do you know the enemy casualty figures for your unit?”

               “Estimated?” The Captain hesitates, as if doing some quick calculations in his head. “Three hundred million by blaster and lightsaber alone under my command.”

               “Not that much,” you interject quickly with a shake of your head.

               “Not at all,” Finn mutters dryly from beside you, but you just shrug him off. At least these were only the casualty figures for his unit, and not him specifically. You didn’t honestly want to think about how many people Kylo Ren had killed himself. How high was that number? In the hundreds? Thousands? Giving an order to kill was so much different from standing on the battlefield and plunging a lightsaber through someone’s chest as you watched the life leave their vacant bodies, and yet to be responsible for doing that thousands of times? Suddenly you didn’t even need to reflect as to why you didn’t ever ask if you could explore Kylo’s past in his mind. You simply had no desire to see it.

               “With casualty figures like that, every single one of those operations was a savage affair, no?” Thorm asks, and you can’t help but wonder what point he was trying to make.

               Neither does the Captain, apparently, as there’s a sliver of trepidation in his voice before he answers. “No more than could be expected for special operations.”

               “Hm, yes,” Thorm replies, completely undeterred. “Judging by the aftermath, one such operation was particularly bloodier than the rest. Tell us about Yaga Minor.”

               “The liberation, or its fall?” Captain asks. “I wasn’t there for its fall, Grand Admiral. I was _here_.”

               “Fair enough,” Thorm says simply. “Tell us about the _liberation_ , then.”

               “Oh shit,” you snap, hitting the ground at your side.

               “Should I even ask?” Finn asks as he raises an eyebrow, and you quickly shoot him an apologetic glance.

               “This is my fault,” you reply. “I ordered an envoy there to forge a Yagai alliance with the First Order, since the chaos of the New Republic would never truly accommodate their regimented caste system. They were effectively slaves under the New Republic, at least from their point of view, but I had no idea Kylo went on that mission himself.”

               “Looks like there’s a lot of things you don’t know about him,” Finn replies. He doesn’t mean it to be as biting as it sounds, you can see it as the expression on his face sours as soon as the words leave his lips, but the damage is already done. He just squeezes your arm reassuringly, and you find his hand as you hold it, trying to look for some semblance of comfort.

               “No matter which way you cut it, it was a mess of an operation,” the Captain confesses. “We needed the shipyard crews to finish our dreadnought, but the New Republic was keeping them under their thumb with some kind of psionic resonator, brainwashing the queens into loyalty to a Senate that would _never_ treat them as equals.”

               You can’t help but laugh as you shake your head, and Finn just quirks an eyebrow in confusion as he appraises you. “They listened to me,” you say happily. “I may have had to kill someone to do it, but it’s nice to know that people actually _listened_ to me, or at least read my case notes, considering that’s almost word for word what I had to say on the subject.”

               “We eventually found out about the resonator the hard way, but we tried appealing to their sense of order first, only to find in the morning after each visit, the hive we visited had been wiped out in the night by their own,” the Captain explains. “We tracked the activities to a giant central hive and sent a team in to investigate, but we never heard from them again. The next morning, the hive was sporting armor plating, _white plasteel_ armor plating, courtesy of my fallen troops. Ren ordered the hive breached with a Lamell core, and we went down and systematically cleansed the remains of the hive, chamber by chamber, with heavy casualties along the way. At its core, we found the device, defended by _thousands_ of bugs. Ren cut down all that got in his way, and the few of us left did our best to cover him until he destroyed the device, then all bugs suddenly collapsed. I was ready to get out of there, but Ren insisted we take one captive with us before he ordered us to torch the rest since they could, I believe his words were, _no longer be helped_. I sent my demo to take care of it and Ren used the Force to probe the creature’s mind, is my understanding of the event. The next thing we know, thousands more bugs appeared, but they acted as though we weren’t even there. They just walked right past us and started attacking the remains of the device and dragging bodies away. Two big ones, queens, I assume, knelt in front of Ren and he executed them on the spot without a word. The others just carried them off and also brought me the bodies of my men, a strange gesture, given we had just executed two of their leaders. When Ren made it clear we weren’t going to take the bodies with us, two more queens showed up, stripped their armor, and mounted their helmets on a hive wall like some kind of bizarre memorial before the rest of the bugs buried the men under them.”

               “What the-?” Finn asks as he turns to you, but you just shrug your shoulders as you spread your hands on either side of you, releasing your grip on Finn. Hux had told you that the situation had been _dealt with,_ but he hadn’t specified how and he had seemed in a particularly irritable mood that day so you had decided it was just better not to ask. Kylo though…how could you not have _sensed_ that? You felt as though your bond with him on the _Propitiate_ had been slipping, but you couldn’t imagine that it would have been so weak as to let something like that go unnoticed.

               Regardless of your thoughts, the trial continues. “How many Yagai died at Kylo Ren’s hands in that raid, Captain?” Thorm asks, as if he’s proving some kind of point.

               “One hundred thousand, easily.”

               Thorm just nods his head forward, before he asks his next question. “Will Kylo Ren ever betray the First Order?”

               “No, sir,” the Captain replies without missing a beat. “He will defend it to his last breath.”

               “Thank you, Captain, that will be all for now.”

               “Wait, _what_?” you ask as you turn to Finn, who is wearing a similar look of confusion on his own face. Thorm had just encouraged the Captain to talk about a species that had been systematically _brainwashed_ by the New Republic, and all Thorm wanted to point out was how many insects Kylo Ren himself had personally killed? The two didn’t quite fit together as well as Thorm maybe had hoped he would, and you were glad that Finn could pick up on that as well.

               Ematt and Wedge float up to the Captain, and you can see an almost wicked gleam in Ematt’s eye through the holo that both unnerves and excites you at the same time. “Do you know who I am, Captain?”

               “Yes, Colonel, you were number three on my unit’s most wanted list,” the Captain replies automatically. “You were in there just behind…”

               “Good,” Ematt replies simply. “Then we can dispense with the introductions and get right to it. During your captivity, have you had the opportunity to hear the details of the Fall of Yaga Minor? Or, as Mister Holl so delicately termed it on the HoloNet, the _rescue_ of Yaga Minor?”

               “I don’t know what the HoloNet is saying, but the guys running the prisoner sled wouldn’t shut up about it,” the Captain replies.

               “What do you know of it?”

               “That the bugs blew up the shipyards when the Republic fleet dropped out of hyperspace,” the Captain begins. “And once they landed, they fought back, to the last bug, carrying the pieces of the device on poles like some kind of battle standard.”

               “That’s not entirely accurate, but rumors will distort the details so,” Ematt says with a sigh. “Their forces did in fact carry pieces of the resonator into battle with them, but they did not exactly fight to the last Yaga. You mentioned that the ascendant queens stripped your men of their armor and equipment?”

               “Yes, I did, Colonel,” the Captain replies.

               “Given the standard armament of a 501st Storm Trooper, what happened when it was clear the Yagai would not win the battle against the New Republic forces?” Ematt asks.

               The Captain pauses for a moment, mentally working through the standard inventory of one of his men, then tilts his head to the side with a look of concern. “So _that’s_ what they meant by firestorm,” he mutters under his breath before he looks back up at Ematt. “The only thing useful to the Yagai in such a situation would have been the sappers’ incendiary charges. Given the choice between death and captivity, the queens chose death by fire, with the hope that the massive charges would turn the tide for the other hives across the planet.”

               “Ninety percent of the planet’s population was killed in the struggle, by both suicidal combat tactics and the reentry of shipyard debris,” Ematt informs him. “Would those have been acceptable enemy losses for Kylo Ren?”

               “No,” the Captain replies immediately with a shake of his head. “The anger of the remaining population would render them useless to all further cooperation. It would be kinder to glass them from orbit and put them out of their misery.”

               “Did Kylo Ren make a habit of such tactics?”

               “In the early years, under the Knights, nearly every one of our operations followed eradication doctrine,” the Captain explains. “After the death of our Supreme Leader, however, they became more varied. On some missions, we would take a small group and try to sneak in and out to kill only one person. Other times, we would go for a single objective and only kill anyone who got in the way. Very rarely did a mission ever require annihilation-level destruction.”

               “You ever meet one of the Knights?” Finn asks you, but you just shake your head. “No, I think you were still on your home planet during that time. Scary dudes. Rey and Luke wiped them all out when they were training on Ahch-To, I think.”

               You just nod your head forward as you glance back at the holo, eager to not miss a word of what they were saying. “How many is rarely?” Ematt asks as the Captain does some quick math in his head.

               “Four such missions in the last seven years.”

               “Such as this one?” Ematt asks, pulling up the same holo that Leia had pulled up. “Your honor, the defense has retrieved exhibit fifty-three for review by the witness.”

               “Noted, defense,” the senator replies. “Continue.”

               “Do you recognize this battle, Captain?” Ematt asks as he nods towards the holo.

               After watching for a minute or so, the Captain finally answers. “Kalee, two years ago. We were tasked with putting down a Kaleesh sect that was responsible for the assassination of several First Order senior officers and loyal industry captains. This battle was the final assault on their fortified temple after we had neutralized all the off-worlders. Our orders were to eliminate all within as enemies of the First Order.”

               “At any point, did any of the Kaleesh warriors surrender?” Ematt asks, although you can tell by his tone that he already knows the answer.

               “None,” the Captain replies. “Every inhabitant of the temple was of combatant status, and we fought them as such, to the last man. Even the _statues_ fought us, but we prevailed in the end.”

               Ematt pauses as he nods his head forward, as if he had suspected as much. “Not without heavy losses, though?”

               “The defensive laser batteries alone cost us half the company,” the Captain tells him quickly. “It took months to recover from our losses there.”

               “Why sustain such losses?” Ematt asks, as if he’s genuinely curious to know. “Other companies have retreated in the face of lesser defenses.”

               “Not the 501st,” the Captain tells him. “Not as long as Ren was at the head. If he was still fighting, there was still a chance, not matter how great the odds.” You can’t help but smile widely at this, and Finn can’t help his small snort of amusement as he watches your face light up at simply the mention of Kylo’s boldness.

               “The other three annihilation operations you mentioned,” Ematt continues. “Were they similar in nature to the operation on Kalee?”

               “Yes, especially on Selvaris,” the Captain informs him. “If it wasn’t a military target, we left it alone, otherwise we crushed the entire town completely. Ren seemed to develop a distaste for civilian collateral damage over the years.”

               “See?” you almost explode excitedly as you glance over at Finn, who just holds up his hands in mock surrender as he shakes his head. You knew that you saw it because you were _bonded_ to him, but if others could see it, especially a First Order Captain that seemed to think Kylo was intent on keeping the First Order alive and well, then others must have been able to see the change in him too, tangible proof that he truly had changed for the better.

               “The Kylo Ren you knew on Nar Shadda, would he have ordered the destruction of the Hosnian system?” Ematt asks, and suddenly your happy, excited energy fizzles out as quickly as it had come as you wait in baited breath for the reply.

               “No,” the Captain says immediately. “The New Republic had committed no overt acts of war against us at that point, so Ren would have had no reason to crush them so. The destruction of Hosnian was always the personal obsession of General Hux, and Ren had no major part in its execution, I believe.”

               “Thank you, Captain, that will be all,” Ematt says, and you can’t help but let out the breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding.

               “That’s good, right?” you ask Finn, pulling on the sleeve of his jacket as you shake him back and forth. “That’s good, right? Is that good?”

               “That’s _very_ good,” Finn says appreciatively as he nods toward the holo, and you can’t help but grin as you wrap your arms around your legs as you try to contain yourself.

               “Does the prosecution wish to further their examination?” the senator asks, and the holo cuts to a view of Deso, who looks visibly annoyed, and Thorm, who looks downright disturbed.

               “We have no further questions, your honor,” Thorm manages, and you make no attempt to hide your wicked smirk. The New Republic had called the Captain up as their last damning witness, and instead it looked like Ematt had turned his testimony into a win for Kylo. You didn’t think Ematt liked you much, but if he would let you, you made a mental note to ask Poe if you could at least thank him personally when he returned.

               “Marshal, return the Captain to his cell.” The Captain floats back to the Master-at-Arms and the two guards, who unlatch him and lead him back to the cell. “Chief Pseudenacon, was the testimony of the captive witness satisfactory?” the senator asks as he looks down over his console at the Tortutaru seated below him.

               The Tortutaru slides one open hand over the closed palm of his other hand in a slow, dragging motion, letting it slowly drop off into space. _Good enough;_ just _enough._

               “The witness testimony was satisfactorily detailed and honest, your honor,” the interpreter replies, and you can’t help but sit bolt upright.

               “Um, that’s not what he said,” you say as you point accusingly at the holo. “That’s not what he said. He said it was _just_ good enough, not _satisfactorily detailed_ , what the fuck?”

               “Maybe she was just trying to make it sound more official,” Finn offers, but you shake your head aggressively.

               “No, she’s _manipulating_ his _words_ ,” you tell him. “She was obscuring the Tortutaru’s tone with her own, and he didn’t _say_ that. He didn’t _mean_ that, like-“

               “Nothing you can do about it,” Finn offers, but you can’t help but huff as you cross your arms, still in a rage. This was going to bother you the rest of the day, you just knew it, and you honestly could not _wait_ until Ladson and Sadie got back so that you could bitch about it to them. This was just the sort of thing that you used to commiserate about back on the Starkiller Base, back when you had actually _been_ an interpreter, but old habits died hard and the obvious necessities of the job would never be erased from your system; once an interpreter, you doubted you could ever completely clear yourself of the mindset of an interpreter. It usually came out in subtle ways, recognizing the subtle cues of body language and making an effort to realize how it played a role in how others saw you, or the way you chose to communicate or the way others chose to communicate with you…the list could go on, but so did the trial, and you quickly snapped back to attention as the senator spoke again.

               “Very well. Defense, do you wish to call another witness?”

               “Yes, your honor, the defense calls Chewbacca of Kashyyyk,” Ematt says, and Chewie immediately enters the chamber, accompanied by the same floating protocol droid that had interpreted for the Aqualish. He stops in front of the Master-at-Arms and raises his right hand.

               “By the Force and the heart of the Great Wroshyr, do you swear to give full and complete testimony, and to submit to the tribunal with no evasion or omission?”

 _“Uma, Pi’warr,”_ Chewie roars, and the protocol droid quickly translates.

               “I do, Marshal,” it says, although you couldn’t help but make a mental not that the literal translation of the phrase was, _Yes, Guide Pers._ It was a droid, but at least its interpretation preserved its original intent, and as much as you hated to do so, you regarded it a bit more favorably than the interpreter that had spoken for the Tortutaru.

               Chewie boards the witness platform and rises to the center of the chamber, where he is met by the prosecution’s platform. If you’re not mistaken, Deso seems to give an unpleasant sniff, as if he considered Chewie to be beneath him. Sure, the prosecution could _talk_ about how much the galaxy lost after Han Solo’s death, but that clearly didn’t mean anything in front of his best friend, and it appeared Deso knew it, too. In the back of your mind, you remembered that Wookiees had also been slaves under the old Empire. You didn’t know anything about Deso’s upbringing, but it was starting to seem slightly more than possible that he could have had parents who supported the Imperial ideals.

               “State your name, rank, and organization for the record.”

               For a moment you had almost forgotten that Poe had once explained to you that Chewie wasn’t officially _with_ the Resistance, just helping out as a friend to Leia and occasionally returning home to Kashyyyk to visit his family, which was clearly reflected in his answer. _“Chewbacca, proud father of two, friend to the trees of the Rwook Clan.”_  

               The languages and culture of the Wookiees revolved so heavily around Kashyyk’s trees that there were phrases that simply didn’t translate right to the crude approximations of Basic, and so you eagerly waited to see what the droid would do with that information. To its credit, the protocol droid actually pauses to process this, before he renders the phrase into Basic. “Chewbacca, proud father and loyal son of the Rwook Clan of Kashyyyk.”

               “Not bad for a protocol droid,” you mutter to Finn under your breath as you turn back to the trial.

               “Prosecution, you may proceed.”

               The Grand Admiral seems to notice Deso’s disdain of Chewie, since he subtly pushes him back behind him before beginning. “Chewbacca, how familiar are you with the life and ambition of Kylo Ren?”

               If looks could kill, then Chewie’s glare would have cut the Grand Admiral clean in half. As it were, it seemed that Chewie understood the necessity of a formal record, and so he seemed to humor the Grand Admiral, though with the tense undercurrent of a warning.

               “I was there when he was born. I was there when Hosnian was destroyed. I was there when Han Solo fell. I was there when the Starkiller Base was destroyed. I was there to retrieve his son from a backwater world. I was there when he was captured aboard the _Resolute_. I was there when your friend attacked the people of Naboo. I was there when the _Propitiate_ was destroyed, and I was there when the First Order attacked us on the way here. I have stood face to face with Darth Vader, was party to the destruction of both Death Stars, and watched as the Old Republic and the Jedi Order were crushed under the boots of the Empire. I know Kylo Ren’s life and ambitions well, Grand Admiral. Please choose your questions carefully.”

               If you’re not mistaken, Deso actually seems to shrink away from Chewie, while the Grand Admiral stops to consult his console as he considers his next question. “When the Starkiller Base was destroyed, what role did you play?”

               “You’re not going to like this,” Finn whispers to you as he grabs your forearm tighter than you’ve ever felt him grab you before.

               “I accompanied Han Solo to disable the shields around the planet, and to destroy a key power component of their primary weapon. With the coercion of Captain Phasma, the operation was successful.”

               “Phasma-?” you repeat blankly, trying to think back.

               “We threw her down a garbage chute,” Finn whispers back excitedly, and if you’re not mistaken, he almost sounds a bit enthusiastic as he does so, as if that was a memory he looked back on fondly.

               “Mm, yes, and the galaxy is ever thankful for your contribution,” the Grand Admiral replies levelly, which earns a scoff from Finn. “That is also where Han Solo was killed, was it not?”

               “Yes,” is the protocol droid’s reply.

               “I see. How did it happen?” the Grand Admiral prompts, and you silently hope that Chewie would choose his words carefully, knowing that the protocol droid may not produce an accurate translation.

               You close your eyes, and wait for the next words to come. “He was cut down in cold blood by his son,” the protocol droid emits, and you can’t help but wince as the words wash over you.

               “Chamber, a moment of silence for the fallen,” the Grand Admiral says as he bows his head, and you can’t help but shift uncomfortably. Maybe it was customary procedure, but out of everyone in the chamber, you had a feeling that the Grand Admiral honestly couldn’t have cared less for Han Solo. From beside you, you can see that even Finn has lowered his eyes in reverence, and you could tell by the expression on his face that he was reliving that dreaded scene over and over again in his mind. You wondered if Kylo was feeling any remorse or trying his best to simply block the memory from his mind; you couldn’t blame him either way.

               After a brief moment, the Grand Admiral continues. “If I’m not mistaken, it’s widely known that you owed Han Solo a life debt, correct?”

               “That is correct, Admiral.”

               “I see,” Thorm replies. “Given the number of encounters you’ve had with Kylo Ren since Starkiller Base that you’ve mentioned in your affidavit, why does he still survive? Are you not duty bound to fulfill your life debt by avenging Han Solo?”

               “That’s where you’re mistaken,” the protocol droid beeps out, but you can’t help but appreciate Chewie’s ferocious growl, which you mentally translated as, _You are_ wrong. “Unlike Cerean society, Wookiee honor holds no concept of vengeance, not where life debts are concerned. When he saved my life so many years ago, I was honor-bound to share my life and family with him, thus I had the honor of accompanying him through the many conflicts and adventures of the past decades. I am not honor-bound to destroy his killer, not when there is still yet hope for his reformation. Han Solo may be dead, but I still share in his family, from his wife, General Organa, to his grandson, daughter-in-law, and his son. Family is not something we take lightly, Admiral.”

               “Wait, does that mean Chewie and I are family?” you ask Finn in a hushed whisper, but he simply shrugs his shoulders.

               “I think he considers you to be,” he replies, and you can’t help but ponder over this for a moment. He had always seemed exceptionally close to Ani when he had been a child back on base here, but you had thought that it was because it was in Wookiee nature to be gentle to children, to teach them and guide them, serving as proper models for how to act and behave. Now you were starting to consider that it had been something deeper, perhaps an implicit connection to Han Solo that he sensed within Ani. You had never met him, but even still, his and Leia’s blood still ran through your son’s veins.

               The Grand Admiral looks a bit confused, but continues to press his point. “By all accounts of the events on the Starkiller Base, you attempted to kill Kylo Ren on the spot. If vengeance isn’t part of the life debt, why did you fire?”

               Again, Chewie gives him such a steely gaze that if they had met under any different circumstances, Thorm’s head would probably be crushed between his large, furry paws by now. “Kylo Ren killed my closest friend. The life debt had nothing to do with it. Wookiees are not slaves to our clan values, Admiral. In that moment, Kylo Ren was a stranger to me, so far gone from the Ben Solo I knew and loved, replaced by _something_ beyond redemption. In the years since, I have had the honor to share in the raising of his son, and I still hold out hope that we can be reunited as a family.”

               The Grand Admiral’s sigh is almost but just not audible as he realizes that no matter what questions he posed, he was not going to get the answers that he wanted the galaxy to hear. “The prosecution has nothing more for the witness, your honor.”

               Thorm and Deso coast back to their dock, and Wedge and Ematt’s platform is quick to replace theirs. Chewie and Ematt exchange a quick look, and it’s quite obvious that they had known each other for quite some time, and they were almost amused to find themselves in these sort of circumstances. Ematt just gives him a faint smile before he poses him some questions of his own, his solemn tone revealing none of his hidden amusement. “Chewbacca, among all the experiences you’ve had with Kylo Ren, the most significant one for the purposes of this tribunal is his capture aboard the _Resolute_. During the extraction, did he exhibit any signs of resistance?”

               Chewie’s expression changes, suddenly becoming much softer. “No, none whatsoever.”

               “What?” you ask blankly. You remembered you and Rey fiercely fighting Kylo down on the bridge while Finn cared for Poe, who had recently been shot, but had Chewie really not been there to see Kylo lashing out like a wounded animal? You knew he had been distracted by Storm Troopers approaching from out in the hallway, but you couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t known _anything_ about the fight that was raging on right behind him.

               “Then what did happen?” Ematt presses.

               “He made a point of showing displeasure with the whole process, much like he once did as a child,” Chewie continues, and Finn can’t help but scoff.

               “Well, that’s one way to put it,” Finn notes, and you can’t help but nod your head in agreement, almost unable to believe that Chewie was trying to write off Kylo’s fit of rage as a temper tantrum.

               “In fact,” Chewie continues. “He actually _assisted_ in the extraction, clearing a battalion of attacking Storm Troopers to allow us to escape unharmed. That’s when I knew there was hope for him yet.”

               “Wait, when was this?” Finn asks, and you shake your head, trying to recall.

               “Oh, when I got struck down,” you tell him quickly. “When you went up to start the ship, Poe was injured and so I went off the boarding ramp to try to give us some room, but I got struck in the leg and I went down. Kylo saved me, pushed them back, pulled me on board and that’s what allowed us to take off.”

               “Right,” Finn says at the same time Ematt asks his next question.

               “Hope?”

               “The hope that the Ben Solo I once knew could break free of Snoke’s control. I began to hope once I met his son on that backwater planet, who very much bore his resemblance. Kylo Ren has done terrible things, but now that he’s free of Snoke, Ben Solo can begin atoning for those mistakes.”

               “So he can be redeemed?” Ematt presses, and Chewie nods his head, bits of fur shaking left and right as he does so.

               “Yes,” he says firmly. “The galaxy has much more to gain from his life than his death. Anakin Skywalker did not live to see his mistakes reversed, and the galaxy bled for it. It would be a shame if we didn’t learn from that lesson. There’s a long road ahead to peace in the galaxy, and I would be honored to join Kylo Ren in righting his wrongs, as his father would have done.”

               You can’t help but smile, and the look is reflected on Ematt’s face as he turns from Chewie to shoot a look in Deso’s direction. “The defense has nothing more to add, your honor,” he says triumphantly as the senator turns to Thorm.

               “Prosecution, do you have any additional inquiry for the witness?”

               “None, your honor,” Thorm replies.

               “Very well. Chewbacca, you are excused.”

               As Chewie descends to leave the chamber, a sudden thought occurs to you and you quickly turn to Finn. “Besides the obvious, do Ematt and Deso have some sort of history that would be worth hearing?”

               Finn just lets out a small laugh as he turns back to you. “Do you remember the story Poe always tells, about how the First Order pirate raids made him quit the New Republic Navy and join the Resistance?” You nod your head slowly. “Ematt was there when it happened. He hijacked the debriefing that was supposed to happen afterward. Instead of Poe coming back and getting busted by Deso, I think Ematt locked him in a closet before he and Leia intercepted Poe and his friends and convinced them to join the Resistance. To hear him tell it, he told Deso he was more useful there than at his desk.”

               You laugh as you shake your head, trying to picture it in your mind, and you’re about to say something more when suddenly you hear Sadie’s unmistakable voice through the holo saying, “I do so swear” and you quickly turn to look as she drops her hand and begins rising to the center of the chamber. Just like they had said in the briefing, Ani is with her, his lightsaber clipped to his belt. They are both flanked by Asher and a man you didn’t recognize, although he is covered in full battle armor. Sadie’s platform is also a bit different than the others, bigger to accommodate the four of them, and visibly surrounded by armor plating and double-layered shielding. Your eyes sweep over to Ani who looked a lot taller standing next to Sadie, and if not for his shorter hair, you were surprised to see how much his features reflected Kylo’s, from the way he used to hold his head back on the Starkiller Base to the way he stood with his legs spread slightly and arms by his sides, as if ready to grab his lightsaber at a moment’s notice.

               “That’s my _son_ ,” you whisper to Finn, unable to conceal the touch of pride in your voice.

               “State your name, rank, organization, and authorization to carry weapons in this chamber.”

               Sadie’s voice comes out slowly and is full of trepidation, as if she had been coached what to say a hundred times over and she was terrified of getting it wrong. “Sadie Rede, Republic Citizen, authorized armed escort by Special Order, um, One-one-three-nine, and, um, issued by the, uh, Honorable Senator Garak’hrath of Euceron for the protection of Anakin Solo, who’s, um, under my charge.”

               You can’t help but let out a small snort of laughter to see Sadie rattle that off under the threat of such an intimidating situation, but you could tell just by her speech that a lot had changed while you were away. Since when was she a Republic citizen? When you had lived there, your academia’s planet had been neutral, owing no allegiance to any government of the galaxy, but now, it seemed they had been annexed by the New Republic, yet another reason to never step foot back there again.

               “Prosecution, you may proceed.”

               “No, I don’t like this,” you whisper urgently to Finn, suddenly feeling extremely protective of Sadie. “No, they’re going to ask her all these uncomfortable questions so that she’s too distressed to answer any of Ematt’s questions.”

               But Deso and Thorm merely exchange a look, as if they had no idea who Sadie was or what they could possibly ask her. “We have nothing for this witness, your honor.”

               “Yes,” you yell at the holo, your voice at full volume. “Yes, _fuck_ yes.” You had to hand it to Ematt, first Chewie shut down Thorm and then the prosecution had absolutely _nothing_ to ask Sadie? It seemed that the planned witness sequence was going as well as, perhaps even better, than he had expected.

               “Defense?”

               Ematt and Wedge approach, and, curiously enough, Ematt takes a backseat to give Wedge the floor. You can tell by the way Sadie smiles shyly at him that they had already been introduced, and she was grateful to see a familiar face.

               “Hello, Sadie. I’m Admiral Antilles. Since he conducted your pretrial briefing, Colonel Ematt has declined to examine you in the interest of neutrality.”

               “I understand, Admiral,” Sadie replies simply.

               “When you received my summons to the tribunal, were you surprised?”

               Sadie cocks her head to the side, as if she’s trying to think back to the moment when she had first received it. You could only imagine that she was either at the store, or tending to her father, when her new husband ran in with the news. You couldn’t picture it, and for some reason, it seemed wrong even trying to. “Somewhat.”

               “From what I understand, you were part of the crew of six interpreters that were sent to the Starkiller Base so long ago, yes?”

               “Yes,” Sadie says, her expression suddenly turning serious. “Yes, I was there.”

               “According to your affidavit, following the discovery of the plot against the First Order, you were imprisoned by the late General Hux but freed by Kylo Ren? Do you mind elaborating on how that happened?”

               You bite your lip as you recall the memory of Sadie on the floor beneath you, battered and bruised from what Hux had done to her. You could remember the pity that you felt for her, and beneath that, the subsequent rage that you had allowed this to go on for as long as it had simply because you hadn’t known she was on base. You remembered how desperate you had been to try to free her, and that was when Kylo had taken it upon himself to save her, sending her back to her father, proving once and for all that he wasn’t lying when he said that he truly cared for you. He really meant it, and for a moment you wanted nothing more than to just be back with him on the Starkiller Base, when life had seemed so complicated, but was honestly nothing in comparison to what you had experienced as of late. A part of you wondered what you would do if you woke up tomorrow to find yourself there, in his bed, to find that this had all just been a manifestation of the Force to show you where your future was headed with him. If that was the case, you knew exactly what you would change, and those events were few and far between. If you had the option of going back to where you stood on your old academia with B when he had asked you to take part in this mission on the Starkiller Base, you would have still accepted in a heartbeat. Your life may had been perilous and filled with pain and regret, but this was your path, the one that you had been set upon, and you wouldn’t have traded it for anything in the world.

               Sadie looks down at her feet and takes a deep breath as she tries to compose herself. You knew her captivity on the Starkiller Base was not something she wanted to relive, much less talk about, and she seems to almost sway for a moment before she looks at Ani, searching his eyes for reassurance. When she turns back to Wedge, there’s a fire and a steely determination across her features that you almost don’t recognize.

               “I don’t mind, Admiral,” she says firmly. “I thought I was going to die in Hux’s captivity. I woke up in his chambers and I thought that, I really thought that that was going to be it for me, that I was going to die there and I was never going to see my friends and family ever again. I really thought there was no escape for me when Kylo Ren came in one day and freed me, sending someone to privately escort me back home without asking for anything in return.” As she speaks, she unbuttons her collar and draws it back to reveal the unmistakable lightsaber burn on her neck, eliciting an audible gasp from those in the room once they realize what it is. “This scar is where he cut through the collar I was forced to wear as Hux’s slave. Kylo Ren freed me from that, and this scar is a constant reminder that I would be dead right now, destroyed on the Starkiller Base with everyone else, if not for his mercy.”

               “Yes, Sadie, yes,” you whisper to yourself, transfixed by the amount of pity and empathy that she was emanating. Sadie was always able to channel her emotions effectively, it had been one of her strong suits as an interpreter, to make people feel exactly what she wanted them to feel, and this was no exception. You can tell that everyone in the room is visibly moved not only by her story, but by Kylo Ren’s apparent selfless act of compassion towards her.

               Wedge, to his credit, gives her a moment to compose herself before he asks his next question. “Did you have any other encounters with Kylo Ren?”

               “Yes, Admiral,” Sadie replies, and she seems to have relaxed at least somewhat. “A few times when he came to visit Anakin when he was a baby on our homeworld. Once he came to question my father and I after the Resistance picked up Ani and my sister and took them and Ladson back to their base, and then one last time on Naboo, when Leia sent me and Ladson to ask Ani to come back to the Resistance with us.”

               “What happened on Naboo?” Wedge asks. “We have already heard the account of Sub-Lieutenant Ladson, but your account completes the story.”

               “They briefed us on what they thought it would be like when we got there, but it wasn’t anything like that,” Sadie says as she shakes her head. “We had only expected to find Ren and Ani and my sister there, but they weren’t alone. Captain Phasma and General Hux were there too, and-“

               Her voice cuts off as she looks away, as if in tangible pain, and you can’t help but let out a guilty sigh as you turn away, shrugging your shoulders uncomfortably as if to physically attempt to shake the responsibility for that event off your shoulders. In the corner of the holo, you can see the Tortutaru sit forward in his chair with sudden interest, and you can’t help but gnaw on your lower lip nervously as you anxiously await Sadie to finish the story.

               “I don’t know if he was Snoke at the time,” Sadie begins, but her speech soon dissolves into broken sentences. “But he was there, and it was…scary. I was scared, really scared. He had a blaster, and Captain Phasma had a blaster, and they weren’t sure quite what to do with us. My sister said they couldn’t kill us, and so they did something that I was later told saved our lives, they knocked us out, and when I came to, I was on a Resistance transport and they told me they were taking me far away from that monster.”

               “Monster?” Wedge asks, raising his eyebrows in surprise.

               “Hux,” Sadie quickly clarifies. “Or Snoke, or whoever or whatever that was.”

               “Is Kylo Ren worth saving?” Wedge asks, and the fine hairs on your arm stand at attention as Sadie seems to hesitate for a moment, as if deliberating her answer.

               “I don’t know,” she says after a moment. “I can’t speak to the horrible things he’s done, because I wasn’t there for that. I know that he probably has some tactical military advantage to help you guys defeat the First Order, but I don’t know anything about the war or how much he could help.” She turns slightly to look at Ani. “But I do know that I cared for Ani for the first few years of his life, and Kylo Ren raised him for the rest of it. Kylo Ren may have made some grave mistakes in his life, but Anakin Solo is not one of them. He’s good, and he’s honest, and he cares about people, and that was all by Ren’s instruction. If for no other reason, he should be spared to show his son, and the galaxy, the value in making mistakes and working to repair them.” Sadie’s gaze shifts to look towards one of the holocams, and you know in the back of your mind that she’s trying to figure out which one is directing the feed directly to you so she can gaze pointedly in your direction.

               “Dammit, Sadie,” you laugh as you readjust yourself onto your knees, and Finn can’t help but nudge your side in silent appreciation. He may not have been there himself, but you pretty much assumed Sadie had made it widely known just what had really happened on Naboo, although fortunately you doubted that the galaxy would ever get to hear the entire tale.

               “Thank you, Sadie,” Wedge says as he dips his head in her direction. “Your honor, the defense has nothing more for the witness.”

               “Prosecution, do you have any examination for the witness?” the senator asks.

               “We have no questions for the witness, your honor,” Thorm answers, as if he was fighting through tears of boredom from Sadie’s story.

               “Very well, you are dismissed, Mrs. Rede,” the senator says as her platform descends back to the dock, and you watch as they file out through a special door flanked by Senate guards. Once Sadie is out the door, Ematt and Wedge look back up from their consoles to address the senator again.

               “Who do you think they’re going to call next?” you ask nervously as you turn to Finn, who just shakes his head. So far Ematt had been doing a good job of picking people that Deso and Thorm didn’t have a chance at countering, and you could only hope that his strategic logic in this trial would continue. If it did, Kylo just might stand a chance after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been fantastic to hear all the positive feedback concerning the trials. I really researched the heck out of this and I put a lot of time and work into it, so I'm glad that it paid off. As always, I want this to be a story that people can keep coming back to time and time again, and I hope that I'm able to pull that off, so even if less than stellar things happen in canon, people can still turn to this story for their happy ending. But we're not there yet, and we've still got less than 20 chapters to go now until the end of this trilogy. What will be of Kylo's fate? We'll see soon enough..... Until Saturday, cheers!!


	67. Chapter 67

               “Your honor, the defense calls upon Master Rey to give testimony,” Ematt announces, and the Master-at-Arms nods as he turns to open the door behind him. Rey walks through a few moments later, wearing robes similar to Luke’s, although her lightsaber is prominently clipped to her belt. Rey opts to do the oath right there at the door instead of going to the platform, and you can just barely hear the process through the holo.

_“By the Force, do you swear to give full and complete testimony, and to submit to the tribunal with no evasion or omission?”_

_“I do so swear, Marshal.”_

_“You may proceed.”_

               “Something’s up,” Finn tells you, and you turn your head to the side, giving him a clear look of confusion as you arch one eyebrow. Rey looked fine to you, but was there something Finn could sense that you couldn’t? “It shouldn’t have happened like that. I don’t know if Rey’s nervous about something or something shady happened that we don’t know about, but she’s carrying her lightsaber.”

               “So?” you ask, still not sure what point he’s trying to make. “Ani did too.”

               “That was different,” Finn insists. “She was supposed to leave her lightsaber with Artoo for safekeeping like Luke did, and although witness oaths don’t technically _have_ to be done on their platform, they are supposed to be, considering that’s where the amplifier is to make sure everyone can hear her. That was what she was instructed to do, and if she’s deviating from form, it means Deso’s probably going to make things difficult for her once they begin.”

               You glance back and forth between Finn and Rey as she walks towards the witness platform. She seemed focused, determined, at the height of concentration, her forehead slightly creased as her platform rose to the center of the chamber. “I hope you’re wrong,” you murmur, but you knew almost implicitly that he wasn’t.

               “State your name, rank, organization, and authorization to carry weapons in this chamber.”

               “Rey, Knight, New Jedi Order, authorized to carry my primary weapon as a Jedi Knight in all public facilities by Republic Code One-seven-nine, Article Eight, Section Three Hundred Three.”

               “How much do you want to bet they had to look that up before she stepped forward?” Finn asks, and you can’t help but nod in agreement. She sounds far too confident and triumphant while she’s reciting it, as if she’s found a loophole in their system.

               Regardless, the senator doesn’t seem to call any attention to it. “Thank you, Master Rey. Prosecution, you may begin.”

               Deso and Thorm float up to meet her platform, and Deso steps forward, looking too smug and too confident for your liking. “Shit,” Finn hisses under his breath. “I told you, they know something’s up.”

               “Master Rey, how confident are you in your skills as a Jedi Knight?” Deso asks, and you watch as Finn’s hands squeeze into fists at his sides.

               “Supremely, Admiral,” Rey replies, although her voice is guarded, and a bit on edge. She doesn’t know where this question is headed any more than you do, and it’s clearly making her uncomfortable.

               “That’s good to hear,” Deso replies smoothly. “Worried Ren is going to try something?”

               Rey looks visibly taken aback, and it clearly shows through the holo. It’s genuine, and you’re glad that the holo captured every ounce of sincerity to make it clear that Rey literally thought that she had nothing to fear from Ren. She quickly looks down to her lightsaber at her side and pauses for a moment as she collects herself before she slowly looks back up. “No, there are far more dangerous things on my mind than an unarmed defendant to treason,” she says pointedly. “Is there a point to this, Admiral?”

               Deso stops, seemingly savoring the moment, as if he’s been waiting a long time for this. You have no idea what he could possibly be about to ask her that would be so damning for Kylo, but you can’t help but take Finn’s outstretched hand and hold it nervously between both of your own. “Yes, as a matter of fact, there is a point to this. We are here to debate the necessity of executing Kylo Ren, a traitor, just as you said just now. Should the justices in their wisdom choose to stay the execution, for whatever reason, the galaxy will never be safe from him. Should he violate the misplaced trust in him, someone will have to subdue him, and perhaps even his family as well. Are you confident that you are capable of such a thing?”

               Your jaw drops in shock, but Rey is far more collected than you are as she simply narrows her gaze in an icy glare. Suddenly, it hit you what Deso was trying to do. He was trying to make Rey look weak, as though she wouldn’t stand a chance against Kylo Ren if he decided to turn against the Resistance, and what’s more, he was dragging you and Ani under the bus with him, as if you would both blindly follow whatever order he would give you without thinking twice. There might have been a small amount of truth in that, but there were some things that Kylo would never dare ask, not that Deso would have any respect for that.

               “Should it come to that,” Rey says slowly. “I will do what I must.”

               “Very carefully chosen words, Master Rey,” Deso gloats, and Finn lets out an angry snort through his nostrils, his anger helping ease your sense of balance. It seemed, at least for the moment, that Finn had enough outrage to cover the both of you. “But that was _not_ what I asked. Are you capable of defeating Kylo Ren, his wife, and his son, combined?”

               “There’s no need to,” you exclaim at the holo, more shocked than angry. You had nothing to do with this trial, and yet Deso seemed determined to try to drag you and your family through the dirt all the same. Suddenly, you were very, _very_ glad that the Resistance had the foresight to keep Poe out of Deso’s line of fire, as you knew implicitly that he would make the situation even more awkward and uncomfortable than he was already making this one.

               Rey and Deso stare each other down, and it’s finally Rey who blinks first. “Yes,” she says at length. “Yes, I am capable.”

               “Interesting,” Deso muses openly. “During my crossover commissioning training, something my first commander told me was that experience was the greatest examiner. Has your experience shown you capable to defeat Kylo Ren all on your own, let alone all three powerful Force-users?”

               “I have bested him in battle,” Rey says quietly, but the firmness in her voice could not be understated. “On the Starkiller Base, after the murder of Han Solo, I-“

               “But all three?” Deso asks, raising his eyebrows as if expecting a reply, but Rey says nothing as she continues her icy glare. “If you’re not sure, maybe some reminders may help. Your honor, I request that Prosecution Exhibit One be displayed.”

               “Oh fuck,” you murmur under your breath, and you almost don’t want to see whatever it is that Deso is about to show you. Since it was Exhibit One, they must have been counting on Rey to speak during the trial and put considerable effort into whatever they were about to show.

               The senator nods to the projector droid, and it begins playing something that looks like a montage of all of Rey’s failures, at least the ones the New Republic were apparently aware of. It begins with your exhibition match against her, pausing and zooming in on the moment where you defeated her, some battles you did not recognize, a ship that almost looked like the _Propitiate_ blowing up, immediately followed by a recording of Hux, possibly Snoke, laughing, and finally ends with a shaky recording of your fight on Tatooine, the entire thing ending with a shot of her lying unconscious in the sand.

               Finn pulls his hand away from yours as he shoots you a cold look, and you hold up your hands in surrender. “I _apologized_ for that,” you say firmly. You know you shouldn’t continue, but you can’t help yourself. “If anything, I was the one who told Kylo not to kill her.”

               Finn just shakes his head, like this wasn’t the time or the place. If anything, he was much too distressed with what Deso was trying to do, trying to undermine Rey and her accomplishments and her abilities, not just in front of the chamber, but in front of the entire galaxy. Even you had to admit, it was a low blow, and you could only imagine that if you were incensed, that Luke and Leia must be feeling extraordinarily infuriated with not only Deso, but with the Republic right now, for allowing this spectacle to be displayed for the whole galaxy. It didn’t just undermine Rey’s credibility, but Luke’s too, and everything that he was hoping to accomplish with the New Jedi Order.

               As the holo concludes, Deso looks just as smug and triumphant as ever. “Master Rey, experience is the great examiner. Do you still maintain your previous statement?”

               There were a myriad of expressions struggling for dominance over Rey’s face, but to her credit, she quirks the corner of her lip up in amusement. “I do, Admiral, though it seems we share a common failure, letting our emotions get the better of us and entering some of our battles with the enemy unprepared.”

               A shocked, but amused, puff of air escapes your lips before you can hold it back, and you’re immediately startled by Finn, who claps his hands together so loudly you can’t help but flinch and duck your head. “That’s my girl,” Finn yells at the holo. “That’s my girl, yes, you get him, Rey, you get him.”

               You can’t help but laugh more audibly this time as you clap Finn on the shoulder, shaking him lightheartedly from side to side. “She’s got this,” you agree. “Don’t worry, she’s got this.”

               Next to Deso, you can see that even the Grand Admiral is amused, and you had a feeling that if he had been human and not Cerean, he would have been chuckling at the very least. Deso swallows the verbal slap to the face in the name of decorum, crisply snapping his tunic in response.

               “So you admit that you failed because you were unprepared?” he asks, trying to regain control of the situation.

               “No, Admiral,” Rey says coolly, clearly taking advantage of his unease. “I failed because I still held out hope that things could change, so I held back. If Kylo Ren betrays us, I will do no such thing. I will leave _prepared_ to do what is necessary.”

               First Chewie, then Sadie, now Rey. Ematt had definitely selected the best, most convincing, witnesses for last, and there was nothing that Deso or even Thorm could say to any of them in order to unnerve them or unseat their position.

               “It seems the galaxy may have a chance yet,” Deso offers, fixing Rey with a bitter smile. “Let us hope it never comes to that.”

               Rey can see what he’s trying to do, but narrows her eyes at him all the same, his previous insults not forgotten. “Agreed.”

               Deso turns back to Thorm, who steps forward a little ways. “The prosecution has nothing more for the witness, your honor.”

               As they prepare to switch platforms with the defense, you can’t help but turn to Finn. “You know, I really am sorry for that whole mess on Tatooine, right? Like, I never meant for things to go down like that. Poe put me in those Force cuffs and I just kind of freaked after that.”

               “I know,” Finn admits as he nods his head forward a few times in solemn reply. “I know, Rey wasn’t acting like herself either. It was a bad situation all around, but hopefully nothing like that will ever happen again, right?”

               “Right,” you breathe, the relief palpable in your voice as Ematt steps forward to ask the defense’s first question.

               “Master Rey, as unfortunate as the events on Tatooine were, you mentioned that you still had hope things could change. Could you elaborate?”

               “I still had hope, because I went to Tatooine expecting to find the center of darkness that was sending ripples through the Force in either Kylo Ren or his wife. It turns out that I was _close_ , but neither of them were its center, only unwitting servants who were just as ignorant to his control as I was, considering we all thought Snoke was gone at the time.”

               “But he wasn’t gone?” Ematt prompts, and Rey just shakes her head.

               “No, he wasn’t,” she confirms. “Given how close by Snoke turned out to be, I was heavily influenced by the corrupting effect he had, and had to fight _myself_ in addition to the duel. When I stood over her, poised for the last strike, everything in me wanted to kill her to stop the spread of the dark side, but I held back in the hope of getting answers. Fortunately, my hesitation cost me nothing but pride, but striking a killing blow that day would had held grave consequences for all involved.”

               “I see,” Ematt says as he nods his head forward a few times, as if allowing this assertion to sink in. “This darkness, did you also feel it on the _Resolute_?”

               “No,” Rey repeats. “Snoke was never nearby, as he had effectively abandoned Kylo Ren until the day we came to capture him, so there was no such darkness at that time, and I easily overpowered Kylo Ren.”

               “How so?”

               “By the same method in which I was incapacitated on Tatooine,” she replies simply, and Ematt nods his head again as he prepares to ask his final questions.

               “Does the galaxy face a threat from Kylo Ren and his family?” he asks after a brief pause, and Rey shakes her head in response.

               “No,” she replies tersely.

               “Why not?”

               “Kylo Ren and his family paid an awful price to be rid of the manipulations of Snoke, and that’s not an experience with a forgettable lesson,” she explains. “Pouring your life into one last desperate attempt to fulfill a goal, especially if it’s to protect your family, is a remarkable anchor to the light side of the Force. No matter how bad the circumstances, that one moment forever wards one from irretrievably falling to the dark side.”

               “Wait, what?” you ask blankly as you stare her down through the holo. “They never told me that-“ Finn gives you a dry look as he quirks up one eyebrow, and suddenly it occurs to you that Rey may have been manipulating her choice of words for the benefit of the Republic. “Oh. I get it. Ignore me.”

               “Don’t worry, we won’t let anything happen to you,” Finn says as he nudges your arm appreciatively, and you force a smile in his direction, more for his sake than for yours. At first you had hoped that there had been some sort of loophole for you, but no, you should have known better than to assume that you had prevented yourself from falling to the dark side forever. You would always be susceptible to the darkness, now more than ever, and it was a struggle that you were constantly going to have to face for the rest of your life.

               “So has your opinion of Kylo Ren changed?” Ematt asks, and Rey seems to stop and consider the question before she answers.

               “No, it has not,” she says firmly. “Redeeming oneself and redemption in the eyes of others are two different things. I suppose in his dying moments Kylo Ren redeemed himself, but there’s a long way to go before he will be redeemed in my eyes, and he can spend the next several years doing just that.”

               “She’ll never forgive him,” Finn says quietly as he shakes his head from side to side, and a part of you couldn’t help but agree with him. You still remembered how Rey had broken down when she had to relive what Kylo had done to her, and although that had been so many years ago, you could bet that she still held the same kind of begrudging resentment for him that Sadie still harbored for Hux. Not everyone could forgive Kylo for the crimes he had committed and the ills he had caused, and at least that much you were able to understand. Kylo knew what he had done wrong, but he didn’t want their forgiveness; he just wanted a chance to live.

               “You already killed Snoke once, and somehow he came back,” Ematt continues. “Should Snoke ever return, would Kylo Ren fight alongside you, given that sentiment?”

               “Undoubtedly, Colonel,” Rey replies without missing a beat. “Whatever I think of Ren himself, I would be honored by his assistance in the battles to come. A wise woman once told me that in the end, there was only one fight that mattered, and that was the fight against the dark side of the Force. She may have lost her life in one of those battles, but it only makes her words stronger, that putting all of our differences aside to fight the darkness should be our ultimate goal. Having experienced what the core of the dark side feels like, Kylo Ren no longer follows that path, and thus he is no longer my enemy. My enemy is still _out_ there, watching, waiting, amassing the strength to return as we speak.”

               “Thank you, Master Rey, that will be all,” Ematt concludes. “Defense has nothing more for the witness.”

               “Prosecution?” the senator asks as he turns to them.

               “Nothing for the witness, your honor,” the Grand Admiral replies curtly.

               “You are excused, Master Rey,” the senator says as Rey’s platform floats back down and she exits through the door without looking back.

               “The defense calls the last of its reserve witnesses, Admiral Gial Ackbar.”

               There is low level applause in the chamber, which the Master-at-Arms quickly quiets. Ackbar quickly emerges from the witness area, and the Master-at-Arms administers the oath that you had almost come to memorize from hearing it so often throughout the trial.

               “By the Force, do you swear to give full and complete testimony, and to submit to the tribunal with no evasion or omission?”

               “I do so swear, Marshal,” Ackbar replies, and he quickly bows his head.

               “Proceed, Admiral.”

               Ackbar floats up to the center of the chamber, and the senator repeats the same phrase for what seems like the last time. “State your name, rank, and organization for the record.”

               “Gial Ackbar, Grand Admiral of the New Republic Command, retired, and current Commander of Resistance Fleet Operations,” he replies, and you turn to look at Finn as he pokes you in the ribs.

               “That technically makes him Poe’s boss, directly,” Finn whispers, and you can’t help but smirk at this as you turn back to the holo.

               “Defense, you may proceed,” the senator says, but it seems that Ematt has other plans in mind.

               “Your honor, at this time, we defer our precedence and yield the chamber to the prosecution,” Ematt says confidently, and Thorm and Deso could not have looked more unprepared if they tried. Regardless, they recover quickly as their platform rises to meet Ackbar.

               “Admiral, how would you describe the military proficiency of Kylo Ren?” Thorm asks.

               “Kylo Ren is a brutually effective ground assault commander, able fighter pilot, and terrible fleet strategist,” Ackbar tells them matter-of-factly, and you can’t help but giggle at that last bit. You think you can feel a faint irk of irritation coming from Kylo, but you’re not whether you felt it through the Force because it was actually there, or because you only suspected he would be feeling it as well.

               “Mhm,” Thorm says as he nods his head forward, as if this wasn’t the sort of answer he had been expecting. “Terrible fleet strategist, you say? What would be one such example of said lack of strategic prowess?”

               “During the first operation we launched to capture him, we noted that his method of fleet defense support was sorely inadequate, depending on a single Piett pincer pack formation which a pair of Gyranian mass cores quickly neutralized. It left his flagship effectively unsupported, save for the onboard fighter crews.”

                “I was there for that, right?” you ask as you turn to Finn. “He’s talking about when I went to capture him, right?”

               “I believe so,” Finn says with a firm nod of your head, and you can’t help but tilt your head to the side in confusion as you stare at holo.

               “But what about the Gyranian mass core?” you press. “What is that? I don’t remember him saying anything about that.”

               “A Gyranian mass core?” Finn repeats, and you nod. “Oh, that’s the surprise they mentioned during your briefing. It’s a device powered from dark matter which creates artificial gravitational gradients when subjected to the Cronau slip fields generated by a charging hyperdrive. Have you ever tried running with weighted boots?”

               “I can’t say that I have,” you offer as you shake your head from side to side, but Finn continues regardless.

               “Phasma used to make us train in them for practice on high-gravity worlds,” he explains quickly. “Basically, it’s just like that. It gets heavier and heavier as the hyperspace charges, until the ship jumps, and, well, shatters itself under the force of a mass-energy conversion violation, kind of like turbo-boosting a speeder bike straight into a duracrete wall. Boom.” He makes an explosion gesture with both hands, and you can’t help but stare at him as you try to piece together just how in the galaxy that was possible.

               “How-?” you ask as you shake your head from side to side, and Finn just cracks a grin.

               “Rey,” he says simply by way of explanation as he turns back to the holo, and you do the same.

               “Are there any other such occasions relevant to the pursuit of the tribunal?” Thorm presses, but Ackbar just shakes his head.

               “No, Admiral, as that was the first and last fleet engagement which occurred completely under his command,” Ackbar explains.

               “I see,” Thorm says. “A wise choice on General Hux’s part. One of few, although there seems to be one battle you must have missed. What was your analysis of the aftermath of Naboo?”

               “I hate him so much,” you say as you glare at the holo, and from beside you, Finn nods in steadfast agreement.

               “Prosecution, you have been warned about the introduction of material subject to conflict of interest,” the senator warns as Deso silently drops his gaze. “Proceed with discretion.”

               “Yes, your honor,” Thorm says before he turns back to Ackbar. “Admiral, in the operation above Naboo, hundreds of thousands of Republic citizens died when the _Maxima_ ruptured _General Calrissian’s_ port reactor and sent it tumbling to the planet below, taking all hands and three small cities with it.”

               “Wait, _what_?” you demand, but Thorm keeps talking.

               “The blood of those hundreds of thousands of people demands that justice be carried out, yet here we are discussing the notion of letting him go simply because he _might_ have information that will be beneficial to us. How can sparring the life of a _terrible strategist_ , as you so phrased it, be worth ignoring the blood of millions? Does Kylo Ren have any value as a military asset?”

               “In my professional opinion, yes, Admiral, he does,” Ackbar replies, but Thorm doesn’t seem to want to hear it.

               “Then you have deluded yourself, as only a few moments ago, you said that Kylo Ren was a terrible strategist and was therefore worthless to the Republic. That will be all I have to say, your honor.”

               “But, but-“ you sputter, and for a moment you can’t quite collect your nerves, between Ackbar’s admission that Kylo’s less than stellar strategy planning could mean that his life had nothing to offer them, combined with what had happened on Naboo. You had assumed there would have been _some_ casualties when you were trying to escape the planet, but you assumed those to be mostly from the Republic fleet squadrons that the First Order TIE Fighters had managed to overwhelm. You had no idea that the civilian death toll had been anywhere near that high.

               “Don’t worry,” Finn says as he squeezes your arm reassuringly. “They’ve got this.”

               You’re not sure why Finn sounds so confident, but there’s not much you can do but sit and wait it out as you watch the senator turn to Wedge and Ematt. “Defense?”

               Ematt gestures with one hand, and Wedge, as you had almost anticipated, takes the lead on this. “Admiral, concerning Naboo, what really happened?” he asks. “What is your analysis?”

               “To the best of our knowledge, Kylo Ren never again assumed command of another battle group after the events of the _Resolute_ ,” Ackbar explains. “But he did organize their movements in accordance with the strategic doctrine of General Hux. At Naboo, then-Captain Deso mustered all hands and left the Third Fleet shipyards with underequipped ships that were not yet combat-worthy. As a result of the lessons learned from the destruction of the _Resolute_ , a hybrid Verpine flanking crush was used, just a simple modification of the Piett pincer. That same maneuver that failed him aboard the _Resolute_ was brutally effective in enabling Ren’s fleet to wipe the Third Fleet off the galactic map, a tactical irregularity which would not have occurred if the Republic Fleet had valued strategic restraint over hasty opportunism. In similar fashion to Kylo Ren, the Grand Admiral removed Captain Deso from command after the debacle of Naboo, but by some good fortune on his part, Admiral Deso remains a figure in New Republic Command.”

               “Ha,” you shout triumphantly at the screen, and you and Finn can’t help but trade a high five.

               “And what of the hundreds of thousands killed by the impact of the _General Calrissian_?” Wedge prompts.

               “In his bid to destroy a supposedly _worthless_ military commander, Captain Deso stationed the _General Calrissian_ too close to the planet in hopes of also getting a shot at a prohibited civilian target. According to the recovered bridge mission logs and the accounts of the surviving helmsmen and fire controllers, Kylo Ren and his wife were secondary targets, with his son being the primary target. Positioning the destroyer that close to the planet ensured that should it be disabled, its orbit would decay due to the atmospheric resistance and it would fall to the planet below, its impact inevitably worsened by the Captain’s incompetent attempts at damage control.”

               Wedge looks up to the Senator. “On that note, Admiral, the defense presents Exhibit Forty-Seven, the recently declassified footage of the Battle of Naboo, recovered from the remains of the _General Solo._ ”

               The holodroid approaches the center of the room and displays the same battle you remember narrowly escaping from, but from the perspective of the _General Solo_ , positioned high above you. From this angle, the colorful streams of cannon fire you remembered seeing above were only angry streaks of red flying directly towards the camera’s viewfinder before being stopped just in time by deflector shields. In the corner of the projection, you can see the unmistakable tumbling fiery silhouette of the _General Calrissian_ plunging towards Naboo’s surface, small trails of escape pods shooting outwards in all directions, when the turbolasers nearest the camera turn towards the falling ship and begin firing. After a few moments, you see a wave of rockets hit the ship, and it suddenly breaks into dozens of fragments that spread apart as they fall through the planet’s atmosphere. You want to see more, but the feed suddenly corrupts with a bright red tint and cuts out.

               The tension in the room has definitely increased as the entire galaxy witnesses this revelation for themselves, and the holo briefly cuts over to Deso, who is uncomfortably adjusting his sleeves, before it cuts back to the satisfied forms of Wedge and Ackbar.

               “An analysis of the original trajectory of the _General Calrissian_ shows that the ship would have crashed on the Adon Plains with minimal casulaties. Instead, Captain Deso’s panicked attempt at damage control intensified the collateral damage a thousandfold and led to the immediate loss of the _General Solo_ as well. During the Battle of Naboo, post-combat assessment shows that the First Order debris contributed to less than two percent of the collateral damage on Naboo, mostly due to the debris of the destroyed TIE fighters; however, not a single fragment of the wreckage of the cruiser _Vengeant_ has fallen out of orbit. Admiral Antilles, Naboo’s dead do not have the successful reformed tactics of Kylo Ren to blame, as I have witnessed his deliberate actions to avoid collateral damage these past several years. They have the arrogance and impetuousness of a certain Republic Admiral to hold accountable, but it seems that is no longer my place to decide. The real justice for the victims of Naboo would be to spare Kylo Ren and allow him to aid in healing the galaxy and avert further conflict before more incidents on the scale of Operation Cinder, Yaga Minor, Nal Hutta and Hosnian happen in this terrible war.”

               “If Kylo Ren is really such a mediocre fleet strategist, as certain Republic admirals seem likely to believe, then why would he be a valuable strategic asset?” Wedge asks, clearly making a substantial effort to conceal the gloat in his voice.

               “Because his uses are not in fleet strategy, they are in ground combat and inspirational leadership,” Ackbar explains. “While the tides of war may be turned by the raw power of capital fleets, wars cannot be won by firepower alone, as the Death Stars demonstrated, they are won by persuasion and ground presence. To achieve victory by any other means is worthless. To that point, one of my most trusted advisors is a former First Order Storm Trooper, one of the first to arrive from the mass exodus of Storm Troopers after the destruction of the Starkiller Base. It was not the violence of war that turned him, no, it was the sheer force of then-Commander Dameron’s personality and fidelity to the cause that won him over. Today, he flies interception for Red Squadron. Similarly, if victory over the First Order is to be ultimately achieved, the splintered factions of the massive First Order Army must be persuaded to abandon their efforts in favor of healing the galaxy, and the only person I know to be capable of such a thing is Kylo Ren. The men who were willing to follow him into the throat of hell will also gladly follow him back out.”

               You can’t help but smirk as you settle back down. Wedge and Ematt had clearly saved the best for last, as Ackbar’s testimony had not only called to mind the atrocities that the New Republic itself had committed, while still championing the fact that Kylo Ren was the galaxy’s best hope to heal. For many people across the galaxy, Ackbar could have loosely been considered the last remaining face of the New Republic since everyone else had passed away on Hosnian Prime, and you had no doubt that more people would be swayed by his appeal to save Kylo Ren’s life, perhaps even the presiding senator and his panel of judges. You couldn’t say for sure, of course, but you could dare to hope.

               “Does the prosecution wish to continue the examination?” the senator asks, and you can’t help but let your grin widen as you see Thorm and Deso looking visibly uncomfortable. You could only hope that Deso would face a much stricter reprimand than a promotion since his misdeeds had been so publicly called to light, but considering the level of corruption that existed in the New Republic, you couldn’t hope for much. You were almost a bit disappointed to know that if Kylo lived, he would be fighting to help _defend_ the New Republic and its corrupt and fraudulent image, but there was nothing you could do about that now. You weren’t a politician, had no desire to be, and you were beginning to believe that there was no way to end this seemingly endless cycle of war and confrontation. Even still, there was absolutely nothing you, yourself, could do to fix an obviously corrupt, collapsing government, and so you just settled back in to watch the holo and hope for the best for Kylo.

               “No, your honor,” Thorm says quietly. “The prosecution has no more examination for the reserve witnesses.”

               “Very well,” the senator replies. “As of twenty-two hours and thirteen minutes, testimony and cross-examination of the reserve witnesses was secured by both parties of the tribunal. Marshal, relieve the witness pool.”

               The Master-at-Arms disappears through the door, then returns about thirty seconds later. “The witness pool has been released, your honor.”

               “Noted,” he replies. “At this time, the bench calls on Master Skywalker to give pertinent testimony, with limited examination by the bench.”

               A door opens, and Luke comes back out wearing his same somber expression. He steps onto the large witness platform, which rises to the center of the chamber. “Master Skywalker, I remind you that you are still under oath,” the senator begins. “Kylo Ren was your former pupil, so you are more knowledgeable about his capabilities and ties than anyone here. What bearing does the survival of Kylo Ren have on the galaxy at large?”

               Luke seems to pause for a moment before he speaks. “Your honor, to answer that question, I must first focus on the issue of Supreme Leader Snoke. Years ago, I and a few others thought we had destroyed him and rid the galaxy of his terror for good. He used exceptional powers of persuasion and control to gather the remnants of the Empire and form them into a coordinated force capable of responding to all the setbacks both the Republic and the Resistance dealt to them. We put a stop to it that fateful day deep in the Unknown Regions, but it appears that all we did was postpone his machinations. Chief among those manipulations were Ben Solo, his family, and most recently, my protégé, Rey. I myself might have fallen if I hadn’t already had the dubious pleasure of facing the Emperor himself aboard the second Death Star.”

               Luke shifts a bit, seemingly recalling the memory, before he continues. “Concerning the matter of Kylo Ren, the manipulations of Snoke do not excuse his crimes; they only serve to highlight the danger that Snoke poses to the galaxy as a whole. Given the extensive scarring he bore in our encounter, he had been struck down before, and recovered to create the First Order. I destroyed him, and he returned to assume command of the First Order in the guise of General Hux. He was destroyed aboard the _Propitiate_ at a ghastly price for those who faced him, but he is not gone. No one person can ever wield the power necessary to truly destroy one who possesses the power to bodily return from the Netherworld of the Force, and there’s no way to predict where in the galaxy he will choose to make his return. Until that time, all we can do is dismantle the First Order and prepare for his return.”

               Luke pulls a holodisk from his belt and beckons to a projector droid. As it gets closer, he loads the disk into the droid and sends it back to the center of the room. Once it arrives, it projects something which looks like a sphere made up of rings within rings, all rotating against each other in a mesmerizing display.

               “During my sojourns these past few years, my studies on Ahch-To led me to the remains of this ancient Sith weapon, known as the Reaper, buried deep inside the wasteyards of Raxus Prime. With it, the ancient Sith Empire devastated their many enemies throughout the galaxy and plunged the Force into darkness for a millennium. I have since seen to it that the mechanisms were destroyed, as such a weapon could not be permitted to endure, but in studying it I learned of a ritual capable of forever extinguishing an individual consciousness within the realms of the Force, much like one would extinguish a candle after the dark of night has passed. Such a ritual has never before been tried, and would require the combined efforts of all known Force-wielders throughout the galaxy, perhaps requiring the training of others in anticipation of his return. Beyond that, the galaxy also stands at the edge of an unstoppable darkness.”

               Luke raises his hand and the disk flies from the droid back into his grasp, banishing the image of the rings. “For the first time in over a thousand years, the Living Force has roused from dormancy, and unlike the Unifying Force which the Old Masters knew and contemplated, the Living Force is not self-stabilizing, instead trending towards the state with the most momentum, especially the Dark Side. The process began many decades ago with the fall of my father, Anakin Skywalker, after the loss of his mother and his transformation into Darth Vader. The subsequent Jedi Purge accelerated the tipping of the balance toward the dark side and gave certain figures such an Emperor Palpatine and Supreme Leader Snoke immense power beyond their natural abilities. I and the others who have faced Snoke before have managed to counter the progression of the Dark Side, but I have foreseen that the death of Kylo Ren carries the greatest potential to irreversibly plunge the galaxy into a darkness from which we may never recover.”

                Luke turns and points somewhere above, and the holo’s frame shifts to show Ani, seated between Asher and Sadie in the chamber’s gallery. Your maternal instincts can’t help but kick in, and your forehead creases as you lean forward. “Why are they doing that?” you ask. “Why’s he doing that? Why’s he showing Ani?”

               “There sits Kylo Ren’s son, the one person in the galaxy who truly has the potential to forever banish Snoke’s evil from the galaxy,” Luke continues. “Executing Kylo Ren precludes this potential, and I do not know if another can be found before it is too late. The ritual to extinguish consciousness requires one pure and uncorrupted by the violence inspired by fear, anger, and hate, the core strengths of the Dark Side. Anakin Skywalker once bore the same potential, but it was extinguished the day his mother died in his arms on Tatooine. Similarly, executing Kylo Ren carries the guarantee of tainting all who care for him, the balance of the galaxy’s most powerful Force-wielders, marring them with fear, anger, and hate. This push onto the dark path, once initiated, cannot be reversed, and the resulting ripples will accelerate the corruption of the Force galaxy-wide and hasten the return of Snoke, who we will be powerless to stop once more without Kylo Ren and his son holding back the darkness.”

               There is an almost eerie silence in the chamber as Luke stops speaking, and the senator finally breaks it. “Thank you for your testimony, Master Skywalker. Did you have anything else to add to the record?”

               “I have nothing else to add, your honor,” Luke confirms.

               “Master Skywalker, you are dismissed,” the senator replies, and Luke floats down to the dock and exits promptly through the doors without another look back.

               “Damn,” you reply as you turn to Finn.

               “That was convincing,” Finn agrees. “A lot of people don’t know how the Force works, but they know Luke, they trust him. If he says that keeping Kylo Ren alive is the only thing it’ll take to stop the galaxy from plunging into certain chaos, they’ll trust his word on that.”

               “Let’s hope,” you murmur as you turn back to the holo to see the senator announcing the next person to speak.

               “At this time, the bench calls upon Captain Poe Dameron to give testimony concerning the strategic posture of the First Order and the applicable utility of Kylo Ren.”

               You’re not sure who’s cheering louder, you or Finn, but the enthusiasm in the room has gotten so infectious that you’re almost certain that Kylo can feel it all the way on Corellia. If the circumstances were any different, you would have tried to suppress your excitement, but as it were, Poe’s testimony on top of Luke’s could only cement the fact that Kylo Ren was a good for the galaxy, and his life had to be spared in order to prevent the galaxy from falling to certain doom. Poe could do it, you knew he could, you just had to have as much confidence in him as he always had in you.

               “He’s got this,” Finn says as he claps your shoulder so hard it’s almost but just not painful. “My buddy’s got this.”

               “Hell yeah he does,” you agree as you both hunker down in front of the holo, holding onto each other in a vain attempt to contain yourselves.

               The door opens and Poe solemnly steps through, stops in front of the Master-at-Arms, and raises his right hand. “Captain Dameron, by the Force, do you swear to give full and complete testimony, and to submit to the tribunal with no evasion or omission?”

               “I do so swear, Marshal,” Poe replies, his voice ringing strong and clear with determination in a way that was uniquely his own.

               “Proceed, Captain,” the senator replies, and Poe boards the platform that Luke just vacated as it floats to the center of the chamber. The holo zooms in on him as he rises, and you can see that his dress uniform has changed since you last saw it on that horrible night when you were forced to duel Rey for the amusement of the Republic. This design is much simpler, yet striking, a simple black tunic with gold piping. As the holo gets closer, you can see that his old command patch of three starbirds has since been replaced, changed to reflect the growth of the Starfighter Corps since that night. Now, there is a single black starbird inset with a golden star, surrounded by a ring of alternating gold stars and starbirds of assorted colors and patterns.

               “State your name, rank, and organization for the record please, Captain.”

               “Poe Dameron, Captain, Resistance Strike Command and Starfighter Corps, commanding.”

               “Thank you, Captain,” the senator replies. “Concerning the accused, Kylo Ren, has he cooperated beyond peaceful submission to the tribunal while in your custody?”

               “In our custody, Kylo Ren has not attempted to escape nor has he shown any resistance to his captivity, although a great deal of his docility can be attributed to extended period of convalescence after his revival. While in our captivity, he has provided limited intelligence on First Order locations and posture, merely sufficient to prevent needless loss of our forces. He has not, however, provided the vast scope of strategic knowledge at his disposal, as he had indicated that leaving this tribunal alive was a condition for revealing the remainder.”

               “Thank you, Captain, that answers our question satisfactorily,” the senator says, nodding his head forward a few times, and suddenly you get the sinking feeling that he was just about finished. “Do you have any personal testimony to add?”

               “Yes, your honor,” Poe replies, and you grab Finn’s arm tighter than ever. “With Kylo Ren safely in captivity, we simply cannot afford to execute him now. Captain Phasma is missing, with absolutely no intelligence concerning her whereabouts, General Hux is dead, consumed by Snoke, and the officers of the First Order Central Command were all killed when the Flare overloaded and destroyed the _Propitiate_. With the loss of all of those key First Order personnel, Kylo Ren is the single greatest source of enemy intelligence that we will _ever_ get. Troop numbers, standard tactics, covert tactics, specific conditioning of Storm Troopers, casualty procedures, contingency operations, they’re all there in his head, and he’s the only one who can provide us with that information.”

               While what Poe was saying might have sounded impressive to the average citizen, you could tell that it wasn’t going to impress anyone of rank. The things that Poe was listing were common to all military operations, and Kylo wasn’t the only source of such information, especially with you sitting right there on D’Qar, although the Republic had no way of knowing that. You didn’t know everything, but you remembered quite a bit, and the rest of the records could be painstakingly salvaged from the wreckage of First Order ships and bases throughout the galaxy. In the back of your mind, you almost wondered if that was why your own tribunal had been privately managed back on D’Qar, in order to prevent the New Republic from getting too involved with you as well, possibly declaring for both your and Kylo’s joint execution. You were starting to think that Poe’s determination to protect Kylo was two-fold, as if the Republic decided that Kylo should be put to death after all, the Resistance would undoubtedly come after you next, and you didn’t know what they would do to get the information they wanted out of you. You’d cooperate with them to the best of your knowledge, especially with Ani’s uncertain future with the Resistance in the balance, but you didn’t know what they would do when your limited knowledge was no longer enough and they wanted more than you could possibly provide.

               At any rate, those were questions that you could dwell upon _later_. The presiding Senator seemed interested in what Poe has to say, but you can see he is losing the other judges, who gave the impression that they preferred justice over victory by their hardened expressions and apparently mounting boredom. For a moment, a kind of fear begins to grip you, the fear that as Poe continued listing all the things which would become available after Kylo was returned to Resistance custody, you were watching Poe surely condemn him to die. Fortunately, Poe stops, seemingly sensing that he’s losing the majority of the judges as he takes stock of the situation. He turns and looks around the chamber, as if he’s suddenly addressing _everyone_ in the chamber, and not just the panel of judges before him. As he turns, for just a second he looks straight into the holocam carrying the feed you were watching, and for a moment it looks as though he’s looking directly at you through the holo, just like he had been when you had spoken to him just before the trial. After a moment, he takes a breath and spreads his hands, clearly showing he intends to address the entire galaxy, not just the small chamber tucked away deep in the Corellian capital.

               “He’s going to do the thing,” Finn whispers in hushed excitement, and you both grab onto each other to help contain your nervous apprehension and your cautious optimism that Poe was going to do what he did best. _Speak._

               “In this terrible war, Kylo Ren and I sat on opposite sides, enemy commanders controlling the movement of troops, ships and equipment, working to advance opposing ideologies in the struggle for galactic supremacy, often personally meeting in combat as a result. Twice have I been his prisoner, twice has he been mine. Regardless of our enmity, he saved my life on two distinct occasions. The first instance was during his daring escape from D’Qar several years ago, and the second when I stood face-to-face with the resurrected Supreme Leader Snoke, seconds away from my own execution.”

               He pauses for intentional effect, then points towards the main doors of the chamber as he continues.

               “Here, within the comfort and safety of Corellia’s ample fleet defenses and unassailable strategic position of the Five Worlds, it may not look like it, but out there, in the rest of the galaxy, thousands die by the minute in the chaos sown by the destruction of the First Order Central Command. With every minute we stand here debating whether or not to execute Kylo Ren, millions of leaderless Storm Troopers gather under the scattered banners of ambitious, unrestrained junior officers, so I cannot stand idly by and watch the New Republic consume itself in the insanity of revenge. To execute Kylo Ren now, in the galaxy’s most desperate hour of need, isn’t justice, it’s madness to its highest degree. Honorable judges, you have heard the testimony, you have seen the exhibits, and the same truth runs through it all: Kylo Ren’s execution will bring the galaxy nothing but ruin.”

               Poe stops briefly for a breath, then brings up his hand to point a finger in Kylo’s direction before he continues.

               “Standing there, under guard and branded as a traitor, is not an evil man. No, I’ve seen the face of true evil, and its name is Snoke. And Kylo Ren died defending me from it, cruelly cut down by his own lightsaber. Because of his sacrifice, the _Propitiate_ was destroyed and the galaxy gained a temporary reprieve from the machinations of Snoke and the terror of the Flare, so to execute him now is to spit on that sacrifice and all it represents. I owe him my life, and the galaxy shares in that debt. _Repay_ that debt.”

               Without waiting for any sort of approval from the senator, Poe promptly descends to the dock and makes his way to the door, where he stops to look back at the judges. The holo cuts back to the judges, who seem to have been caught unaware by Poe’s dramatic exit and are debating something likely procedural amongst themselves. You had no idea if there was any precedent for someone leaving their platform without being formally told to do so, but the senator finally silences them all as he gets to his feet. “Captain Dameron, you are dismissed,” he says firmly, and with that Poe steps through the door without a word, quickly shutting it behind him.

               That was now the second time that you had seen Poe Dameron angry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are getting so, so close to the end of this trial and learning Kylo's fate. Will the closing remarks of the defense, and Kylo himself, be enough to spare him from execution? Or will he lose his life and get to see Reader again in the After? I guess you'll have to wait until Tuesday to find out! Until then, cheers!!
> 
> (And again, you guys are so, so incredible, thank you so much for all your support and your really beautiful, thoughtful comments. You guys rock, much love, bigs hugs. <3333)


	68. Chapter 68

               “Damn,” Finn whispers from beside you, but you find yourself unable to speak. It feels as though the air has been sucked right out of your lungs, and you’re not the only one. All of the attention in the chamber turns back to the senator, who is still standing there, seemingly still recovering from the shock of Poe’s effective theatrics.

               “The bench declares the body of the proceedings at a close,” the senator says at length. “In accordance with Article Forty-Seven, the representative parties are now invited to submit their final arguments. Prosecution?”

               To his credit, Deso seems to hold his tongue for once, as he defers the floor to Thorm. Their platform moves to the center of the chamber, where the Grand Admiral pauses for a few seconds as he collects his thoughts.

               “Honorable judges, these past two days, we have sifted through hundreds of exhibits and heard dozens of hours of testimony, both impassioned and practical. Through it all, not a single virtuous moment can ever repay the billions of lives destroyed by the First Order, helped eagerly along by Kylo Ren. Hosnian. Mygeeto. Muunilinst. Nal Hutta. Bricera. All utterly destroyed. Han Solo? Cut down in cold blood by Kylo Ren. Lando Calrissian? Executed in captivity by Kylo Ren. The list goes on and on. Despite the passionate pleas of those he seems to have selfishly swayed over to his cause, Kylo Ren has nothing to offer the galaxy but further misery wherever he shows his face. If we spare him now, the galaxy will one day rue the moment we had him in our grasp, only to let him go. For his crimes, justice demands that the traitorous Kylo Ren must die.”

               The Grand Admiral sits down, and their platform returns to its dock. There’s silence for a moment, as if the galaxy is collectively holding its breath, but it appears that the prosecution has nothing more to add. “Defense,” the senator says as he turns to Wedge and Ematt. “You may now give your final argument.”

               Wedge and Ematt’s platform comes forward, and the two men exchange a look before Wedge sits down, and it’s suddenly more than clear that Wedge had come along simply as a matter of procedural compliance, and they wanted everyone to know it. Colonel Caluan Ematt was the _real_ defender, and now it was down to him and Kylo to avert his death sentence.

               “Honorable judges, the man standing before you may be a confirmed traitor, but I must remind the tribunal that while under Article Fourteen of the New Republic Articles of Galactic Constituency, treason as defined is punishable by death. Kylo Ren has already atoned for that crime in accordance with the law. As Exhibit One for the defense showed, after the events aboard the _Propitiate_ , Kylo Ren died in our custody and remained so for seventeen minutes in every legal sense, the death report signed and witnessed by medical representatives of both the Resistance and the New Republic. How he was revived, we still don’t understand, but under Article Fifteen of the Articles, no person shall be held to answer for an expiated crime, no matter how heinous, and the decision of the tribunal must reflect this reality. We do not ask for leniency, no, we ask that his sentence be harsh and difficult, commensurate with the magnitude of his multiple crimes. The death of Kylo Ren will not heal the galaxy. It will give it fifteen minutes of excitement which will be quickly forgotten in the despair to come after losing city after city, system after system, to the unpredictable violence of the leaderless First Order. Alive, Kylo Ren can pay for his crimes, one by one, day in and day out, healing the galaxy as he expiates his transgressions and neutralizes the remains of the First Order. Kylo Ren must live, but he must also suffer for his crimes as he works to rebuild that which he has destroyed. That will give the galaxy not only justice, but the closure it so desperately needs to heal.”

               As Ematt sits down and the platform retreats, the holo cuts back to the panel of judges, whose expressions reveal nothing, and it’s all you can do but wait nervously as the holo cuts to Kylo and the six guards sharing his platform. He seems deep in thought, working on something on the datapad in front of him. This was the first time since the beginning of the trial that the holo had focused this closely on Kylo, and you were at least relieved to see that it looked like he was furiously working on his own defense and not morosely awaiting his inevitable death sentence. The holo cuts back to the senator, who silences the judges around him as he stands.

               “Kylo Ren, the bench now calls upon you to review final testimony and submit your final statement,” the senator says, and you can hear a grunt erupt from the back of Finn’s throat as you squeeze his arm tightly in both hands.

               Kylo pauses for a moment, as if trying to deliberate the right words to say, before he finally speaks. “It seems the will of the Force that I should yet live, and as such, I will devote my remaining days to restoring peace to the galaxy under New Republic rule.”

               It sounds too forced, and you harshly push Finn away from you as you cross your arms over your chest. “What idiot fed him that line?” you demand as you sulk. “Ematt, probably.”

               “Probably,” Finn agrees as he massages his sore arm. “But then again, did you really want him saying anything else?”

               “Not that,” you say as you take a moment to collect your thoughts. “It sounds too unlike him. It’s, I don’t know, unnerving.” To be honest, a small part of you wanted Kylo to go down fighting. If the New Republic truly was going to execute him, you didn’t want his last address to be so docile and submissive. Maybe that’s what Ematt was secretly hoping to achieve, making Kylo seem broken and compliant so that they could use him in any way they wanted, but you knew that Kylo was stronger than that. Kylo would never, could never, be broken, and the notion of anyone viewing him as anything other than such pulled at your heart strings as you thought about how embarrassed Kylo must have been to utter those words in front of the entire galaxy, in front of friend and foe alike.

               The senator himself seems perfectly neutral and unbiased, and, to his credit, does not give any reaction to Kylo’s statement one way or the other. “Your testimony has been noted and entered into the record. Do you have anything else you wish to add?” Kylo’s demeanor changes slightly as he simply stands there, lifting his chin to make it seem as if this whole thing was beneath him, and you can’t help but let a smirk pull to the corners of your lips to see him there, standing strong and resilient in what could very well be his final battle. He would say what they wanted him to say, he would say what he knew the judges wanted to hear, but beyond that, he was not going to beg for his life or ask for forgiveness that he neither wanted nor earned. Not only was it too out of character for Kylo, it wasn’t quite something you believed the judges wanted to hear anyway. “Hearing no amendments, the bench declares the tribunal in recess for deliberation. Master-at-Arms, secure the chamber.”

               The feed immediately cuts back to Dran Holl, but Finn just gets up and mutes it before he can begin his tirade against the Resistance. “I have some things that I should probably take care of,” he says with a sigh. “Pete’s wired to notify me the second the consensus notice goes out, so I’ll come right back and watch it with you, no matter what happens next.” He pauses for a moment as he looks you over. “You going to be okay while I’m gone?”

               “Of course I am,” you reply evenly. “I mean, as Ematt said, Kylo technically _died_ and so he’s already paid for his crimes, and since you can’t punish someone for the same crime twice, they literally can’t execute him; he walks on a technicality. They’ve got no choice but to let him live.”

               “Yeah,” Finn says slowly, and you can’t help but notice him wincing slightly. “I know that, but the Republic makes the rules, and they can just as easily rewrite them if that’s what they want to happen.”

               “I don’t know,” you say dismissively as you wave Finn away. You could see why Finn wanted to warn you against being too optimistic, but you honestly weren’t trying to be. You were trying to stay positive not only for Kylo’s sake, but for Ani’s as well. The more you believed that Kylo Ren would come home to you unscathed, the greater the chance that it could truly happen. When Ani was a child, you had often told him that he had to just ask the Force for what he wanted to happen, and the Force would see it done. If that was still as true as it was then, you just had to believe, deep down, that Kylo would walk and the Force would carry your wish through to fruition. It had to. “Go, don’t worry, I’m going to be fine, okay?”

               Finn just nods his head as he steps out, and you can’t help but roll over onto your back as you close your eyes and press your fingertips into your temples, trying to reach Kylo with your mind. You wait, trying to keep yourself focused and relaxed, but eventually your mind slips away from you and you don’t even realize that you’ve drifted off to sleep on your back with your knees bent upright in front of you, as if you had merely collapsed. It’s hardly the most comfortable of positions, but as you drift off to sleep, you can hardly say that you’re aware of it. In fact, you’re hardly aware of anything as the world around you slowly fades to blackness.

_“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?”_

               You blink a few times as you open your eyes to see that you’re sitting on a balcony way up in the air with your feet swung over the rails. Anakin is sitting beside you, his long hair swept back out of his face by Naboo’s gentle breeze and he’s gazing at you with a much softer, gentler expression than he had when he usually visited you in the pitch blackness of your mind. Beneath you, you can see a river flowing directly beneath your feet, slowly being pushed along by a gentle current that flows into the rolling green hills and mountains in the distance.

               “Do you know where we are?” he continues, and you bite your lip as you glance around you, trying to place why this planet felt so familiar to you when you could be almost sure that you had never seen a place this beautiful before. The only place that even came close to matching this sort of natural splendor was-

               “Are we on Naboo?” you ask suddenly as you turn back to Anakin, and the corner of his lip quirks back into a smile as he laughs quietly to himself. “Why are we here?”

               “Happier times,” Anakin replies, glancing around him before he looks down at you. “For both of us.”

               “I can agree with that,” you say, and you both just sit there for a moment as you glance around the greenery and the fresh air that surrounded you, just taking in Naboo’s natural aesthetic. “You know, we’re a lot alike,” you say after a moment, and Anakin almost looks surprised as he raises both eyebrows and looks down at you, waiting for you to continue. “Well,” you say, shifting your gaze back towards watching the river flow. “For one, we both know what it’s like to be a slave, although if I remember correctly, you at least got out of it when you were still a young child. We both never want to step foot back on Tatooine after the awful memories we had there, and I’m pretty sure we both hate sand.” Anakin chuckles lightly at this as you continue. “We both lost ourselves to the dark side while trying to protect the people we loved, trying to protect our families, and almost ended up losing them in the process. Or…did lose them.” You had never met Padmé, but you suddenly can’t help but think about the way that the Resistance and the Republic had declared Kylo legally dead. For a while, he was gone, really and truly gone, and if not by some miracle of the Force, you might have lost him forever. “But it was the love we had for our families that held us back from the edge, that pulled us back from being consumed forever, and we died sacrificing ourselves to the evil of the dark side to find the strength to protect both of our sons. The only difference between us is that I was allowed to come back for some reason.”

               Anakin sits in silence for a moment as he fidgets with himself, suddenly reflective. “We are a lot alike,” he admits as he gazes off into the distance, his eyes gazing over Naboo’s hilly landscape. “That is how I knew you would fall. No matter what paths you took, you were always in danger of losing yourself to the dark side. Some things are just set in the Force, and this was one of them.”

               “I remember,” you murmur under your breath. “I remember when Ani was just a child, you warned him that he had to be wary of me. That I would lose myself to the dark side of the Force and I wouldn’t be able to protect him.” You pause for a moment as you think it over. “But that was so, so many years ago, Ani was just a child at the time. Why warn him then?”

               “So he wouldn’t forget,” Anakin tells you, and your expression sours as you glance away. “It seems cruel, I know, to put so much distrust in a child so young, especially in regard to his mother, but it helped him learn to be cautious. It taught him to be afraid of his own dark instincts as well, and as a result he never succumbed to the darkness within himself.” You pause as you sit in moody silence, not sure how to respond to that. You were glad that Ani was able to have enough foresight as a child to try to prevent himself from following down the same path that had led you and Kylo to so much destruction, but at the same time, you almost felt that it made Ani have this sense of responsibility on his shoulders that he could never quite shake, and in doing so, he never got to be a child in the way that he should have. You had never gotten to be much of a child either, which is why you wanted Ani’s upbringing to be different, and you thought that it had been, although now you couldn’t say anything with much certainty. You no longer trusted your thoughts regarding your past as you once did, and you weren’t sure if that was something that you were ever going to come back from.

               “It’s like stones,” Anakin says in a sing-song voice, and suddenly he turns over his closed left hand and spreads his fingers to reveal a few small, silver rocks that looked as though they had been polished smooth. One by one, he casually takes one into his right hand and then drops it into the water beneath him, watching as they disappear beneath the folds of Naboo’s gentle current. One at a time, the stones fall into the water with a small _plop_ before they sink down to the bottom, out of sight, where they probably disappeared into the myriad of other various stones that compromised Naboo’s riverbed, each one suddenly indistinguishable from the next.

               “Once you fall to the dark side, there’s no way to go back,” you agree, nodding your head slowly as you turn to him. “So if Ani never falls to the dark side, there’s nothing to fear. Kylo and I are the best examples of a cautionary tale that I can possibly think to give him. He’s seen the danger of the dark side firsthand, and I don’t think he’ll fall now.”

               “Those who know the consequences can still be tempted by its power,” Anakin tells you as he glances over at you. “There was once a boy named Ben Solo who knew the risks, but deemed himself strong enough to control them, deemed himself strong enough to resist the dark impulses within himself. He thought he was strong enough to wield both, unable to see past the manipulations that were slowly rotting him to his core.” He shakes his head. “But that was in another time. Ben Solo no longer exists, it seems, and Kylo Ren is all that’s left.”

               You don’t like something about the way he says this, and you can’t help but feel something unpleasant stir from somewhere deep within your chest. “Why do I feel as though there’s something you’re not telling me?” you ask. “Why bring me to Naboo? Why show me something that would remind me of a time when Kylo and I were happier, unless something bad was going to happen? Unless he was going to lose his life?”

               “Would it make you feel any better if I told you that I didn’t know?” Anakin asks, a look of sincerity crossing over his features as he looks down at you. “Some things are hidden, even from me.”

               “I don’t know,” you say lightly with a shrug of your shoulders. “Honestly, a part of me thinks that you know, and you just don’t want to say.”

               To his credit, Anakin laughs openly at this, and you can’t help but smile a little in response. “You remind me of my former padawan,” he says at length, and you can’t help but let your eyebrow quirk in confusion. You didn’t even know that Anakin had once had a padawan, but you couldn’t imagine how that must have played out after he had fallen to become Darth Vader, or where he or she was at now. “But those were times when I took things for granted. When I thought almost everything was within my control, and I thought of nothing but the war and my next assignment. I thought nothing of the future, only what danger the next day had in store for me.”

               “Yeah,” you say with a sigh. “Yeah, I think I kind of know what that’s like.”

               “Then I think you’ll understand,” Anakin says with a small nod of his head. “It’s not going to be easy, but I think in time you’ll begin to find a sense of balance within yourself again.” He looks down at you reassuringly as he gives his head a firm little nod, and it takes you a moment to realize that the gesture was so similar to Kylo’s that for a moment you forgot where you were and almost lost your grip on the railing. To his credit, Anakin doesn’t seem to notice, as you sense a small figure approaching you from behind.

               “Lost yourself you have,” the voice says, and it’s familiar in a way that you can’t quite describe. You’ve heard this voice before, but you honestly could not place where you had last heard it. “But lost you are not. A great challenge, healing is, for those who have walked so far along the dark path. Patience, you will need, if whole you are ever to become.”

               “Master-“ Anakin starts, but the voice again cuts him off. You want to turn around, but suddenly you feel as though you can’t move.

               “Clouded by the dark side, the future is,” the voice continues. “Alert you must be.”

               “Why?” you ask, when suddenly you can feel someone shaking your shoulder, but it’s the opposite side of the one Anakin’s on. Your brain is trying to piece things together, trying to make sense of what’s happening, and the next thing you know, you blink your sleepy eyes awake to see Finn standing above you, telling you to wake up, because a decision has finally been reached.

                “What?” you murmur as you turn back to the holo. You can see Dran Holl on the screen talking over a clip of one of the testimony’s given by a Republic officer, but thankfully the screen is muted and you don’t have to hear his hateful droning. You sit up as you stretch your neck from side to side, trying to shake yourself awake. You felt foggy, as if you had been asleep for way too long, and your muscles felt incredibly stiff as you tried to stretch your arms out on either side of you, shaking them awake. “How long was I out for?”

               “I don’t know,” Finn admits with a shrug. “I don’t know what time you decided to take a nap, but the judges have been deliberating for sixteen hours.”

               “Sixteen hours?” you exclaim as you force yourself upright into a seated position, fluffing your hair back behind you as all remnants of your dream fall away from you. “Seriously, what could they have been debating for sixteen hours?”

               “To be fair, I thought it was going to take them a lot longer,” Finn says with a sigh. “Look, before it starts, I hope he lives, okay? Not just for your sake, but if he can really help us, if he really means to, then that can help save a lot of our soldiers, a lot of our troops. I don’t know what it’ll be like to fight beside him, and I’m honestly hoping that I never have to find out, but I just wanted you to know that.”

               “Thanks,” you say quickly as you force a smile in his direction. “I still understand where you’re coming from, or at least, I’m trying to, anyway. If Kylo had never taken me off D’Qar, I don’t know how I would have felt if he was in this same position years ago. A part of me would have thought it would have been easier for him to pass away, but too much has happened since then, and now I just, I don’t know, I can’t think about losing him, not when I’ve lost him too many times already.” You can’t help but push a smile to your face as you turn back to Finn. “We’re bonded through the Force, though, and we always seem to have a way of finding our way back to each other, so I know no matter what happens, I’ll find my way back to him again, no matter what.”

               The screen on the holo had changed while you were talking, and Finn quickly reaches forward and unmutes it as a voice speaks through the spinning starbird image of the New Republic. “And now, we return to the Corellian Hall of Justice, where I have just been informed that the judges have come to a final consensus.”

               The holo shifts to the panel of judges, with the Gran senator front and center. Kylo and the six guards on the platform are standing directly in front of them, Kylo’s hardened expression not showing even a hint of trepidation for the sentence that’s about to be carried out. As the Gran begins to speak, Finn quickly finds your hand and holds it between both of his own, perhaps to help comfort you if you should hear the worst, perhaps to subdue you if you so much as heard the word _execution_ , not that you really blamed him either way. You can feel your heart skip a beat in your chest, and every fine hair on your body is standing at attention as your brain filters through what the Gran is trying to say, one meticulously chosen word at a time.

               “Concerning the matter of the treason of Kylo Ren, the finding of Special War Tribunal Three Hundred Ninety-Four is that the automatic death sentence has been commuted, to instead be carried out by severe terms of reparation. Kylo Ren, you are to be immediately remanded to the custody and supervision of Resistance Command for the rest of your natural life. You will answer directly to Colonel Ematt and all following successors to the Auxiliary Command, so long as the First Order and its tributaries maintain a martial presence anywhere in the galaxy, you will be committed to armed supervisory escort or appropriate detention facilities when idle, and transported under guard to and from combat fronts. The term of reparative restriction will conclude only when the last First Order stronghold surrenders or is destroyed and all systems under First Order control are returned to antebellum New Republic or local sovereignty, a term easily shortened by full strategic cooperation, but you will never again experience free enterprise within the New Republic territories. Should you violate the terms of this sentence by desertion or betrayal, it has already been determined that an additional tribunal will not be convened, and you will be executed on sight for your sedition. In addition, the Coronet Council has issued a lifetime order of banishment for the murder of Han Solo. For as long as you live, you may not set foot on any of the Five Worlds under penalty of immediate execution, to be carried out by any Corellian citizen. Do you have any questions?”

               Kylo says nothing, his face completely impassive, as if he was totally indifferent to his fate one way or the other.

               “Special War Tribunal Three Hundred Ninety-Four is adjourned. Captain, remove the condemned to confinement.”

               The chamber erupts with clamor as the judges rise and walk out, and Kylo’s platform floats to a special door, where he is led out by the guards. As Kylo walks through the door and out of sight, the holo feed cuts to a spinning New Republic logo accompanied by some kind of broadcaster theme. After a few seconds, the logo fades to the somber image of a very displeased Dran Holl, joined by an irate Rodian guest. As the two begin their analysis of the trial, harping on all of the missed opportunities of the prosecution and the _injustice_ of awarding anything other than death, Finn quickly switches off the holoprojector as he turns to you.

               “You okay?” he asks, but you simply sit there in stunned silence, your hands spread on both knees as you stare at the spot where the holo had been projecting. “I would’ve thought I’d start to lose my hearing from all your cheering.”

               “He’s alive,” you murmur softly, but you can’t conceal the trepidation in your voice as you turn to face Finn. “I mean, I should have seen this coming, but given the severe terms of his sentence, doesn’t this mean that he’s going to be gone for long stretches at a time?”

               “Probably,” Finn says with a shrug. “But they’ll probably bring him back here first, I imagine. It’s not like they’re going to just charge straight into the Unknown Regions now that they have Ren helping them out, right?”

               “Maybe,” you reply uncertainly, but for some reason, you couldn’t shake the sense of unease that has suddenly started to take over you. You weren’t sure whether or not it was coming from you or from Kylo, but now you were concerned that something would definitely go wrong, although you couldn’t be sure exactly why. “I don’t know, for some reason I can’t help but think that this is too easy. Suddenly Kylo’s okay, suddenly he just gets to live, just like that?”

               “Isn’t that what you wanted?” Finn asks, as he tilts his head to the side in confusion. “You wanted them to, what, sentence his execution on the spot?”

               “No,” you say quickly, shaking your head back and forth. “No, of course not, but I didn’t really expect things to be that easy, either. Maybe I’ve just had too much bad stuff happen to me, that I can’t accept something good when it finally comes my way.”

               Finn seems to visibly relax as you tell him this, sitting back as he looks at you. “You’ve been through too much,” he agrees. “And I can see why it’d make you nervous, but we’re not the Republic. He hasn’t been kept in chains, and he hasn’t been mistreated at all while he’s been here, has he?” You shake your head from side to side. “Okay, maybe you won’t get to see him as often as you did in the past, not every day, but he’s still alive-“

               “Yeah,” you say as you dip your head. “But what kind of life is that? You heard him, he said that Kylo would be in the custody of the Resistance for the rest of his life. Does that mean they’re just going to lock him up in that little cell for the rest of his days when he’s not fighting the First Order? Kylo will go crazy in there and you know it.”

               “He did some pretty horrific stuff,” Finn points out. “They’re not just letting him get away with this. They’re sparing his life, but they intend to make his sentence as difficult for him as they can possibly make it.”

               “Yeah, but difficult in what way?” you press. “Because if they’re going to punish him, they might as well be punishing me, and by default they’re punishing Ani, and he hasn’t done anything wrong.”

               “I’m the wrong person to talk to about this,” Finn says as he shakes his head. “I don’t know anything about what they plan to do with him, don’t want to know, but like I said, the Resistance is not the Republic. They’re going to make his service difficult, but they’re not going to torture him.”

               “Yeah,” you say quietly, because there’s nothing else really that you can say to this. As much as you hated to admit it, you had absolutely no control over what happened to Kylo. You had had zero control over what happened to him throughout the trial, and now wherever he was locked up or wherever he was stationed in the galaxy was out of your hands. You felt weak, and powerless, and above all, dejected. You had claimed that you wanted to keep your small family together, and now there was nothing, absolutely nothing you could do now that Kylo’s free will was pretty much now completely in the Resistance’s hands.

               “Talk to Poe,” Finn says brightly, and you can tell that his elated expression is more to try to cheer you up than anything else. “He’ll be back soon, and he can probably explain what’s going to happen to him a lot better than I can. They’re probably all meeting on Corellia right now to figure that out.”

               “Yeah,” you say with a quick nod of your head, mostly because you just wanted this conversation to be over and done with. You wanted answers, wanted to know definitively what would happen, and that was something Finn could not provide you. He could give you optimism, but that wasn’t something that you wanted to hear right now. Optimism would only lead you blindly into denial, and it would do nothing to protect you from the reality of the situation if something were to again go terribly, terribly wrong.

               “Your stomach’s probably not helping,” Finn says as he points to your gut. “I stopped by to see if you wanted to go grab some food earlier, but you were pretty out of it, so I figured it would be better if I just let you sleep.”

               “Yeah,” you repeat with a quick nod of thanks in his direction. You can tell he’s waiting for an answer, and you just glance away from him as you fluff out your hair, suddenly troubled by something lingering just past your point of recollection. “Yeah, um, actually I think I’m going to go to sleep.” You can feel the surprise emanating from Finn before you see the look on his face, and you quickly make an attempt to recover yourself. “I’m just tired, and sleeping on the floor probably wasn’t helping me much.”

               “Yeah,” Finn says, nodding his head forward as if trying to confirm this to himself. “Yeah, yeah, that’s okay. Want me to walk you?”

               “No,” you say quickly as you shake your head from side to side. “No, I’m good.” Finn doesn’t say anything more, and so you quickly make your way past him with a forced smile as you make your way out into the narrow corridor and find your way back to Poe’s room, thankful that the halls are more or less uncrowded so you wouldn’t have to face any scathing looks from Republic sympathizers who thought that Kylo Ren should have been executed on the spot. You were in a mood, not one that you really knew how to describe, and you were honestly a bit concerned as to what would happen if someone pushed you too far in the wrong direction right now.

               Regardless, you make it back to Poe’s room without incident and sit down on the bed cross-legged, immediately feeling a bit better as you’re comforted by a sense of warm familiarity. Considering your olfactory senses were no longer functioning, you could no longer say that the room smelled like Poe or his familiar scent of machine oil that you could no longer recollect, but it _felt_ like him, and you were at least slightly grateful for that. Even still, Poe wasn’t what you needed to feel better right now, you knew that implicitly. Instead, you put your hands on both knees and let your eyes slip closed as you tried to concentrate, forcing yourself back into a familiar world of meditation.

You try to picture it, try to picture the lakes and the waterfalls and the shining sun and the bright blue sky overheard. You tried to hear Ani’s childish laugh, Kylo’s happy murmur as you kissed him, tried to remember exactly how it felt when his fingers trailed down the warm skin of your arms after a day of lying in Naboo’s summer sun. You couldn’t be sure why you were thinking about Naboo, now, when you should have been focused on how you were going to greet Kylo when he came back to D’Qar, but you supposed a part of you just wanted to leave the stress of the trial behind you and focus on the days of your past and those carefree, happier times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Kylo lives!! He's alive!! He walks......on a technicality, which a lot of people in the New Republic are probably not going to be happy about. But the Reader isn't ready to celebrate just yet, not until Kylo is back, safe and sound, although if Yoda seems to have anything to say about it, there is still much to be weary of. How much are they going to have to endure before they can finally get their happy ending? Not too much longer until we finally find out.....but you guys trust me, right? Right? ;) Until Thursday, cheers!!


	69. Chapter 69

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is either going to be released really early or really late...celebrating Mabon today, it's me and my husband's three year anniversary, and my mom is out of the hospital and coming to visit, so there's a lot going on. So if I posted this chapter way late, I'm sorry, and if I posted this chapter super early, huzzah!! (I'm typing this out in advance to save time any way I can. xD)

               Kylo couldn’t come back soon enough.

               Finn had informed you that they were staying another day on Corellia, just enough to sort out some policy between them and the New Republic and make sure that everything was squared away as far as the politics of the whole matter were concerned. You had no idea what kind of policies they could be discussing, but you supposed it had something to do with the war efforts now that Ren had joined the Resistance in their attempt to wipe out the First Order once and for all. Maybe it meant that the Republic was looking to retract some of their military support or seek some sort of financial recompense from the whole ordeal, but you didn’t ask, because you didn’t care. As much as the Republic may have wanted to make it look like the troops had to live in fear of Kylo Ren during the trial, Kylo himself had just as much reason to fear one of them murdering him in his sleep. Every soldier probably knew someone who knew someone who had died on Hosnian Prime or some other battlefield, and you didn’t want Kylo to be snuffed out in his sleep due to some renegade and his or her desperate lust for revenge.

               Even still, you tried to be patient, tried to keep your mind quiet, as you anxiously awaited his return. Finn offered to wait with you, offered to try to do something to keep your mind off it, but you just wanted to be alone to meditate and try to get your emotions in order. Something didn’t feel _right_ to you, you felt uneasy, but you were sure that feeling would pass once you saw that Kylo was safely back on D’Qar. The fact that the First Order had previously tried attacking his convoy when they had travelled to Corellia didn’t help, and so you assumed that part of the reason they were delaying their journey was to make sure it didn’t happen again, especially considering that this time they didn’t have any of the Republic’s protection aside from Wedge to assist them.

               You were asleep when you heard a shuffling at the door, and like a child eagerly awaiting good news, you were awake in almost an instant as you shook the sleep from your eyes to take in the figures of Poe and BB-8 entering in through the doorway. You hadn’t seen BB-8 since you arrived on base, although you assumed that that may have been because of you. In your opinion, droids were just that, droids, and though Ani may have become friends with the thing, to you it was just a spherical system of parts that had caused you and Kylo both far too much trouble than it was worth, and for that reason, you couldn’t help but regard the droid with a learned sense of animosity, which hadn’t changed ever since your first meeting. You were almost sure that the droid’s feelings, if it had any, were mutual.

               “Hey,” Poe says as he takes a few steps into the room, BB-8 following in after him. “How are you-?”

               But you don’t even give him the time to finish his question. You are out of the bed in an instant and jump into his arms, knocking him backwards against the wall with the force of your leap. You plant your hands on either side of his face as you kiss him, your tongue generously dipping into Poe’s open, surprised mouth as he makes no attempt to kiss you back. BB-8 lets out a short series of what you could only assume to be judgmental beeps as you sheepishly pull away and Poe seems to come back to himself as he slowly lets you back down. Still, you can’t help but grin up at him as you pull on the front lapels of his familiar leather jacket. “You were fantastic,” you tell him, unable to conceal your gush. “You were great, really, you-“ But there’s something solemn in Poe’s tone that you don’t understand, and you can tell by the way that BB-8 dips his small head that something’s happened. “What is it? What’s wrong? Where’s, where’s Kylo?”

               “I’m sorry,” Poe says quietly as he takes the holo that you hadn’t noticed that was tucked under his arm and holds it out for you to take. You take it uneasily in your hands, your fingers suddenly feeling far too weak and the holo far too heavy. Even BB-8 lets out a sequence of short, muted beeps, and you can’t help but glance between him and Poe.

               “I, I don’t understand,” you say softly. “What’s-?”

               “You should view that,” Poe says as he juts his chin over towards the holo. He doesn’t tell you that he’ll be right back. He doesn’t tell you that he’ll be there if you need him to be. Instead he just turns to BB-8 and dips his head forward in a nod as he follows BB-8 out, closing the door behind him without another look back at you.

               Something unpleasant has curled up inside your chest as you slowly walk back over to the bed and sit down a bit harder than you mean to. Your hands are shaking and your heart is pumping faster and faster in your chest as you turn the holo over in your hands before you finally activate it. To your relief, Kylo is standing in front of you, and for a moment you allow your eyes to slip closed, grateful that he’s still alive. “Kylo,” you say brightly as you open your eyes again. “Where are you? When are you coming home?”

               Kylo’s quiet as he glances away from the holo. He looks back at you like he’s about to speak, before his gaze drops, and he literally hangs his head in front of you in a way that you’ve never quite seen before, as if he can’t even bring himself to look at you. “Kylo?” you venture nervously. “What’s wrong? You…” You shake your head, unable to fathom what this might mean. “When are you coming home?”

               “I’m not,” Kylo says quietly as he looks back up at you, and you can see something new and determined in his gaze, something almost angry, but you know it’s not at you. It can’t be at you, because you haven’t done anything. You _literally_ haven’t done anything. You went from doing too much to too little in such a short span of time, and you could no longer keep track of what was and what wasn’t your fault.

               “What do you mean you’re not?” you ask as you shake your head, as if you still couldn’t understand what he was saying.

               “I’ve already been deployed,” Kylo tells you, keeping his words measured and even, just like he used to, and you knew implicitly you were going to have to draw every single word out of him as slowly and painstakingly as possible if you wanted to get any answers.

               “Deployed where?” you ask, and Kylo closes his eyes as he grimaces, as if he knew this question was coming.

               “That’s classified,” he tells you quietly, and you open your mouth and shut it again, unable to believe that what you were hearing. Classified meant secrets, and Kylo didn’t keep secrets from you, unless-

               “You’re not coming back to D’Qar,” you say quietly, and before Kylo glances away, you can see the look of guilt cross his face. It may have just been a holo, but you would recognize that look in his dark eyes from the other side of the galaxy. “You knew,” you spit at the holo as you climb to your feet, holding the holo out in front of you at arm’s length. “You- you knew this whole time? You knew you were never coming back to D’Qar? You-“ You shake your head from side to side, unable to believe what you were hearing. “How long did you know?”

               “I’ve always known,” Kylo tells you quietly. “There was always the chance that I would be executed by the Republic, but they wanted a reason to withdraw their resources and leave the matter of taking care of the First Order primarily in the hands of the Resistance, so-“

               “So they let you live to suit their own motives,” you whisper quietly as you shake your head from side to side. How like the Republic to consider what was in their best interests rather than the best interests of the galaxy. Even still, this anger awakens something else inside you, something much more pressing. “That’s why you were so always so insistent for me to stay here, wasn’t it?” you demand suddenly. “To give Ani a future here? To try to make things better with Poe? You _knew_ that if the Republic didn’t execute you that you would _never_ step foot back on this planet again, right? Tell me I’m right.”

               “You’re right,” Kylo admits quietly, and your lower lip trembles as you stare at him through the holo. Tears are spilling down your cheeks now, and you shake your head from side to side, unable to believe what you were hearing. Kylo hadn’t said the words directly, but it was quite clear from his, if not Poe’s, demeanor, that he was never coming back.

               “But you can’t,” you exclaim to the holo. “They’re just going to put you into dangerous situation after dangerous situation until it gets you killed.” Kylo says nothing, and you can only assume that he knows this, that this isn’t something you needed to explain to him, but you can’t help yourself. “So they’re never going to let you back on D’Qar? Ever? Why? Because you’re too much of a security risk?”

               Kylo just shrugs, but that’s not good enough for you, it’s not good because you had waited so long for things to finally get better, and Kylo’s life had been spared. You should have been happy, you should have had at least five more minutes to wrap yourself in his arms and tell him you loved him before they sent him away, they could have done at least that much for him, but no, instead they had deployed him immediately, sending him away forever like he didn’t have a wife and a son that honestly, truly cared about him and his life.

               “Okay, fine,” you sniff as you try and fail to blink back your tears as you wipe your nose unceremoniously with the side of your arm. “Okay, then why can’t I go to you? I can just come see you, and-“

               “No,” Kylo says firmly, and you’re pretty sure this is the longest he’s made eye contact with you throughout your entire conversation so far. “It’s far too dangerous for you here, and I can’t run the risk of anything happening to you. You need to stay there, stay behind, and look after Ani. He’s going to need you now, more than ever.”

               He looks away from you, and the sinking feeling in your chest suddenly expands into a cold patch that seems to spread from one side of your chest to the other. Your skin suddenly feels like ice, and you can feel goosebumps prickling up all over your arms as each individual hair on the top of your scalp calls your attention, each strand suddenly distinguishing themselves from one another. You try to speak, but it takes you a few moments before you can truly find your voice, truly manage to get the words out that you need to say. “What does this mean, Kylo?” you ask, but Kylo just looks away and you can’t help but shriek into the holo, your voice full of emotion as you demanded answers. “What does this _mean_?”

               Kylo turns to you suddenly, startled by your sudden volume, as he meets your eyes again. Your chest is heaving, the tears are burning hot and thick in your eyes which are probably so red by now that they have perhaps have taken on a demonic hue. He knew you were going to react this way, he knew it, and the least he could do was at least be honest with you, and he wasn’t doing that. Right now he was slowly trying to approach the issue, and that’s not what you needed. You needed him to be straight with you, to tell you the truth as quickly and honestly as he had back when he had told you that he needed to send you off the Starkiller Base. “I don’t know when I’m going to be able to see you next,” Kylo says after a moment, and it’s all you can do not to fling the holo away from you and rip it apart into a thousand tiny pieces.

               You knew what that meant. He didn’t need to say it, you could see it in his eyes, which looked to be almost on the verge of tears himself. Kylo didn’t cry, and yet this was probably the closest that he was going to come in his entire life. He had been granted the privilege to breathe and to eat and to fight, but his life? That had been taken from him, and now it was more clear to you than ever that the entire trial had been a farce. His death would have granted him freedom, and in living, he had lost his life; he had become a slave to the Resistance. They were forever going to control where he went and what he did, and in so doing, it meant that they were probably never going to allow him to see either you or Ani ever again.

               You can’t take it, you literally, literally, can’t take it as you crumble to your knees, physically trying to keep yourself together. You place the holo on the floor as you scoot back against the bed, feeling it press uncomfortably into the back of your shoulders as you press your face into your forearms and shudder. You were going to vomit. You were going to get sick right there, all over the holo, and you were going to throw up and puke until every bit of this unpleasant feeling was out of your system, and then you were going to continue until every single organ evacuated itself from your body, under too much pressure to keep your body alive. You could feel your heart straining in your chest, pitifully trying to push through beat after beat on the throes of exertion, and you could feel yourself trembling as though you were literally about to collapse to the floor and shatter into a million tiny pieces.

               “We can still talk,” Kylo tells you, and if you’re not mistaken, his voice is a bit louder, trying to reach you through your tears. “We will talk over the holo, every few days.” You glance over at him, and his expression softens, as though he’s grateful he’s still being heard. “I won’t love you any less,” he assures you, although that was literally the furthest thing from your mind. “But now you understand, why you need to stay with him, why you need to stay with the pilot.” Kylo is speaking openly now, not communicating by thought but by word, and he seems almost panicked by your outburst as he keeps going. “I can sense how troubled you are, I can feel it, and I know how susceptible you are to the darkness now. I don’t want to lose you to it again, not when I’m not there to protect you from it.”

               You grin, you can’t help it, but it’s an ugly, sickening grin as you realize there was a definitive way to see Kylo again after all. You could do it, you knew you could, and it would be so, so easy to, especially now. All you had to do was surrender yourself over to the dark side, and when they failed to pull you back, they’d of course turn to Kylo to-

               “No,” Kylo says firmly before you can even open your mouth, and your shoulder slump again as you press your forehead into your knees. “No, that’s not the way.”

               “Then what am I supposed to _do_?” you wail into your legs, feeling every bit as miserable, if not more so, as you did back on the _Propitiate_. At least then it had been your mistakes that led you to that position, and if you were the one who made the mistakes, you could eventually find a way to go about fixing them. But this was totally outside your control, and there was seemingly nothing you could do in order to make things right. There was nothing, nothing, you could do, except- “I’ll talk to Poe,” you sniff. “I’ll try to work out a deal. Maybe I can-“

               “There’s already a deal in place,” Kylo tells you firmly. “He’s the reason I’m even allowed to be speaking to you right now. He convinced Ematt to require me to report to him every few days to check on the progress of my _rehabilitation_ , and I have no doubt that he intends to allow me to talk to you and Ani during that time. From what I’ve heard, it was a fight to even allow me that much. Apparently Ematt was sincere when he said he wanted to make me suffer as much as possible.”

               You just shake your head from side to side, not really paying all that close attention to what he was saying as your thoughts begin to get too loud for your brain, and you start to say them out loud. “But then that means I can’t see you,” you say, the words coming out of you in a whisper that hinted that you were right on the edge of breaking down completely. “Not in person, just through the holo, which means I can’t touch you or feel you or kiss you or-“ You turn suddenly to him, and you have to admit that this is perhaps the saddest you’ve ever seen him look. You had seen variations of sad, pitiful, guilty, remorseful, but this look was just pure and unadulterated sadness in its rawest form, and it made your heart hurt so heavily that you honestly weren’t sure it wasn’t just going to collapse in your chest under the weight of your emotions.

               “Will you think about me?” you ask, trying to give him an easy answer to help alleviate some of the pain you were both feeling. “Will you think about me all the time at least?”

               “I can’t,” Kylo admits, and for a moment it hurts that he didn’t seem to love you enough to just lie to you. “I can’t, when I’m in battle, I can’t allow myself to think about anything but. I have to focus on what’s in front of me, and thinking about you or Ani is only going to distract me and remind me of how much I’ve lost.”

               “No, no, you’re right,” you say quickly, the words dripping out of you like drops into a puddle. “You’re right because you have to stay focused, because if not you’ll get distracted and if you don’t think about me or Ani then it will be easier to keep yourself alive, and then I’ll know you’re safe because you won’t be distracted.” Your words are starting to slur together, but then again, your vision has been that way for quite some time without you even realizing that you were no longer able to see Kylo clearly, and for a moment you wondered if you were just going to drop dead of exhaustion right then and there. You had lost so much already, and it seemed all the galaxy wanted to do was take and take as much as it possibly could from you until there was nothing left. You had done bad things before, Kylo had done bad things before, but he didn’t want to do them anymore. You had both already given your lives; how much more did the Force want to take until it would finally allow you both to rest? You just wanted to be happy; were your previous misdeeds so shameful that it would never allow either of you to again receive at least one minute, one small moment, of contentment?

               As if in answer, you can see Kylo’s expression turn to anger as he turns to address someone just out of view of the holo. You can hear someone say something that you just can’t catch, and you can see Kylo’s lips form the word _No_ as the holo suddenly cuts out, and just like that, Kylo is gone. You didn’t tell him you loved him, or goodbye, or to stay safe, and just like that he was gone, and you had no idea when the next time you would even get to hear from him was. You didn’t know when the next time you would see him was, or hold him, and you slam your hands over both your ears and ignore the sudden pulse of contact in your brain as you scream. Your voice cracks the first time around, but you just scream as loud and as long as you can. You think you can hear shuffling outside the door, but no one comes in, and you just put your hands over both your ears as you scream until your voice gives out and your lungs burn in your chest, as if you had been running around in the cold outside for far too long. The lining of your throat felt raw, you could no longer clearly breathe out your nose, and every puff of air in and out of your open mouth felt like you were rubbing salt into an open wound with each and every pitiful exhale. You felt like you were burning up at the core, and the worst part was that this wouldn’t kill you. You would live through this, live long enough to watch yourself crumble as you lost everything. That was apparently why the Force had brought you back, to watch everything that you cared about slip through your fingers, and there was nothing you could to do to stop it.

               For some reason, you have the idle thought that you should have just gone with Taro and tried to escape with him. You should have died, then and there, should have let Kylo think that you hadn’t cared for him at all as you escaped, and then none of this would have mattered. You would never have gotten involved with the Resistance, never wound up meeting Poe, and Sadie would still be safely back on her academia without having to be involved in all of this. You had no idea what would have happened to Ladson, but you would have liked to think that maybe he would have escaped the base’s destruction and headed back to Sadie and your home planet, and would never have gotten involved in this horrible war as much as he had.

               You could feel yourself becoming faint and light-headed, your thoughts harder and harder to process as things fly back and forth through your mind like a tangled webs of words. You couldn’t believe that you were so stupid as to believe that things would all be okay for once, that things would have actually worked out in your favor, as though the Republic would simply let Kylo off with a warning and that things would go back to how they used to be on the Starkiller Base, where Kylo went off on missions for a few days every now and again, but for the most part he was right by your side where you could keep him safe and grounded. Now he was who knew where in the galaxy, and the worst part was you suddenly were struck by the horrific thought that he was guarded at all times, and your whole conversation with him was probably monitored, meaning that someone had actually watched you have that terrific fit, possibly even Ematt, and he was probably going to make sure Poe and the rest of the Resistance heard about it later. Maybe it was a test to see how you would react, to see if you could control yourself, and if so you could only assume that the heads in charge of the Resistance were even crueler than the New Republic, perhaps even crueler than Snoke himself.

               And Poe, how were you going to be able to trust him either? Shouldn’t he have warned you that this was a possibility, or did Kylo encourage him not to say anything? Kylo knew all along that this would happen, knew that no matter what the outcome was that he was probably never going to see you again, and yet he hadn’t told you, hadn’t wanted to have that painful conversation with you. Was he trying to spare your feelings, or did he just not want to deal with them because he couldn’t stand to feel them for himself? You weren’t sure who you could trust, not yourself, not Kylo, not Poe, and suddenly you felt so tiny and alone, standing in the dust of one giant planet while the stars overhead looked down at you and laughed and mocked how small and insignificant you were. Kylo was alive somewhere, standing under those same stars in a different sector of the galaxy, but what did it even matter if you were never going to see him again? Sure he was alive, but that didn’t make things better, it only made things worse.

               Suddenly a shadow jumps out at you from the corner of your vision and you throw your arms up and away from your face to see who it is, almost hitting yourself in the process. You almost expect it to be Poe, and for a moment you allow your anger to rise up inside of you and provide you with at least an ounce more strength than you had a moment earlier before you quickly push it away as you see Ani’s slender frame walk through the door.  He’s been crying, it’s clear that he’s been crying, and he looks more dejected than you had ever seen him inside your entire life. He was in pain, you could feel it through the Force, and you silently hoped that it wasn’t your pain that had been making things difficult for him. But no, it wasn’t, you knew it wasn’t, this was something dark and deep and all his own.

               “I Force choked Ladson,” Ani says quietly, his voice trembling through his tears. “I can’t go back there…I can’t.”

               You don’t say anything, merely just hold your arms out for him, and Ani shuts the door behind him as he sits down by your side, resting his head on your shoulder as you wrap your arms around him and pull him into you, trying to provide him with the little bit of comfort that you could. You were the wrong person to tell him that it was going to be okay, the wrong person to tell him to remain strong, but you were his mother, and you were burdened with that maternal sense of responsibility no matter what.

               “They say I’ll never get to see Father again,” Ani tells you through his tears as he sobs into your shoulder. “They told me that he’s never coming home…they won’t let us visit him and they won’t let him return.” His shoulders shake with sobs and you can’t help but hold him tighter as you screw your face up, trying to will the Force to hold back your own tears so that you could at least try to remain strong for your son.

               “We’ll work something out, Ani,” you tell him quietly. “You’ll see, we’ll talk to Poe and try to find some way to-“

               “They lied to me,” Ani blurts out suddenly, and you smooth down his hair as you continue to hold him close, afraid that if you released your grip on him for more than a minute that he might slip away too. “They told me it would be okay. They told me that everything was going to be okay and that I would get to see him, that I would be able to talk to him after the trial, but they sealed him off on a different ship and took him away immediately after the trial ended. I never even got to tell him goodbye.”

               You can feel your heart splintering in your chest as you hold your son fiercely in your arms, trying to siphon off the pain that was thick within his blood. When Ani had been a young child, he had barely known Kylo, hadn’t seemed all that bothered by the thought of losing him when he had been captured the first time. Their relationship had clearly changed since that time, and there was barely a day that went by that he hadn’t seen Kylo in some way. But now Kylo was gone, and Ani had been robbed of what could have possibly been the last words that he would have said to his father. Ani had made such a show of acting mature and independent lately, but it occurred to you only now that he only felt safe taking those risks because he knew implicitly that he had his father there to back him up and help him if anything were to go wrong. Now Kylo was truly gone, possibly never to be seen again, and you had no idea how to help him with that. You hadn’t had a great relationship with your own father, if that man who had sold you off for a flask of ebla even _was_ your father, but that wasn’t something you could think about now. Even still, you lacked that parental bond to even try to understand what Ani was going through. You didn’t know what it was like to lose a father, but you did understand what it was like to lose _Kylo_ , and it felt like a part of you was drifting further and further away as the seconds passed and you were never going to ever be able to feel complete again. It felt like little bits of yourself were cracking apart, becoming ragged and torn at the edges, and even if by some miracle Kylo did return, you didn’t know if those edges could possibly align together in even a semblance of their former shape. This was too much for you to deal with, you had lost _too_ _much_ , and you could feel that Ani was suffering through that pain as well.

               “I’m trying so hard,” Ani continues to wail. “You were both dead and Ladson told me they’d take care of me, he and Poe kept telling me it was going to be okay and I tried to keep it together but then you came back and I thought it was going to be okay, that everything was going to be okay, but I can’t _do_ this. I can’t do this anymore. I wanted to try to be brave and try to join the Resistance and erase all the bad things that you and dad have ever done, if I could just be _better_ then maybe they would welcome you both too, but-“ Ani’s words are too muffled by his sobs to understand him, and you begin to feel a penetrating numbness spread throughout your core as you comfort him in slow, robotic motions. You couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for Ani to see both of his parents dead in front of him, only to watch them be revived and have their lives constantly be put in jeopardy once again by the same people that promised to protect him.

               Ani was far too noble and far too good, trying to put on a brave face and erase the negative stigma associated with his family name, and you could tell that he had tried to do it by submerging his inner darkness and trying to fill himself with the light side of the Force. But he was your child, through and through, and he was tempted regardless. You could feel him right now, filled to the brim with so much hatred and despair and negative emotions that you didn’t know what you could possibly say to comfort him. It seemed as though everyone was set to try to take everything away from him at every turn, and there was nothing you could do to comfort him.  

               “The trial,” Ani clarifies suddenly. “When Poe and the others had the tribunal to decide what they were going to do with you, I was so scared that I was going to lose you again. That they were going to lock you up or send you away somewhere or worse and they kept promising me that they wouldn’t let anything happen to you, and then things turned out okay, and then they promised me things would be okay with Dad, but-“ Ani doesn’t go on, but he doesn’t need to, as you think back to the hasty tribunal that the Resistance had held for you, the one that you hadn’t even been aware of. If you hadn’t been on D’Qar the first time around, hadn’t made friends with at least a few people there and gotten involved with Poe, things would have ended a lot differently for you, you were almost sure of it. Maybe then you’d be in the same predicament as Kylo, forced to serve your sentence through combative servitude, and you knew implicitly they would not allow you to fight on the same battlefield.

               “What do you want to do, Ani?” you ask him quietly as you continue to smooth back his hair.

               “What can we do?” Ani asks, and you tilt your head to the side in consideration.

               “Well, we’re strong,” you tell him lightly. “We’re powerful, _someone_ on this base knows where Kylo is, and I’m sure we can get them to tell us with the right… _motivation._ Then it’s just a matter of blasting our way through the hangar, finding him, getting him back and locating some place in the Unknown Regions to stop and lie low so that no one will ever find us again.”

               “That’ll never work,” Ani replies miserably. “We need to stay here, at least for now.” He sits up as he looks at you, really looks at you. “It’s what Father would want us to do.”

               “Okay, Ani,” you say quietly, and if you can read your own emotions correctly, you’re almost a little disappointed that he wasn’t as ready to get up and storm the hangar like you were in a vain, possibly suicidal mission to get Kylo back.

               Ani seems to sense your disappointment as he sobers up slightly, trying to apply at least some bit of logic to the situation. “Maybe if we stay on our best behavior, they’ll let Father return,” Ani offers. “If we show them that we want to contribute here, and Father helps out the Resistance and they make good progress, they’ll let him come back for a little while, at least let us see him again.”

               “Maybe,” you reply quietly. You were beginning to get the sense that the Resistance really didn’t care what you wanted, that they were out to serve their own interests just as much as the New Republic was, and Kylo was nothing but a pawn in that as well.

               But Ani seems to have brightened at least somewhat by this consideration, and you can’t help but force a smile in his direction as you continue to run your hand up and down his back in a comforting gesture. “Before they left, after the trial, I was too far away to say anything, but I saw Poe talking to Father about something,” Ani continues. “I don’t know what they said, but maybe Poe was working out some kind of a deal so he can come back and see us sometimes.”

               “There was a deal,” you say quietly, and Ani quickly pulls away from you as he gets to his feet, anxious for a bit of good news at last. You close your eyes, unsure how to tell him what you knew he wouldn’t want to hear. “The deal was that-“ You shake your head as you let out a sigh, trying to get the words out of you in a rush. “The deal was that Kylo could contact us by holo every few days or so. Poe convinced Ematt to have Kylo report to him, and while he does, Kylo’s pretty sure Poe’s going to let us be able to see him and talk to him, at least some of the time, anyway.”

               “That’s it?” Ani asks, and you can’t help but wince at the dejection written all over his face. “That’s _it_? That’s all? We just get to talk to him?” You can feel Ani’s anger increasing now, but there is absolutely nothing you can say that can help temper it. A part of you wants to tell him that you should both be grateful for even that much, but it does absolutely nothing to help your mood either. Ani seems to sense your defeat, and instead of sadness, he turns instead towards his anger. “That’s not fair,” he yells, and suddenly you notice his lightsaber quivering in his belt.

               “Um, Ani-“ you start, but it’s already too late. The lightsaber is already in Ani’s hand, and he’s already ignited its blade, the bright shade of blue suddenly taking on a more eerie, ethereal shade.

               “I’m sorry,” Ani says as his eyes fix on the glowing blade of energy in front of him. “But I just, I just need to _hit_ something, I-“ You can see the muscles in his arms shaking like yours did whenever you got upset, but you didn’t need the complications that would arise if Ani decided to destroy everything in Poe’s room. They would deem him as dangerous and as capable of destruction as Kylo, and that was _not_ what Ani needed right now. He needed to safely vent his frustration and his sadness and his anger, and, like Kylo, he found that this would be the easiest way to do it.

               “Here.” You quickly get to your feet and expand the blades of your amber lightsaber, letting them shine out as brightly as his did, but only for a moment. “Dim your blades.” Ani does so, and you hold your lightsaber out at an angle from your body, bracing the strong iron of the hilt in both hands. “Hit me.”

               Ani looks nervous, but only for a second. You expect him to challenge you, to say that he couldn’t possibly, but instead he just lashes forward, bringing the blade up and over his head before launching into a downward strike. You take a step back and bend your knees as your arms drop slightly from the sudden force of his blade, but thankfully Ani doesn’t alter his strikes. Instead he just brings his lightsaber up and down, up and down, striking your amber blades with all the strength he can muster. Eventually his arms start to waver and his strikes begin to differ now, and you retract one blade as you hold the other out in front of you, letting him strike right and left, right and left, swinging his lightsaber like he would a bat while the blades crackled and snapped upon contact.

               Eventually he drops his arms and although his glowing blue blade disappears, you still keep yours lit, cautiously watching him bend over, his hands on his knees, as he takes deep breaths in and out, in and out, trying to regain control of himself. “I’m tired,” he says at length, and without looking at you, he turns and does a spectacular jump into Poe’s top bunk, rolling to the side and obscuring his face from view as he turns to the wall. You just stand there quietly, not sure what to say, not sure if there’s anything you can say. As you retract the blades of your own lightsaber and clip it back into your belt, you suddenly look back up to see Ani watching you. “Is it okay if I stay with you for a while? I don’t want to go back and see Ladson yet.”

               You can’t help but purse your lips as you think it over. He had said he had used a Force choke on Ladson, but that was only because he was angry. You were almost certain that Ladson himself was completely and totally fine, although perhaps maybe a bit unnerved considering that Ani was the last person in the world he ever expected would probably turn around and use the Force to hurt him. “Of course you can,” you say gently, your voice full of obligatory motherly affection. “But Ladson-“

               “He’s fine.” Ani’s reply is terse and immediate as he rolls back over, and you can’t help but nod as you sit down on your bunk. You could see how Ani wouldn’t exactly want to talk about what happened with Ladson, but you were certain that he would tell you if he had done something seriously, seriously wrong. No, he had probably just lifted Ladson into the air, realized what he was doing was wrong, and ran before he could think twice about it. It was an embarrassing sign of weakness and lack of control, and you knew implicitly that Ani hated not being in control of himself almost as much as you did. No, he was your son through and through, and if Ani said Ladson was fine, then you believed him. In the back of your mind, you remembered how Kylo used to choke others, how he had once choked _you_ , and you could never, ever imagine Ani inflicting harm on anyone in such a way, especially not Ladson.

               You lie back down on the bottom bunk until you hear Ani snoring soundly above you, and you figure that he must have tuckered himself out to the point of exhaustion. That was good, you thought, he needed sleep, he needed to rest, needed to take his mind off of all of the terrible things that had happened as of late. You could only hope that maybe in his dreams that perhaps Anakin or another one of the spirits in the Force would visit him and give him some bit of guidance, or at least some valuable words to help him control himself and help him understand what he was going through. You had lost Kylo before, but Ani had never had to deal with that sense of loss, and you didn’t know how to make things right in a situation where you yourself seemed to have no more control than he did.

               You don’t know how much time goes by until the door opens up and Poe enters, this time without BB-8. He moves his hand over to flick on the light switch, but you hold out one arm and stay his hand with the Force, keeping the switch in the off position. Poe immediately glances over to you and you notice that, for some reason, his expression is cross. You don’t know why, but you doubt it’s something you can fix either, and so you just shake your head and put a finger to your lips as you point upwards, letting the sounds of Ani’s gentle snoring reach his ears. Poe nods his head forward in understanding and his face seems to relax a little bit as he closes the door behind him and sits down on the bed beside you, keeping his feet planted flat on the floor. You curl up beside him, resting your head against his shoulder, and he just puts an arm around your shoulders as he gingerly smooths back your hair.

               “You doing okay?” he asks, making sure to keep his voice quiet so as not to disturb Ani.

               “I’m not,” you reply simply. “At all.”

               “I’m sorry,” Poe says as he shakes his head. “I did everything I could, but you were watching the trial. Ematt has full charge of Kylo’s custody and he wanted him deployed immediately. He thought, considering how we were attacked on the way here, that it would be too much of a risk to bring him back to D’Qar right now, not with that base still out there.”

               Granted, this did make at least some sense, considering how the First Order had been able to penetrate D’Qar’s defenses and help Kylo escape years ago, but something told you that this was merely a convenient excuse and not an actual reason. “Okay,” you say slowly, drawing out the word. “But what about _after_? What about when the fighting is over? Can he come back then?”

               “I don’t know how long that will be,” Poe says as he shakes his head, and suddenly you can’t help but notice how tired he looks, and in the back of your mind you wonder if he’s slept at all since the trial started. “I don’t have any idea what will happen when the fighting is over, I really don’t, but it’s not going to happen tomorrow.”

               “I know that,” you say as you shake your head, and the room lapses into uncomfortable silence as the steady pulse of quiet is disrupted only by the sound of Ani snoring overhead. “I need to know something.”

               “Sure,” Poe says as he turns to you, perhaps sensing something in your tone. “Anything.”

               “Anything?” you echo, unable to keep the skepticism out of your voice. “You’ll tell me _anything_?”

               “I’ve always been honest with you before,” Poe points out. “Why stop now?” You consider this for a moment, but it’s still not the answer you’re looking for. Poe deemed, _I’m not allowed to tell you_ as an answer, and that sort of ambiguity wasn’t going to work for you, not this time. You needed actual answers, but what’s more, you needed to see him. You needed to hear his voice in your head and you needed to know the truth about just what happened after the trial. You could maybe talk Poe into telling you, maybe convince him to tell you everything he knew, but it wouldn’t be the same. Although you doubted Poe would lie directly to your face, you needed answers, and you needed them five minutes ago.

               “I need answers,” you tell him quietly. “And I need them now.” You can sense Poe’s sudden sense of concern through the Force, but you don’t give him enough time to react. Instead, you use the Force to hold his body still as you sling your leg around his and straddle him off the end of the bed. For the first time, you didn’t even think about kissing him as you sat in his lap; instead, your fingertips went straight to his temples. “This is going to hurt a lot, you know it is, but if you try to resist me, it’s going to hurt worse.”

               At least you gave him that one small bit of warning before you try to enter his mind. Poe, to his credit, was mentally a lot stronger than you wanted to give him credit for, and it actually takes you a minute before the connection opens up as easily as you want it to. From beneath you, you can see Poe grimacing in pain, wriggling under the pressure you’re exerting on his body with the Force, trying to pull through enough to make the pain stop. “I’ll make this fast,” you tell him, and Poe looks up at you with his mouth slightly open, his eyebrows knotted together with wariness and distrust, but not quite to the point of anger. Regardless, you press your fingertips into his temples and attempt to open the connection as you lower your face until it’s no more than an inch away from his, making sure his eyes were locked steady with yours as you drop your voice down to a whisper.

               _“Don’t scream.”_  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kylo lives, but of course nothing is ever easy. What will it take to bring Kylo back to D'Qar? We finally see the chink in Ani's armor, and we see him slowly, slowly start to crack.....will he break down completely, or will the Reader be able to save her son from the darkness that consumes him and find their way back to Kylo or have Kylo find their way back to them? And what will be the repercussions of mind probing Poe in probably the worst way possible? I guess we'll see....but things are definitely going to get worse (again) before they get better!! (but they do get better!!) Until Saturday, cheers!!


	70. Chapter 70

               You almost expect it to be a lot harder to find what you’re looking for inside Poe’s brain, but he seems to know more or less what you want to see as you suddenly find yourself listening in on the last conversation that Poe had with Kylo. You’re not quite sure where he’s standing, but there are guards a reasonable distance away, and you can assume that this conversation had taken place almost immediately after the trial had ended. You want to take the time to study Kylo’s face, to see how he’s doing, to make sure he’s more or less all right, but you get the feeling that you don’t have a lot of time, and if you wanted answers, you were going to only have one chance at this. You knew implicitly that Poe was not going to let you do this a second time.

               “I’m sorry,” Poe offers, but Kylo’s expression doesn’t change. He doesn’t look impressed, but he doesn’t look surprised either, as if he had known that Poe wouldn’t have been able to do whatever he was apologizing for. “I’ve done what I can but there’s no swaying him.”

               _Swaying who? Ematt?_

“I assumed as much,” is Kylo’s terse reply. “It seems things are playing out more or less as I expected; he’s as stubborn as I remember.”

               “He still holds what you did to the General against you,” Poe tells him, his voice square and matter-of-fact, but Kylo just shakes his head.

               “Ironic that he seems so insistent to keep me away from her then,” he muses. “Considering the distance he’s putting between us, I’ll never be able to make amends.”

               “You’ll get to talk to her,” Poe offers, but Kylo just shakes his head again.

               “But I’ll never get to see her again, will I?” Kylo asks, and Poe remains silent as he glances away. “Not her, nor my son, nor-“

               “I’ll look after them,” Poe tells him with steadfast resolution in his voice. “You have my word, I’ll look after them. I’ll keep them on D’Qar, they’ll be safe there, and I won’t let anything happen to them.”

               “I know you will,” Kylo says as his face hardens. “Because you need to. You know how she’s going to take this.”

               “Not well,” Poe confirms, and you can’t help but feel taken aback as you know they’re talking about you. Kylo’s eyes flick to the side, as if that was the biggest understatement that he’s ever heard in all his years in the galaxy, and you can’t help but feel affronted, although your earlier outburst surely had confirmed what they had both expected.

               “You’re going to have to keep a much closer watch on her,” Kylo advises. “Without me there to hold her back, she’s going to be just as reckless as ever, and much more vulnerable to the dark side.”

               “Well, Luke will be close by,” Poe offers. “And Rey, they’ll-“

               “It’s not the same,” Kylo says firmly, making sure his meaning got across. “You _know_ it’s not the same.”

               Poe hesitates for a moment, as though he’s trying to figure out what to say. “I’ve ordered open channels,” he explains. “It took a while to clear with Ematt, but you are to report back to me every few days. I’ll do what I can to make sure you can see her, so you’ll be able to see she’s okay for yourself.” You can see Kylo nod his head forward in silent appreciation, but it does little to relieve the gloom of the overall situation.

               “It’s not going to make much of a difference to her,” Kylo tells him, and you can’t help but laugh silently at that.

               “I know,” Poe admits as he looks away. “I’ll try to figure things out from my end, but you’re going to have to pull your weight too. If you don’t follow orders or do exactly what he says to the letter, they’re going to make life much more difficult for you than it’s already going to be.”

               “That’s hard to imagine, considering they are keeping my family from me,” Kylo tells him crossly. “Although considering where I’m headed, this isn’t a punishment for me so much as it’s a punishment for her and my son.”

               “I know that,” Poe replies, his voice full of aggravation. “I know that, okay? I-“

               “You don’t,” Kylo tells him firmly. “I’ve always been there, not just for her but for Anakin as well. Who do you think has been helping him to control his dark urges? Believe me, they’re there. He feels them just as strongly as I do, but so far I’ve managed to help him control it.”

               “Like I said, Rey and Luke will be there,” Poe says as he crosses and uncrosses his arms over his chest. “I’m sure they’ll be able to help him.”

               “They won’t,” Kylo insists. “Even Luke must know that they can’t understand; their connection to him isn’t the same.”

               “Okay, you’re right,” Poe relents. “I don’t know anything about this, but she’s there, right? She can look after him and help him if something starts to-“

               The connection starts to waver slightly, and you’re not sure if it’s because you’re losing your connection to Poe or what, but suddenly you can see Kylo’s flash of anger as he’s surrounded by guards, and you hear a man’s voice telling him that they need to move out immediately. You can hear Kylo asking, no, demanding one more minute, telling Poe something about one last thing he had to do, or one last thing he had to know, but the connection isn’t clear and as you strain to figure out what he was trying to say, your vision suddenly cuts to black.

               Before you can even take stock of yourself, the next thing you know you are flying into the back wall of Poe’s room, the backs of your shoulders slamming into its hard surface before you drop to your knees and slump to the floor. Your vision blacks in and out again, but through the haze, you can see Rey standing in front of the bed, her arm stretched out in front of her, and you realize implicitly that she had been the one to knock you away from Poe. As your vision clears, you can see Poe slumped over, holding his head in one hand, with Finn kneeling down beside him, trying to make sure he’s all right. “Yeah, buddy, yeah, I’m okay,” Poe tells him, but his voice is weak, and you slowly glance away from him to meet Rey’s eyes. She looks angry and disappointed and disapproving all at once, and as you try to get to your feet you realize that you can’t move, that Rey is keeping you there until they can decide what to do about your latest transgression.

               Suddenly, you slump back to the floor completely as Rey goes flying back against the wall to the other side of her, and she lets out a brief yelp of surprise as she’s held there, struggling against the Force grip that is binding her there. Finn and Poe immediately turn to you, but you’re clearly not doing it as you struggle to get to your feet, still feeling knocked off balance by the sudden attack and by what you had just witnessed. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see Ani lying still hidden on the top bunk, his hand just barely stretched out in front of him as he focuses on holding Rey in place.

               “Stop,” Poe commands as he gets to his feet and straightens himself up. “Everybody just calm down.” Ani’s grip on Rey loosens, and she quickly picks herself up front the wall as she readjusts the front of her tunic.

               “Are you all right?” Rey asks as she turns to Poe, but he just gives her a quick shake of his head that you can’t really read one way or the other.

               “I’m fine,” he says dismissively, but there’s a certain heat behind his words that immediately puts you on edge as he turns to glare at you. “Stay here,” he warns you, but he says nothing further to Ani as he turns to head out of the room. Finn shakes his head in disapproval before he follows him out, and Rey gives you an uncertain, concerned look before she follows after them, closing the door behind her as she goes.

               You sigh as you slump back down against the far wall again, burying your face in your hands. “What did you do?” Ani mutters, his voice bordering on the edge of sleepiness.

               “I got answers,” you reply, your voice solemn as you suddenly glance back up. You turn to face him to explain what you just saw, but he just shakes his head as he throws his legs off the top of the bunk bed.

               “This whole situation is so screwed up,” he murmurs as he hops down, landing on his feet with one palm flat on the floor and one arm thrown back behind him for balance.

               “Where are you going?” you ask immediately as you take a few steps towards him, but Ani just shakes his head like he doesn’t want to talk.

               “I need to take a walk,” he tells you without looking at you, and you can’t help but sigh.

               “Just, don’t leave the base?” you ask, but Ani just shrugs dismissively as he turns and leaves the room. You figured a part of him didn’t want to be there while you and Poe had it out, whenever he came back, but another part of you was more than just a little concerned. Ani was moodier than you’d ever seen him, and the change that had seemed to take over him since Kylo had been taken away was drastic. He had always seemed so mature and independent before, and now you almost wondered if that was the role he knew Kylo wanted him to play, and thus he was just trying to put on the best, most responsible image he could for his sake. Now Kylo was gone and he had no one to impress. He could act his true self around you, you were relieved that at least he wasn’t afraid to hide how he was really feeling from you, but another part of you couldn’t help but wonder where this new moody persona was coming from, and if you’d be enough to help him through it.

               You consider following him out, but a part of you knows that will only make things worse for yourself, and so you decide to stay put. You feel completely drained, both emotionally and physically, and although you want to lie down, you suddenly don’t feel comfortable doing it in Poe’s bed when he was quite clearly so angry at you. No, you didn’t want to be anywhere near his bed right now, and so you walked right back to the spot where Rey had thrown you as you slump against the wall and let your back trail down to the floor, where you rest with your knees slumped against your chest. You wrap your arms around your legs and rest your cheek against the cool fabric of your pants as you wait, and wait, and wait for Poe to return.

               When he finally does, your eyes are oddly wet, although you can’t honestly remember if you had actively been crying. It hadn’t felt like you had, but you couldn’t deny that when you sat up to look at him, it felt as though the tops of your cheeks were wet with the sticky trail that your tears had left. Poe doesn’t say anything for a few moments as he looks down at you, clearly still angry, and you only wrap your arms around yourself tighter as you hug your knees into your chest and try to make yourself small.

               “Why did you do that?” Poe asks at length, and you can tell that he wants an honest answer, but you almost don’t trust your voice to speak. “Why don’t you trust me? I told you that you could ask me anything, there was no need to do that.”

               “I just wanted to see Kylo again,” you whimper quietly, and Poe looks to the side as he lets out a frustrated exhale. “It’s not that I didn’t trust you, I just wanted to see him, I wanted to hear his voice, I wanted to see what he said myself.”

               Poe hesitates for a moment, and you know on some level he understands you, he really honestly does, but the ends didn’t justify the means. “You will _never_ do that again,” he tells you, and you sense something vaguely menacing in his tone as you slowly nod your head forward. “Promise me.”

               “I promise,” you reply softly, and you meet his eyes for only a moment to show him that you mean it before you drop your gaze again, staring resolutely at the corner of the wall where it met the hard floor.

               Poe studies you for a moment, but you can’t bring yourself to meet his eyes again. You had given him reason upon reason not to trust you after what happened on Tatooine, but he had more or less assumed that to be Snoke’s influence and tried to look past it. Now you were giving him a reason to convince him that your behavior on Tatooine was possibly permanent, and that was clearly not something he wanted to get involved with when he had just given Kylo his word that he would look after you. “Get to bed,” he says at length, and you get to your feet, feeling like an errant child as you slump into the lower bunk and roll into the corner, as far away from him as you could possibly go to give him as much space as he needed.

               You can hear him crawl slightly onto the bed, and that’s when you feel a pinch in the back of your arm. You immediately wince as he injects something into your upper arm, but you don’t even have time to let out a cry of panic as you suddenly begin to feel very, very drowsy, as if pushing thoughts through your conscious mind suddenly took a considerable amount of effort. “I have stuff that I need to take care of,” Poe tells you, his voice as firm as ever. “Just a precaution to make sure that you won’t go anywhere. Get some rest. I’ll be back to check on you later.”

               You have no idea if he waits around to see if you’re really out of it or not, as blackness overtakes your vision and everything suddenly slips away from you. A part of you should have been concerned that Poe was possibly going to throw you in chains and lock you in a cell of your own, perhaps turn you over to the Republic so that you could have a little televised trial for yourself, although you could be sure that there would probably be a lot less people interested, and the Resistance would probably not spend much time finding witnesses to provide a proper defense. It was almost strange how apathetic you were to this idea; now that Kylo was gone, it felt like nothing mattered anymore, and you weren’t the only one that felt that way. Ani seemed to be just as lost without Kylo there as you were, but you couldn’t think of anything at the moment to help him feel better. There was nothing you could say, you knew that implictly, but you were going to have a hard time reaching out to him and at least trying to help him believe that everything was going to be okay when you could barely keep it together yourself.

               When you next come to, you’re lying face down on Poe’s bed, and you slowly roll your head to the side as the familiar sound of Poe’s gentle snoring fills your ears. You slide your legs out of bed, feeling at least considerably better than you had when you had first fallen asleep, as you slowly get out of bed and climb nervously to your feet. Poe is still sound asleep on the top bunk, lying on his stomach with one arm draped over the edge over the railing. You watch him for a few moments, letting your heart sink in your chest as you realized that was probably the way things were going to be from now on. Poe was going to be constantly on his guard around you, constantly vigilant and alert, and you almost considered the fact that he had knocked you out because he didn’t trust you not to attack him in his sleep. You knew that wasn’t why, but a part of you couldn’t help but wonder as you sat back down on the lower bunk, letting the tingling feeling of numbness settle back into your core.

               You lie on your back just staring at the bottom of the top bunk, not tired, but feeling drained all the same. You had screwed everything up, absolutely every word you said was wrong, every move you made was a mistake, and there was no coming back from that now. A part of you was hoping that once Poe woke up he would escort you to a cell once and for all so that you could just lie there, facedown, for the rest of your natural life, where you wouldn’t be forced to be accountable to anyone. You had already done enough damage without meaning to, and you were only going to keep making more and more mistakes as the days went by, and it was only a matter of time before you did something that no one could forgive you for, and you didn’t know quite how to deal with things when that happened. At least then you and Kylo would both be prisoners, although you failed to see how that would help either one of you, or Ani, and he seemed to need all the help he could get in his current state.

               Regardless, you just lie there and focus on your thoughts until you can hear Poe stirring overhead. You’re not quite sure that you have anything to say to him, and so you just lie there until he finally pushes himself awake. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see Poe swing his legs off the side of the railing as Ani had done the night prior as he hops down, and you just roll away from him, pretending to be asleep.

               Regardless, Poe seems to be able to sense you’re alert, or at the very least awake, as he nudges your arm softly. “Hey, you up?”

               “Sure,” you reply, your voice immediately betraying you. It’s much too firm and much too indifferent for someone who had just woken up only a second ago. To his credit, Poe just lets out a sigh as he leans over the bed, choosing his next words carefully.

               “This isn’t how I wanted things either,” he offers, but you just shrug indifferently. “I know this isn’t easy for you, and I’m trying to help you, but I can’t if you won’t even give me that opportunity.”

               You just snort as you shake your head. “It doesn’t matter,” you tell him, your voice at the height of ambivalence. “If anything, I’m not even the one you should be scared of right now. I’m at least trying to hold it together, but Ani? I don’t know how he’s going to pull through this.”

               “Ani?” Poe asks, and his voice is a mix of alarm and confusion. “What’s wrong with Ani?”

               You can’t help but screw up your face as you roll over to face him, propping yourself up on one elbow. “Um, how about when he Force choked Ladson? Were you just dismissing that as an emotional outburst in a moment of grief, or-?”

               “He did _what_?” Poe demands, and you can’t help but raise your eyebrows as you look away. Apparently Ladson had kept quiet, maybe out of shame, maybe to protect Ani, but either way, Poe knew about it now, and if he knew about it, you were sure that other people were going to know about it soon enough, people like Ackbar, and Ematt, people with authority who could do something and take action against Ani if they so chose to.

               “You didn’t know about that?” you ask, your voice suddenly much lighter, as if you were trying to write off the whole incident, but Poe just narrows his eyes at you.

               “Where is he now?” Poe demands, and there’s something in his voice that you don’t like.

               “Last night he said he was going for a walk,” you tell him before something suddenly dawns on you. “Hasn’t, hasn’t anyone seen him?”

               “No,” Poe replies quietly, and you exchange a worried glance as suddenly all of the tension between you over the course of the past night drifts away. Poe offers you his hand and you take it without hesitation as he helps pull you to your feet.

               “Where did you think he could have gone?” you ask as you follow Poe out of his room. In the back of your mind, you were glad that Poe didn’t tell you to stay put, because this was your _son_ , and with Kylo gone, he was the only thing you had left. There wasn’t a chance you would just stay put when your son was missing, and on some level, you suspected Poe knew that.

               Fortunately, you don’t have far to look, as BB-8 comes rolling towards you from the other end of the hallway, beeping excitedly. “He went where?” Poe asks, and he lets out a frustrated sigh of annoyance as he turns to you. “BB-8 says last night he took a ship and ran off. He hasn’t come back yet.”

               “Did he leave the atmosphere?” you ask, looking from Poe to the small round droid, who only lets out a small beep that you assumed was a _no._

“Come on,” Poe says quickly, and BB-8 scoots a little ways to the side to let you pass before he follows you down the hallway heading towards the hangar. He lets out a small series of shrill beeps, and Poe just nods his head forward as he listens. “Thanks, pal.”

               “What?” you ask quickly. “What, what’s it saying?”

               “He’s already got a shuttle prepped and ready to go,” he says as he glances towards you, but he seems to hesitate before he looks at you again, like he was suddenly just seeing you for the first time.

               “What?” you ask quickly. “What’s wrong?”

               “Your flight clearance has been revoked,” Poe explains quickly. “You’re no longer permitted to enter the hangar, let alone-“

               “Are you kidding me?” you ask dryly, continuing to walk step by step beside him towards the hangar. “Ani is out there, by himself, scared and confused and upset and _armed_ and you’re going to leave me here because of _protocol_?”

               “No,” Poe replies simply. “But I’m just letting you know what we’re getting into before we take off.”

               “Meaning you’re going to take some heat for this?” you ask as you arch an eyebrow, and Poe just shakes his head dismissively. “See, this is why we would have never worked out.”

               “Now?” Poe asks incredulously, but at least he makes no signs of slowing down. “Really? You want to do this _now_?”

               “No,” you insist. “But I’m just saying, something like this was going to happen sooner or later, and believe it or not, I actually _don’t_ like putting you in this positon. I don’t like to see you putting yourself in a situation where you’re clearly going to get in trouble because of me.”

               “That’s nice of you to say,” Poe says as he pauses outside the hangar doors to turn back to look at you. “But I get into enough trouble on my own. Just follow me and don’t try to call attention to yourself. You ready?”

               “Always am,” you reply with a sigh, and BB-8 lets out a quick beep as Poe turns to the left, assumingly following BB-8’s directions. He pauses for a brief moment as he digs through a pocket in his jacket and pulls out his comlink, an alert chirping with activity as soon as he turned it on.

               “Dameron,” he replies immediately, his eyes front and center, as he continues walking.

               “Captain, finally,” an unknown voice sighs. “This is FOP-9, we’ve been trying to raise you for nearly an hour now. BlueLeaf was supposed to return with the _Highwind_ three hours ago, but Control has informed us that the ship is unaccounted for.”

               “I know, BB-8 just told me,” Poe replies quickly. “Have you been able to track it?”

               “Negative, sir,” the voice replies. “ _Vigilant_ ’s planetary scans show no sign of the ship, and transponders are unresponsive.”

               “Well, he couldn’t have gone far, not in a Seventeen,” is Poe’s reply. “Why didn’t you send a runner if you couldn’t raise me?”

               “Control didn’t want to call attention to the gravity of the situation. They wanted to keep it discreet, sir.”

               Poe sighs as he rolls his eyes in your direction, and for a moment you almost wonder if it had something to do with you. “I understand. I’m on my way.” You just keep your head high as you walk along beside him, trying to walk as normally as possible without hurrying. It was still early, and the hangar was fairly more crowded than you had initially expected it would be.

               Poe had told you not to try to call attention to yourself, but you were not the one turning heads as he walked through the hangar, and you silently cursed yourself for underestimating Poe’s popularity. One of the men who is working on an X-Wing nearby comes over as Poe is about to pass, and you can’t help but curse under your breath, almost prepared to take him out if he intended to stop you. “On your left,” you mutter as a word of warning, but Poe just raises his hand slightly by his side to his side to show that he had the situation under control.

               “Hey there, Black Leader,” the man greets, and you can tell by the smile on Poe’s face that this person wasn’t a threat, at least, not yet.

               “Hey,” Poe says amicably in reply. “How’s it going?”

               “Oh, you know,” the man replies with an idle shrug. “Just fixing up the calibrators on my engine. The Raeon-Ulzer Nine Series is definitely an improvement over the last thrusters I had installed, but it’s taking a bit to sync them up with the new cycling rear shield generators we mounted on the hull a few weeks back; the shields keep getting shorted out by the engine wash.”

               “Yeah, I figured that’d be an issue when I first saw them,” Poe echoes, but you can tell that he’s just as eager to move along as you are, before you draw any more unnecessary attention to yourself.

               “Hey, I heard one of your guys took the new IF X-17 scout shuttle out for a test run last night,” the man continues. “Hasn’t come back yet.”

               “Technical problems,” Poe replies immediately, without missing a beat. “Was just headed out there to give him a hand, that’s all.”

               “Ah,” the man nods his head forward before he suddenly turns to face you directly. He pauses for a moment, like he’s not quite sure what to do or how to respond, before he looks back at Poe. “Is she, uh, is she allowed to be in here again?”

               “She’s under my direct supervision,” Poe tells him confidently, and the man slowly nods his head forward before he glances back at you and forces a small smile in your direction.

               “Hi,” he says in way of greeting, although his words come out a bit forced and awkward. “How are you?”

               “Good,” you reply, your voice full of that same awkward sense of unease. “And yourself?”

               “Good,” he echoes, but he’s clearly uncomfortable with the situation as he turns back to Poe. “I’ll just let you, ah-“

               “Yeah,” Poe says quickly, and he claps the man on the back before he turns back to his X-Wing. “See?” he asks under his breath as he turns to you. “Piece of cake.”

               You just nod your head quickly as you follow Poe down a few neat lines of parked ships until you arrive at a shuttle with the boarding ramp already extended. BB-8 lets out two beeps in quick succession, and Poe nods his head as he quickly grabs you by your upper arm and ushers you onto the ship first, before anyone had time to notice you were there. You head over to the cockpit, considering plopping down in the pilot’s seat, but you had no idea where you were going and while you could make the argument that you were necessary as a passenger, Poe had told you that your flight clearance had been revoked, and you didn’t want to make an already terrible situation any worse than it had to be.

               You quickly scamper into the co-pilot’s seat, and Poe plops down in the pilot’s chair without any hint of knowing that you had secretly wanted to fly this thing in search of Ani. As he begins the start-up procedure on the console, you can’t help but turn around and notice BB-8 rolling into the cockpit. “What is that thing doing here?” you ask, and BB-8 lets out a few muted beeps as he swivels his domed head in your direction.

               “Not now,” Poe sighs as he presses down on the comlink. “Controller, this is Black Leader, do you copy? I was headed out to help with the, uh, technical difficulties that BlueLeaf had been experiencing with the _Highwind_. Do you have its last known location on your scanners?”

               “I don’t like you,” you whisper to BB-8, who just gives one long low hum in response.

               “That’s a negative, Black Leader,” the Controller responds. “All communications and navigation systems have been disabled, although our ships report that it hasn’t left atmos.”

               “Just a technical glitch,” Poe says firmly as he glances at you. “Don’t worry, we’ll find him and bring him home safe and sound. We clear for departure?”

               “That’s a negative, Black Leader,” is the Controller response, and Poe’s eyebrows momentarily knot together in confusion. “We have reports that Moonstaff is on board and she’s not clear for-“

               “She has the Force,” Poe explains quickly. “She can help find him, and right now, I need her to help me do this. She’s under my direct supervision; she won’t give me any trouble.”

               There’s silence on the other end, and Poe waits with his forehead creased, gnawing on his lower lip as he waits impatiently to hear the reply. “Would it help if I promised to be good?” you whisper quietly, but Poe just holds up one hand to silence you.  

               “Okay, Black Leader, you are cleared for departure,” the Controller replies, and both you and Poe let out an audible sigh of relief as Poe starts up the ship and navigates it out of the hangar.

               “Thank you,” you tell him firmly once you are safely in D’Qar’s atmosphere. You don’t know what exactly you’re thanking him for, probably for everything. “I know I cause way more trouble than I’m worth, but-“

               “This time it looks like Ani’s causing some trouble all on his own,” Poe muses. “To be honest, I was wondering when it was going to happen.”

               “ _When?_ ” you echo. “Ani’s a good kid. He doesn’t act like this, he doesn’t _do_ things like this. He’s mature, and responsible, and-“

               “And he’s still just a kid,” Poe points out. “A kid who just lost his dad. You were – thankfully – you weren’t there to see him when he thought he lost both you and Ren when we were leaving the _Propitiate_. I don’t even have words to describe how inconsolable he was, lashing out at everyone around him. Even when Luke and Rey came to try to help, he didn’t want to even let them near your bodies at first. He was, just, he was a mess.” Poe shakes his head from side to side, but doesn’t turn to look at you as you turn this piece of information over in your mind.

               “No one told me,” you say immediately. “No one told me that happened. When I woke up, he was upset, sure, but more or less the same old Ani as he’s always been.”

               “Nothing to tell,” Poe said with a shrug. “No one holds that against him. There’s no good way to cope with losing both of your parents, especially when they both died to save your life.” He looks back at you. “But you’re back now, and all of that’s in the past.”

               “I’m back,” you agree. “But Kylo’s not. I’ve always been there for him, and he’s used to me being there, but who he really needs is his dad. He spent a lot more time training with Kylo than he ever did with me, and I don’t know what he’ll do now that Kylo’s gone.”

               “He’ll figure something out,” Poe offers, but you just shake your head.

               “He doesn’t _want_ to,” you say, not sure how much clearer you can make it. “He doesn’t want to figure out how to move on, he just wants his father back.”

               “I’m not sure how much I can help with that,” Poe admits quietly, but you just shake your head from side to side as you drop your gaze. Poe’s position in the Resistance could help with a lot of things, but it was beginning to look like getting Kylo back wasn’t one of them. You had already asked too much of him, you knew that, but you weren’t sure just how you or Ani were going to be able to get along without Kylo. He had become a permanent fixture in your life, and while you had been able to try to move on from him once, you knew implicitly that it was not going to happen again. You wanted Kylo there, needed him beside you, and you weren’t sure you could honestly help Ani when you were suffering through the same affliction.

               “So you want to tell me why you hate my droid?” Poe asks, trying to inject some bit of humor into the conversation as you turn back to face BB-8.

               “This thing caused Kylo a lot of trouble,” you remind him as you glance aside at him. “And he almost made things very difficult for us when we were trying to escape Naboo.” You can’t help but eye him suspiciously. “And I’m not sure what he’s doing now.”

               BB-8 swivels his head around to look at Poe as he emits a long series of beeps and whistles. “Ani’s a friend,” Poe translates for you. “And he’s in trouble, BB-8 just wants to help.”

               The idea of being friends with a droid honestly seems a bit ridiculous to you, considering it was just a bunch of parts, but you couldn’t help but admit that BB-8 had been friends with Ani when he was a child, and perhaps there was some sense of nostalgia that the droid could appeal to in order to help Ani get through this, especially considering Kylo hadn’t been there for him at that time. “How’s he going to help?” you ask, folding your arms over your chest, and BB-8 emits a quick beep and a whistle that results in Poe turning around to give him a scandalized look.

               “Look, is it really so difficult for you two to just get along?” Poe asks at length as he turns back to you, and you can’t help but scoff as you spread your hands.

               “Me?” you demand. “I didn’t even say anything. _He_ just insulted _me._ ”

               “And you insulted him,” Poe sighs. “I’m not taking sides; this is something you two have to work out on your own.”

               He glances away in frustration, and you can’t help but lower your gaze before you look back at BB-8. He swivels his small head around to look at you, fixing you with his beady black eye. “Okay,” you say at length. “I’m sorry that I’ve threatened to sell you for parts-“

               BB-8 lets out three quick excited whistles. “And tried to destroy him,” Poe translates, and you can’t help but look affronted as you glance between them.

               “What? No,” you insist. “ _Kylo_ wanted you destroyed, and I just happened to agree with him, but I’m not the one who fired at you.” BB-8 just lets out another short beep as you roll your eyes. “But you obviously care about Ani, and I care about Poe, so for their sake, do you think that maybe we could _try_ to get along?”

               BB-8 looks over at Poe, who glances over at you with a small smile playing on his lips. “He says that sounds like a good idea,” Poe tells you, and you can’t help but smile in response.

               “Okay then,” you reply as you turn around to face D’Qar’s bright blue sky again. “Then let’s go find my son.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Poe, BB-8 and Reader have set off on their quest to find Ani, who is clearly in the middle of some sort of a breakdown? Panic attack? Existential crisis? All of the above? We are slowly winding down to the conclusion of this tale....only 15 more chapters are left!! Are you excited? Nervous? Terrified? ....all of the above? Check back in on Tuesday to see if Reader will be able to find Ani and snap him out of it. Until then, cheers!!


	71. Chapter 71

               The rolling green hills, the dark verdant forests, and the crumbling, rocky mountain faces all started to look the same from your high altitude, especially when you were _sure_ that you were passing the same formations for the fourth time. Your shuttle had circled the planet about three times over, but you weren’t getting any clear sense of where Ani was. He had somehow managed to disable the location and the navigation systems in the _Highwind_ so that the Resistance was unable to find him, and now you were unable to sense him as well. You closed your eyes and focused as hard as you could, but while you could feel that Ani was _nearby_ , you couldn’t pinpoint his location to any particular cave or rock formation.

               “I don’t know where he is,” you admit after a while as you shake your head. The Control had already checked in twice to see what the status of the _Highwind_ was, and Poe’s adamant defense that nothing was wrong, that you were almost there, was starting to border on unbelievable. He didn’t want to raise the Resistance’s alarms any more than you did, but at this point it was his responsibility to declare Ani officially missing and order a formal search party for him. Considering how much that could jeopardize his future with the Resistance if he ever wanted to become a pilot, Poe didn’t want to do it, but his frustration with the situation was quickly becoming apparent.

               “What do you mean you don’t _know_?” Poe demands as he turns to you. “We’ve been around this planet three times now. Shouldn’t you have gotten a sense, or a feeling, or something like that?”

               “No,” you snap back, unable to conceal your irritability with the situation either. Poe had his ties to the Resistance, but this was your _son._ While he was worried about Ani’s potential future, you were worried about his present. What if the reason you hadn’t felt anything was because something had seriously happened to him? What if he had _crashed_? Poe had already told you that that was impossible, that if he had crashed, the ship would have sent out a distress beacon regardless of if Ani disabled the controls, but that honestly didn’t make you feel any better. “I don’t know where he is, how much clearer can I _fucking_ make it? I. Don’t. _Know_.”

               BB-8 chirps something from behind you, and you swore if that droid was going to suggest circling the planet one more time, you were going to disengage the boarding ramp and roll it straight off the back of the ship. “BB-8, that’s not helping,” Poe replies, and you can tell by his tone and his uneasy glance over at you that the droid had attempted to insult you in some way.

               You roll your eyes and try to ignore it, but BB-8’s beeping continues, churning out a much longer phrase. “Okay,” Poe said loudly. “Okay, I see your point, but can we not start a fight right now?”

               “A fight?” you echo as you turn around to face him. “Is that droid trying to pick a fight with me?” BB-8 doesn’t say anything as he swivels his head around so that he pretended to be looking out the front window instead, but you narrow your eyes anyway as you hold out your hand in a classic gesture of the Force.

               “Maybe you should power off for a little bit,” you tell him, and although you don’t actually mean to go through with the gesture, BB-8 feels considerably threatened as he rolls towards you. You’re wondering if he’s going to try to nudge you to death before you suddenly feel a violent shock spreading up your arm as you jerk your hand away from him.

               “What the _shit_?” you yell loudly as you clutch your hand to your chest, and as BB-8 rolls away from you, you can hear him beeping excitedly, as if he was pleased about what he had just done. You glare at him but keep your temper in check as you see Poe eyeing you warily. The last thing you needed was to hurt his droid in some way and watch him retaliate by picking up the comlink and telling someone that Ani had purposely disengaged the location systems and you were going to need help finding him.

               BB-8 turns around and says something else, and you turn to face Poe expectantly. “He says you’re even,” Poe tells you, but you just shake your head as you glance back out the front of the shuttle again.

               “We need to focus on more important things right now,” you say in an attempt to try to take charge of the situation. “This clearly isn’t working.”

               “Any bright ideas?” Poe asks, but you can’t do much but admit that you don’t even have one.

               “Let me try to focus again,” you say quietly as you close your eyes, trying to tune everything out as you focus on Ani. You try to picture him, but when you do, all that comes to you now is the image of him back on Naboo, playing with Kylo when he was a little boy. You remember the three of you sitting in the grass out in the sun, mentally floating Ani’s staff back and forth to one another as Naboo’s gentle breeze ruffled Kylo’s long hair, blowing it away from his face. You can picture his shy, tentative smile, as if he almost couldn’t believe that he was allowing himself to feel this happy, and as he looked at you, you could see the warmth in his eyes, the tender expression that he reserved for you and you alone. It almost made you-

               _I miss him too._

“Stop.” The words are out of your mouth before you’re even aware you’re saying anything as your eyes fly wide open, and without thinking your arm jerks out in front of you and points down and to the left. You have to adjust yourself in your seat before you can see it, but up ahead of you looks to be a series of dark caves, small pits in a scaled rock face, and Poe lets out a small hum before he pulls back around and hovers the ship, as if trying to figure out what to do next.

               “You sure he’s down there?” Poe asks without looking at you, and you bite your lip uncertainly as you stare into the scaly rock face ahead. You don’t see Ani, or the sign of any ship, but you could feel that he was close by, in your heart of hearts, you could feel your son. The Force was telling you that he was nearby, and you had to trust the Force.

               “I heard his voice in my head,” you tell him. “He’s here, and if he’s not in there, then he’s definitely close by.”

               “Okay,” Poe says as if that’s good enough for him. “BB-8?” BB-8 lets out a few cheerful beeps and whistles, and you’re not sure where along the line a droid got to have an opinion, but it looks like it agreed with you nonetheless.

               Poe pushes the shuttle into a slow descent, and now you can clearly see why he was concerned. The caves ahead look far too small for the shuttle you were navigating, and silently you wondered how Ani somehow managed to get his ship in there. He used the Force, you didn’t doubt that, but Poe had years and years of experience and had probably had to get in and out of tighter spots, and if _he_ was having trouble, then you could only imagine that Ani must had a much more difficult time of it. You hadn’t actually taken the time to consider that the ship really _was_ damaged, but perhaps there was more of a reason that he hadn’t reached out to you than you had originally thought.

               BB-8 lets out a sudden loud beep, and Poe nods his head quickly. “I see it too,” he says firmly, eyes set with concentration as he slowly steers the ship a bit upwards and to the right. You don’t see whatever they do, but Poe looks as focused as you’ve ever seen him, and you just keep your mouth shut and sit there quietly. If you happened to say or do something that caused Poe’s ship to become damaged as well, you would never, ever, _ever_ , live to hear the end of it. Not only that, but you could be sure that your flight revocation status would move from _temporary_ to _permanent._

Poe seems to _just_ manage to get into the entrance of the cave as he slowly navigates its thick walls, and as he turns a small corner, you can just manage to see the white speck of the back of the wing of a ship in the distance. “This shuttle’s too big,” Poe says as he shakes his head. “I can’t go any further. It looks like we’re walking from here.”

               “Okay,” you acquiesce quietly before you’re suddenly taken aback. “Wait, what do you mean, _we_?”

               “We,” Poe confirms. “If there’s anything wrong with that ship-“

               “Forget about the ship,” you tell him firmly. “ _Ani_ is out there, and he’s upset. I don’t know if you’re the first person he really wants to see right now.”

               “Me?” Poe asks incredulously. “I-“

               “He saw you talking to Kylo before he was basically pushed onto a ship and flown off Corellia,” you explain. “And he’s not exactly happy that you didn’t do more for Kylo.” Poe looks like he’s about to argue, but you hold your hand before he can say anything more. “I know, I know, there’s nothing more you could have done for him, but the point is-“

               “BB-8?” Poe asks as he turns his head to the side, and you’re about to ask him what BB-8 has to do with _anything_ when suddenly you notice that the little droid is gone.

               “ _Dammit,_ ” you hiss under your breath, and you quickly jump to your feet as you chase him down the boarding ramp, with Poe following at your heels. Nevertheless, BB-8 had a considerable head start, and he reaches Ani sooner than you can.

               Ani is sitting on the edge of the ship, his legs dangling off the edge, silent as you approach. You know he can feel you through the Force, but even still, you approach cautiously, not wanting to startle him in any way. BB-8 had stopped to allow you and Poe to catch up, and now you gestured for them to hang back, to make sure Ani was okay for yourself before they approached and possibly made things worse. You didn’t think you had any real concern with the droid, but you weren’t quite sure how Ani would react to seeing Poe there.

               “Hey Ani,” you say quietly in the most soothing voice you can muster as you come around the side of the ship to get a good look at his face. He’s sitting there staring off into space, his features full of dejection and sadness as his eyes remain fixated on a small spot of wall in front of him. “You doing okay?”

               “I couldn’t stay there,” Ani tells you, although he doesn’t look at you while he speaks. “No one cares about what happened. No one cares that he’s gone. I heard that they were planning to host some sort of a party to celebrate a _successful_ trial. My father is gone, I’ll probably never see him again, but as long as he’s not a problem for the Resistance or the Republic, then who cares, right?”

               “I care,” you say firmly, and you quickly jump up into the air until you land firmly on the ship beside him. You plant one hand firmly behind you as you drape your legs over the edge next to his, wrapping one arm around him as you sit down beside him. You know Poe and BB-8 are watching you, but they’ve suddenly become less than important spectators in all of this. This was between you and Ani and Kylo, this was between _family_ , and you didn’t think anyone at the Resistance could truly appreciate the bond that the three of you shared. It wasn’t just that Kylo was gone, it was a piece of yourself that was gone as well, and there was nothing that you could do to possibly heal that loss. The others could try to distract you from it, but it wouldn’t be the same, and on some level, you suspected Ani knew that as well.

               “What can we do to get him back?” he asks as he looks at you, and you can’t help but pause as you consider what it is that you _can_ do. You had to do _something_ , and clearly crossing your fingers and hoping things would turn out in your favor wasn’t the right way to go. You wanted to put your trust in Poe and hope that there was something he could do, some leverage to help you against the Resistance, but it was beginning to look like his hands were tied as well. Instead, you had to stop waiting around and do something yourself, despite your concerns that you may make the same grave mistakes that you had made on the _Propitiate._ You couldn’t just live out the rest of your life in a state of ambiguity, letting everyone else make decisions for you, simply because you couldn’t deal with your own past. If you did, you weren’t going to have much of a future.

               “I’m going to talk to Ematt,” you tell him firmly, and as Ani looks up in surprise, you’re pleased to see another emotion cross his face besides the sadness he had been feeling as of late. “I’m going to tell him, no, I’m going to _order_ him to fix this. He may not be willing to bring him back right away, but there’s got to be a way to convince him that Kylo’s life is worth something here on base, and that he’s needed _here_ , not just out there.”

               “Do you think he’ll listen to you?” Ani asks quietly, and you can see trepidation behind his eyes. He wants to believe you, he wants to believe that you’ll be able to fix this so badly, and that inspires you more than anything.

               “I will,” you tell him. “As soon as we get back, I’m going to ask Poe to send word to Ematt and tell him to get his butt back to base, because-“

               “But he’s already on base,” Ani tells you, and something about this makes you freeze mid-sentence.

_Already on base? But did that mean-?_

“No,” Ani confirms. “No, Kylo’s not with him. Like I said, they’re having this big celebration for the trial, celebrating his and Wedge’s _accomplishments_ and Father isn’t even going to be there.”

“So you mean Kylo is off fighting for his life while Ematt gets drunk off his ass?” you demand angrily as you push yourself off the ship. “Well, _fuck that_.” You land a bit harder than you mean to on both feet, stooping down low and pushing yourself back up to a standing positon as your heels take most of the force of the impact. “Turn this hunk of junk around, Ani, we’re headed back there so I can trade words with the Colonel.”

“No, you’re not,” Poe says firmly, and you wheel around to face him indignantly.

“We’re not?” you echo as you scoff incredulously. “So, what, you expect us to walk back then?”

“Didn’t we tell them that something had happened to the navigation and location systems?” Poe asks. “We’ll all head back in the ship we came in, and I’ll come out here with someone later to _repair_ the ship before anyone can figure out what really happened.”

“What really happened?” Ani asks as he turns to face Poe. “The navigation and location systems _are_ broken.”

Poe narrows his eyes before he silently starts walking towards the ship, and Ani makes no attempt to stop him. You stare at Ani incredulously for a moment, but Ani just shrugs as he keeps his lips pursed firmly together. _Did you really destroy that ship?_ you ask incredulously, reaching out to him with your mind, but Ani just shrugs like he has no idea what you’re talking about. After a few minutes, you can see Poe come back down the boarding ramp, his face as stern as you’ve ever seen it.

“On the ship,” Poe says as he faces Ani, pointing in the direction you just came. “Now.”

Ani just dips his head to the side as he casts his eyes down towards BB-8. “Come on, BeeBee-Ate,” he murmurs as he starts to head back towards the entrance to the cave, and you turn back to Poe incredulously.

“He didn’t really destroy the ship?” you ask, but the bitter glance he sends your way tells you otherwise. “No, Ani is a _good kid._ He’s upset, but he knows better than to do something like that.”

Poe just glances aside as you as he works his jaw, as if he’s trying to figure something out. “Who taught him how to fly when he was growing up?” he asks at length. “You? Ren?”

“Ren and Phasma, mostly,” you tell him. “I know he did some training while I was on the _Propitiate_ , but I have no idea how extensive it was or the details of it or anything like that.” You pause for a moment as you consider him. “Why?”

“Nothing,” Poe says as he shakes his head. “Let’s just head back to the ship.”

“But-“ you start, but Poe gives you a look that tells you that he doesn’t want to talk right now, and you can’t help but groan loudly in frustration, your voice bouncing off the cave walls around you as you head back in the shuttle, pleased to see that Ani is at least smart enough not to take the pilot or co-pilot chairs. “What did you do to that ship, Ani?” you demand as you drop into your seat. “Whatever you did, Poe’s pretty pissed.”

“Pissed doesn’t even begin to describe it,” Poe says as he comes into the cockpit behind you, and your eyes widen as you turn towards Ani.

“You didn’t take your lightsaber to it?” you ask in disbelief, but it’s Poe who shakes his head before Ani can answer.

“No,” he admits as he once again resumes his post in the pilot’s chair. Nevertheless, he doesn’t start the ship as he turns around to face Ani again. “Who taught you how to mess with a ship’s wiring?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ani replies, his face completely deadpan, and you can’t believe that this is Anakin, your _son_ , that you were looking at. He seemed to have changed into a different person overnight, and you weren’t entirely sure what to make of it. A part of you almost couldn’t believe that losing Kylo would have such a profound effect on him. You were hurting too, but the shock of the utter change that was happening to your son combined with your almost disbelief that you were losing Kylo yet _again_ perhaps stopped you from feeling the loss as deeply as he was feeling it right now. You knew it would come and hit you again like a shipwreck, again and again and again, but it was no use dwelling over until you got back to base so you could do something about it.

“The ships in the First Order and the ships that we have here are fundamentally wired differently for a reason,” Poe tells him. “So I know you didn’t learn it over there. So tell me, who taught you how to disable the navigational systems so no one would track your ship?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ani insists, and you can’t help but side with Poe on this one as you turn to face him. Right now, it was going to take everything you had in order to try to convince Ematt to bring Kylo back, and having Ani purposely destroying Resistance property was going to get you nowhere. Not only was it not going to help your case, but it was seriously going to jeopardize Ani’s future with the Resistance if this is where he wanted to spend the rest of his life, or at least the next few years.

“Was it Asher?” you prompt. “Did Asher tell you how to do this?” Poe just raises an eyebrow as he glances at you out of the corner of his eye, as if this was something that he was considering as well. “Ani, this isn’t like you, please just tell us who helped you do this.”

“Can’t we just go back?” Ani asks, and Poe folds his arms across his chest as if there’s something he doesn’t quite understand.

“Why do you want to head back so soon?” Poe asks him. “You’ve been sitting in that cave all day, and if you knew how to unwire it, you could have figured out how to put it back together and flown back to D’Qar just as easily.” He leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “Were you waiting for someone out here?”

“No,” Ani replies quickly, but you can tell by the way he ducks his eyes that he’s not telling the absolute truth. You try to focus on his thoughts, but for some reason, they’re not coming to you as easily as they once did, and it doesn’t take you more than another moment to realize that he’s shielded himself, even from you.

“Seriously?” you demand, almost jumping out of your chair. “What are you _hiding_ from me, Ani? We don’t hide things from each other, we never have, remember?” For a moment, Ani looks almost guilty, before his face settles back into its same somber demeanor and says nothing.

“Is this about your father?” Poe asks at length. “Is this about Ren? Are you trying to act out in hopes that maybe they’ll bring him back if you cause enough trouble?”

“There’s no point,” Ani tells him suddenly, animosity flaring in his voice. Poe turns to you as he raises an eyebrow, but you have no idea what he means any more than you do.

“What has no point?” Poe asks calmly, and his voice is much gentler by comparison.

“There’s no point because none of this matters,” Ani insists. “Because if something happens to him when he’s out there, then there will be no one around to stop Snoke when he finally returns.” He turns back to you imploringly. “You know he will, and when he does, he’ll target me next, especially now that Father isn’t around to shield me from him. He was able to shield me before, back on the _Propitiate_ when he saw what was happening to you, but now he’s gone and no one will be able to protect me from this.”

You stay silent, letting the full weight of his words sink in. Snoke was going to target Ani, of course he was, that much was obvious, and you could only imagine the fear that Ani would have to go through, wondering the rest of his life whether or not he would ever truly be free of Snoke, or whether he would have to go his whole life watching his back, jumping at shadows, constantly on guard for whoever Snoke might possess next. You could only imagine that sense of paranoia slowly chipping you away at you to your core, and you could suddenly appreciate just how scared Ani was right now. He didn’t just miss his father, he was _scared_ , scared of losing himself like he had watched you lose yourself, and you couldn’t blame him for that.

Poe, however, looks less than impressed. “There are people here who care about you,” he says firmly. “People who would never let that happen to you. Me, your mom, Rey, Luke, the General, none of them would ever let Snoke take you.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” you snap at him suddenly, and out of the corner of your eye you can almost see the look of appreciation cross Ani’s features. “Seriously, stop talking about the Force like you know something about it. There are some things you can understand, and there’s other things that you can’t unless you’re actively going through it. You saw what happened to Rey, and she was right in front of you, as was Luke, as was Leia, as was Finn, and you didn’t stop her from her slow spiral because there’s no way you can control what a person _thinks_ , because you can’t control what goes on inside a person’s _mind_. The only person who can do that is Snoke, and Ani has every right to be concerned that Snoke might possibly come back and target him next.”

“Of course he does,” Poe says quickly, and he seems troubled that what he said might have been taken the wrong way. “But we stopped him before, right? _You_ stopped him, and even though Snoke may be getting stronger, so will the rest of us. We’ve seen what can happen, and we’re not going to let it happen again.”

“You can’t say that,” Ani sulks. “You don’t know.”

“I don’t,” Poe admits as he spreads his hands at his sides. “But I know that you can’t go running off destroying our ships and expecting me to cover for you.”

“I never asked you to,” Ani snaps, and you’re almost surprised how much his expression reminds you of Kylo’s when he says it, chin up slightly, dark eyes burning with an intense gaze that would unnerve even the bravest of souls. Poe, to his credit, doesn’t break, but he does weaken slightly as he glances aside towards you.

“I asked him to,” you say firmly. “Because I know that even though you’re upset right now, Kylo wanted you to stay here and I know that you’ll respect that because you respect _him_. He wants you to have a future here, some kind of life here, better than anything he or I could have provided you while we were on the run.”

“But they don’t respect him,” Ani points out. “They don’t care about his life. They’re hoping that he’s going to die trying to take out what’s left of the First Order.”

“But he’s not and you know that,” you say firmly, with new intensity behind your words. “Listen to me, Ani, you know he’s not. Kylo’s going to be fine because he’s _always. fine._ He’ll live through this because he’s lived through worse, and when the First Order is gone they’ll have nowhere else to put him but back on D’Qar, and he’s not going to be happy if he’s stuck there and you’ve been exiled because you were acting out against the Resistance.”

Fortunately, Ani seems to at least consider this as his expression softens slightly. “But who knows how long that will be,” he replies glumly, and it’s all you can do to steel your resolve and provide him with as much optimism as you can offer.

“I told you, I’m going to talk to Ematt,” you tell him as firmly as you can. “And when I’m done with him-“

“You don’t know Ematt,” Poe says, shaking his head. “He’s known Ren since he was a boy, and the General a lot longer than that. If she wasn’t able to convince him that Ren should be allowed back on base, then I doubt you’ll be able to.”

“Thanks for the confidence,” you reply bitterly. You remembered how Poe used to always inspire you in the past that you could do _anything_ , but it seemed now that the tables had turned and age had taken a toll on him too. He was just as war-torn and weary as anyone, forced to face casualty after casualty and watching his old friends get struck down in battle one after the other. He still tried to put on a positive front, you could see it, but the old optimism following the days just after the Resistance had struck down the Starkiller Base was long gone. When you had been on D’Qar last, they had all thought that this was a war that was going to be wrapped up quickly, especially with Kylo in custody, and instead it had dragged on for years and years, accumulating immeasurable losses on all sides.

Still, something about this doesn’t sound right to you. “And what do you mean that Leia didn’t have a say on whether or not Kylo can come back to base? It’s _her_ base.”

“There’s things I’m not at liberty to discuss,” Poe says stiffly. “But she was overruled. D’Qar has been so heavily fortified and shielded over the years that they don’t want to see it destroyed from the inside out. It wasn’t just Ematt, the vote was split, five to four.” You just shake your head from side to side, unable to believe that they would betray Leia this way. Maybe they honestly thought that they were doing what was best for the Resistance, but she had _started_ the Resistance, and even though she had since stepped down from official command, you felt that it should still have been her call either way.

“But _Ematt_ is the one that is in charge of Kylo, isn’t he?” you press. “Which means he has final say, and if the vote is split that close, then all I have to do is convince Ematt that Kylo’s life _is_ worth something, and he’ll be allowed to come back, won’t he?”

Poe just shakes his head as if it can’t possibly be that easy. “That’s even if he wants to see you,” he points out. “He’s not exactly pleased at just how much you helped out the First Order. He-“

“Wait, does that mean he voted against me at the trial?” you ask, and Poe suddenly turns away from you as he moves to start up the shuttle. “Are you _kidding_ me?” BB-8 says something from behind you, and you turn around to face him and Ani.

“He’s not the only one,” Ani offers glumly in translation, and you can’t help but cross your arms across your chest in frustration.

“That doesn’t matter now,” Poe insists as he cautiously tries to back the shuttle out of the cave. “What would you even say to him that makes you think you could change his mind?”

“I don’t know,” you admit, and BB-8 lets out another string of beeps and whistles from behind you.

“He wants to know if you’re planning on choking him to death until he agrees to what you want,” Ani tells you with some humor in his voice, and you can’t help but smirk.

“Well, that’s one way to do it,” you say as you tilt your head to the side, and you’re almost glad that Poe is concentrating on getting out of the tunnel so you can’t see the look that he wants to throw your way. “Oh, calm down, I’m not going to hurt him, I know the consequences if I do something like that, and none of them end up being very favorable to me _or_ Ani.”

“Then what are you going to do?” Poe asks, as if he genuinely wants to know.

“I don’t know,” you say with a sigh. “I’m just going to open my mouth and let the words come out. That’s always helped me in the past. I just have to, I don’t know, let the Force guide me. As lame as that sounds, if it’s the will of the Force that Kylo comes home, then I just have to trust it and listen to that part of me.”

“I need you to know-“ Poe’s voice cuts out as he gently pulls that ship out of the tunnel and turns it around so that you’re headed back towards D’Qar. Once he’s adjusted the ship’s altitude and took off at a normal speed, he feels comfortable enough to speak again. “I need you to know that I don’t think it’s a good idea that I’m part of this.”

“That’s fine,” you say dismissively, but Poe shoots you a look that borders on uncertainty as to how much he believes you. “No, I mean it, Poe, that’s fine. You’ve done far too much already and I don’t want you to get in trouble for this. This isn’t your mess, it’s mine, and I want to be the one to fix it myself.” You pause for a moment, thinking something over. “But you are on my side, right?” When Poe doesn’t answer right away, you quickly clarify your question. “I mean, do you think Kylo would be a danger if he returned to D’Qar? Yes or no?”

“No,” Poe replies immediately. “No, with you and Ani here, he has too much to lose. Would he try to potentially escape with you two again, that remains to be seen, but I don’t think he’s going to actively hurt anyone while he’s here.”

“Good,” you reply, unable to conceal your happy tone as a self-satisfied smirk spreads across your face. “Because he’s not. Kylo may have done unspeakable things in the past, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a good person.” You turn to Poe, filled with new optimism. “You’ve killed people and you think you’re still a good person, right?”

Poe just gnaws on his lower lip as he glances away, and suddenly you think that maybe that was a question you should have avoided asking. “I try not to ask myself that question anymore,” Poe says at length, and the shuttle immediately falls into uncomfortable silence. You had all done things that you regretted, you, Kylo, Poe, and you were sure that even Ani had done things that he had regretted as well. At least Ani hadn’t yet killed anyone, hadn’t yet been forced to deal with the internal consequences of what that felt like, but Poe had. When you had first met him, you thought that Poe had at least handled things better than you had, that he was able to assure himself that he was on the right side of this war and so all of his actions were justified in some way, and that’s how he was able to keep going and keep being so positive. Now, though, now you were beginning to wonder if that was just a façade he was wearing to disguise the fact that he felt just as burdened as Kylo after all the things he had done and the tough decisions he had to make. There was a time long ago when he thought he had seen an ending to the fighting, when he thought that everything was finally going to be okay, and you wonder how much it honestly broke him when Kylo took you away and he had seemingly lost everything overnight. You wondered how much of it honestly had to do with you and how much of it was due to the fact that he hadn’t been able to protect his station, or maybe these were just small events that happened long ago and his change in how well he was able to confront things was chipped away little by little over the years by a series of much more random, unanticipated, possibly even minor events. Maybe he was never better at dealing with things at all, maybe he was just better at hiding how he felt for the sake of his troops, constantly trying to inspire them with leadership so they wouldn’t feel as internally afraid as he felt.

There was one way to find out, but you knew implicitly that Poe would not let you into his mind again, and you were just as determined not to betray him in that way either. You had given him your word, and besides that, you almost couldn’t believe that you had subjected him to that amount of pain and torment just so you could see Kylo again. “I’m sorry,” you say quietly. A part of you doesn’t want to bring it up again, wants it to be forgotten, but a part of you wanted, _needed_ him to know that your apology was sincere. “I shouldn’t have tried to get into your thoughts that way. I know you’d never keep anything from me, so I should have just listened to you instead of just trying to take the information for myself.”

Poe just purses his lips as he nods his head forward, but you still don’t feel any better about what you did. “I know you’re not going to do it again,” he offers as he reaches forward and squeezes the back of your hand reassuringly, and you can’t help but force a smile as you look at him. Something had changed between you, you weren’t sure in what way, but the relationship between you felt fundamentally different somehow in a way that you weren’t quite sure you could put into words. You wanted to search your feelings to try to figure out if they had changed for better or worse, but the truth was that you couldn’t. The truth was that ever since you had woken up, your thoughts had been focused on Kylo, and they would _always_ be focused on Kylo. Whether Kylo returned or didn’t surprisingly had little effect on your relationship with Poe, as you’d always be trying, fighting, to get Ematt to allow him to come back to D’Qar, and on some level, you suspected Poe knew that.

You had always thought that you were going to have to make a decision, that it was going to be painful, and awkward, and that someone’s feelings were inevitably going to be hurt, but in the end it seems that your relationship with Poe had just worked itself out on its own. Maybe it was something you said, or did, maybe it was luck, or the Force, or some combination of all three, but whatever the case, your future began with Kylo, and you knew implicitly that that was where it would end as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are definitely heating up. What in the galaxy is going on with Ani? Who else is involved? And what exactly is going to be the fall out from Reader taking on Ematt, because there can't possibly be a way that can end favorably, can it? Believe it or not, you'll get the answers to those questions sooner than you think.....until Thursday, cheers!!


	72. Chapter 72

               When you flew back to D’Qar, you were hoping that the hangar would be deserted so that you could sneak Ani away while Poe cleaned up his mess, and no one would really be any wiser as to what happened, but it was quite clear from the moment that your shuttle touched down that that was not going to be the case. The hangar was filled with people, although you weren’t quite sure if this was the new standard crew that the Resistance had adopted since you had been away, or if the hangar was crowded, specifically, because of your return.

               “Is this bad?” you ask Poe as your eyes sweep over the mass amount of people below you. They all seemed to be more or less doing their own thing, but the fact that there were still so many people around was not exactly auspicious, especially considering how Poe seemed to draw everyone’s gaze when you first took off.

               “It could be,” Poe admits nervously, and you can’t help but sigh as you turn back to Ani.

               “Okay, uh, new plan,” you tell him quickly. “We are going to _bolt_ out of the hangar, and then-“

               “Oh no,” Poe says quietly, and although he’s not looking at you, you can’t help but think that this is going to directly involve you in about five seconds. “He’s here.”

               “Who’s here?” you ask quickly, and you jump over to his side of the cockpit and lean way over his shoulder until you can see who he’s talking about. Just off to the side in front of the hangar doors, Luke is there, and he does not look happy about something. He’s talking to someone who is standing with his back to you, and although he looks slightly familiar, you have trouble trying to place him.

               “Who _is_ that?” you ask curiously, but Poe doesn’t even have time to respond as the man turns around slightly to glance around the hangar. “Is that Ematt?”

               “What’s he doing in the hangar?” Poe asks himself, but suddenly you are one hundred percent sure that the Force has led him here for a reason. It couldn’t be coincidence that right as you were determined to talk to Ematt, that he wound up in exactly the one place that you were, so that you could say that your timing was more or less coincidental. You didn’t know how you would feel about approaching him in the middle of the party, as much as you wanted to upstage him, but here was _just_ private enough that you could get your point across with minimal witnesses, if everyone truly was going about their own business and didn’t eavesdrop on your conversation. At least it would force you to keep things civil. Otherwise, the only place you were sure that you could find him was in the command center, and considering that your clearance there had definitely been revoked, this was your best chance.

               “Led here by the Force,” you reply under your breath as you turn to go, but before you can emerge from the cockpit, Poe grabs your arm.

               “Wait,” he says firmly. “Not here.” You turn around to face him and he just lets out a sigh. “It’s too public here. He’s not going to want to talk and you’re not going to get anything out of him. If anything, it’ll just push him away from ever wanting to discuss the subject with you again.”

               “But _Luke’s_ here,” you insist. “He’ll back me up on this, I know he will.” You didn’t actually know if Luke would support you on this, but you had a feeling that he would. It wasn’t the kind of feeling you could explain or put into words, considering just how little you actually knew about Luke, but you at least knew from his testimony that he was as concerned about the return of the dark side of the Force and the affect it could have on Ani as you were. If that was the case, then he knew how valuable Kylo’s life would be if anything happened, and another reason why you wanted him close by on D’Qar, to prevent the inevitable should it ever occur in his lifetime.

               “It’s the will of the Force,” Ani says as he gets to his feet, and Poe glances between you nervously, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to say. You hadn’t really been one to prattle on about the intentions and abilities of the Force before as if it was a real tangible thing that controlled your life, but even you couldn’t deny that Ematt being in the hangar right after you had resolved to talk to him had to be more than just coincidence. You had trusted the Force before and it had helped you to defeat Snoke, it helped you talk to Anakin when you really needed it to, it helped provide you with enhanced reflexes, and foresight, and for all you knew, it had brought you back from the dead. To not trust it after everything it had seemingly done for you would make you a fool, and you were determined not to succumb to the same mistakes that you had made before.

               “Look,” you say quickly as you step forward and lace your hands around the back of Poe’s neck, as if you’re about to kiss him, but you make no move to. Instead your lips remain a few inches apart as you lock eyes with his, making sure he was paying the fullest amount of attention that he could to what you were about to say. “I trust you, Poe Dameron, I do, with my life, with my son’s life, and with Kylo’s life, and you haven’t let me down yet. I need you to trust me. Right now, I need to go down there and talk to Ematt, I have to. This isn’t just about Kylo, but about fighting for all that we died to protect, and he doesn’t understand that, but you do. You _saw_ it, and deep down I know you’re just as scared as I am that Snoke will return, even though you can’t let it show. I don’t want you to get involved, I don’t want you to risk your rank for me, but I just want you to trust me and support me, even if you think it’s the stupidest idea you’ve ever heard of. Can you do that?”

               Poe searches your eyes for a moment, and the minute it takes for him to reply almost feels like an eternity. “I’ve heard stupider plans from you,” he admits at length, and you can’t help but sigh with relief as you bow your head in gentle laughter. Poe just kisses your forehead gently as he puts both hands on your shoulders, and you bite your lip in a vain attempt to conceal a grin as you look up at him. “Go. I’m right behind you, as always.”

               “Good,” you reply as you turn around and head out of the ship, with Poe walking beside you and Ani following behind with BB-8.

               “Just try to keep yourself in check,” Poe advises. “Ematt’s more the type to listen to cold logic. Talk with your head, not your heart.”

               “Oh, just like dealing with Hux then,” you reply. You don’t mean anything by the comment, but the look on Poe’s face tells you that it was the wrong thing to say. To be honest, you didn’t mean to compare Ematt to the person who had ruthlessly destroyed billions in the Hosnian System, but you didn’t really know him all that well, and you couldn’t say for sure. You didn’t know how much he valued the lives of his troops, but he clearly didn’t value Kylo’s life, and his life was the one that mattered more to you than anything in this world.

               As you get close, you can see heads turning your way, eyes shooting in your direction, and it’s more than obvious that people have been looking for you, or Poe, at the very least. You knew that it took you a while to find Ani, but you weren’t sure just how long you had been gone for. Maybe they thought that you and Poe had snuck out to fuck, and for some reason, the thought left a bitter taste in your mouth, not because of the thought of fucking Poe, but because there were way, way, _way_ more important things to be concerned about, like Kylo’s life, and the life of your son, and fucking _anyone_ hardly seemed to be on the list of your top fifty pressing matters that needed tending to.

               But as you get closer, you can hear Luke and Ematt’s conversation getting slightly heated, and although you can’t quite hear what they were saying, the look on Poe’s face immediately tells you that he doesn’t think you should get involved. “Can you hear them?” you whisper as you look at Poe. “I can hear _talking_ but I can’t hear the _words_.”

               _Luke thinks Ematt made a mistake about something,_ Ani tells you in your head, and you turn your head over your shoulder to regard him. _Was reckless, got people killed, I don’t know, it’s really vague._

 _Just like Hux_ , _or Deso_. The thought comes out of the back of your mind immediately, and although Ani smirks good-naturedly to show that he didn’t like Ematt any more than you did, a part of you almost couldn’t fathom how much you had suddenly come to hate the Resistance. Maybe it wasn’t just their group, but maybe you had come to loathe politics of any sort. Still, whatever the case, you were starting to see very clearly now that there was never any good or evil in this war. There were only two sides that were fighting for power, the New Republic and the First Order, and the Resistance was more or less trying to fight against a dictatorship and support a flawed status quo. After the Hosnian System was destroyed, it only allowed for more seedy government representatives to take the place of the Senators that had been truly good, and, unfortunately, it allowed people like Deso to rise to power.

               As you approach, Luke glances over Ematt’s shoulder at the four of you, and even from the short distance away, you can see his blue eyes blazing with untold emotion. There’s something that passes between you, not a look, but some charge of the Force, and suddenly you can feel righteous indignation flooding through your veins. Luke was _right_ , you didn’t know how you knew or what he was right about, but suddenly you felt righteous anger coursing through your body like you had never experienced before. You had been nervously calculating what you wanted to say to Ematt, but now you knew, you would say nothing, and you would let the power of the Force speak through you. Luke was there to help you make sure of it.

               Ematt turns around to see who Luke is looking at, and while he purses his lips as he glances at Poe, his eyes narrow as he turns to you. “Captain Dameron, you’ve been gone for some time,” he says as you’re finally within earshot, but Poe just shrugs good-naturedly, as if he wasn’t even put off by this obvious comment.

               “We got a little held up,” he replies good-naturedly. “Colonel, you’re looking well. I didn’t realize you were heading back so soon. Did you make it to the briefing this morning?”

               Ematt doesn’t even look like he heard him as his eyes focus on you, and you stare right back with steely resolve. Over his shoulder, you think you can see the corner of Luke’s lip twitch into the semblance of a smile, and that’s all the push you need. “And what are you doing here? I thought your clearance to be in this area had been revoked.”

               Poe opens his mouth to speak, but you beat him to it. “Reinstated for a temporary measure,” you reply firmly. “I was under the direct supervision of Captain Dameron the entire time, and he can assure you that I didn’t fly the craft, nor did I cause any trouble.”

               “No, I’m sure you didn’t,” Ematt muses. “It seems both you and Ren can follow orders when you know it’s in your best interests.”

               “Speaking of Ren,” you say quickly, glad that Ematt was the one to invoke his name first. “What hellhole did you dump him on to defend while you came back here to pat yourself on the back and toast to your great accomplishment? Shouldn’t he be here for this?”

               Out of the corner of your eye, you can see Poe hang his head, but Ematt looks completely undeterred. “Master Sergeant Finn told me that you were most attentive during the tribunal, so you know perfectly well why he can’t be here,” Ematt says, making an extra attempt to sound both cordial and rational by the same measure. “We saved him from execution, just as you wished, but there is a price to be paid. He has still committed numerous crimes against the galaxy, and he has to pay for those crimes.”

               “I’m not debating that,” you say firmly. “I want him to make amends for the things he’s done, I want him to help take out the First Order so it can put an end to the fighting once and for all, but to say he can never come back here again to see his child or his mother is _cruelty_ and it won’t help anything.”

               “And you,” Ematt points out, and you can’t help but huff in exasperation. Yes, you wanted Kylo to return more than anything, but you didn’t like Ematt specifically pointing that out, as if you were only defending the many reasons why Kylo should be allowed to return because of your connection to him. “You know what he’s done. Despite his recent cooperation, he can still be regarded as a menace to others, and I will not risk the life of my troops on this base to accommodate him.”

               “He did what he did because of Snoke,” you practically exclaim. “You’ve had First Order Storm Troopers here who used to _kill_ your troops too, and now they fit right at home with the rest of you, and everyone still sleeps soundly at night. You can still lock him away in a cell if you don’t feel entirely safe with him around, I’m not debating that, but you know he’s not completely to blame for the things he’s done under Snoke’s manipulations.”

               “Manipulations aside, he still committed those actions,” Ematt continues. “You can assign blame to whomever you wish, but Ren still decided to follow through with whatever Snoke commanded him to do. If he wonders why he’s in the situation that he’s in, he only needs to look towards himself. It’s his fault-“

               “You know what, no,” you interject, unable to listen to any more of this. “No, this is _your_ fault.” You suddenly turn to the side to realize that a small crowd has gathered around you now, probably drawn in by your bold assertion, but you can’t be bothered to care. Ematt could have you potentially thrown out of the Resistance headquarters permanently for challenging him like this, but right now you didn’t care about that either. Ani didn’t want to be here either right now, and even if they decided to send you away and ground you back on your old academia, there was no reason why you couldn’t just leave and go off to find Kylo yourself. The galaxy was a big place, but you were bonded, and you were confident that the Force would reunite you once again if you opened yourself up to its influence.

               “You keep acting like keeping him away is in everybody’s best interests,” you snap at him, deciding to unleash weeks of anger while you finally got his attention. “Keeping me watched over, making sure that I won’t cause any problems, make any waves, but the only reason I’m here, in this position, is because of… _you_.” The realization surprises even you, and a part of you honestly couldn’t believe that you hadn’t realized this any sooner.

               “You truly think I am to blame for your mistakes aboard the _Propitiate_?” Ematt asks, his voice full of good humor, but you can feel your anger burning hot in your blood now, and it was not going to go away until you had said your piece. You didn’t need your lightsaber right now, heck, you didn’t even need the Force, right now, you just wanted to be heard, and considering the size of the audience around you, there was not a chance that your words would be lost in the sea of curious faces that were eager to see just what would happen to see you challenging Ematt in such a way.

               “Oh, this goes back so much further than the _Propitiate_ ,” you tell him coldly. “This goes back to the very first time I stepped foot on the Starkiller Base. _You_ helped orchestrate that mission. _You_ helped B assemble a team that would infiltrate a base with the Tortutaru, and you _knew_ that we didn’t want anything to do with this. Six interpreters stepped onto Starkiller Base, and _none_ of them walked out, _none_ of them. You made a big show of that at the trial, letting Wedge take the lead on that one, convincing Sadie to show off her scar to show Kylo’s _mercy_ , but you know the reason why she was there in the first place? It wasn’t Hux and it wasn’t B, it was you and your _pathetic_ Resistance, using whoever and whatever you could in order to get yourselves ahead of the First Order, no matter what the price.” Ematt opens his mouth to speak, but you’re not done. “Such is the cost of war, though, right? Who cares if a _few_ civilians have to die in order for victory to be gained? You know who said that? The First Order. So you can claim to be better than them, and the _New_ Republic, but in my book, you’re just a coward. I don’t give a _shit_ what kind of hard decisions you had to suffer through in order to get to be the Auxiliary Commander, but until you’ve actually _given_ your life for the cause you claim to believe in, then I don’t want to hear it. _I_ died taking down Snoke, _I_ died destroying the superweapon, and _I_ died when I stayed behind to try to sacrifice myself and take out the _Propitiate_ for good. If I hadn’t stayed behind, if I had just run off the base like a scared dog with my tail between my legs, you would all be dead now, all of you, this system completely wiped from the galaxy forever.”

               Ematt tries to say something, but the fact that he even opens his mouth to try to counter what you were saying stings like a personal insult. “You could be dead,” you shriek at him, your voice rough, your words diving out of your mouth like knives that slice your throat raw. “You could all be dead, each and every _fucking_ one of you, and the only, the only-“ You can’t help but manage a forced laugh. “-reason you’re not is because of Kylo Ren. If it wasn’t for him, I would never have known how to channel the Force bomb. I would never have known how to defeat Snoke, and he would have won. He was already charging up the _Flare_ in order to destroy each and every ship in your squadron that came to attack the _Propitiate_ , and if he had defeated me, he would have set a course for Ileenium, set his sights of D’Qar, and blown it out of the galaxy before Ani even had a chance of getting back here.”

               “But go ahead,” you continue, spreading your arms wide. “Please, by all means, celebrate your _victory._ You certainly earned it, didn’t you? You didn’t do _anything_ to destroy the _Propitiate_ , that was all Kylo, and of course then you try him as a war criminal even though we _both_ know that using the Starkiller to destroy Hosnian was Hux’s secret obsession and Kylo couldn’t have cared less about that when his main concern was tracking down Luke. But please, enjoy all that you’ve accomplished, and while you’re having fun doing that, please remember all of the people that died on the Starkiller Base, not just B, and C, and Shayne – because make no mistake, he died there – but think about all the Resistance spies that died because they didn’t get out in time.” You tilt your head to the side in consideration. “Did you even warn them that you were coming to attack? Did you even give them enough time to get out?”

               All eyes turn to Ematt, who stiffens as he straightens up slightly, clearly unnerved that he was being forced into at least somewhat of an honest answer. “A few were able to escape,” he tells you, and you can’t help but let out a curt laugh.

               “At least Kylo is honest,” you tell him firmly. “And at least Kylo is brave. And he’s off fighting on the front lines, right now, put in harm’s way, while you sit back and toast your wine and pretend that you have this all under control, but you don’t. You so clearly don’t, and I’m going to laugh when it all burns at your feet, when the Resistance comes crumbling down into smoldering ash.”

               “Is that a threat?” Ematt asks, his steel blue eyes flashing in the fluorescent light of the hangar, but you just shake your head.

               “I don’t need to threaten you,” you say, letting your voice become surprisingly casual. “Because despite what you preached, you still don’t take him seriously, do you? Snoke? Someone that evil won’t stay dead for long, and what will you do when he comes back? You’re risking Kylo’s life now, but who do you think stands the best chance of stopping him if he returns? Kylo and I already gave our lives defeating him once, so who else are you going to risk? My son?” Your tone turns mocking as you take a step forward to approach him. “My son, who has always been balancing on the edge of the light and the darkness because of the Skywalker blood in his veins? He is powerful, and he is brave, and he is smart, and he could be the single greatest Jedi and fighter that the Resistance had ever seen-“ You pause as you let your shoulders rise and drop. “-but you just took his father from him, swore you’d never let him see him again. When Snoke returns, and inevitably, he will, he will want to take out the Resistance first, and not only will Ani not want to help you, he’ll be unable to, because _you_ took that choice from him. Kylo is his main hold on the light, helping to teach him balance and control, but _you decided_ that his life was worthless.” You cross your arms over your chest as you stand in front of him. “Doesn’t that make you feel good, to decide whose lives are worth living, how some are just more _valuable_ than others? You destroyed my life when I entered onto the Starkiller Base, and I did so under your false pretenses. You may think nothing of it now since I’m still here, but make no mistake, I could have died if not for Kylo Ren’s mercy.”

               “Mercy,” Ematt echoes, and his voice is dry now, as if this is a game that he’s since grown tired of playing.

               “Do you really think, in those early days, that he took pity on me and my situation?” you demand. “Once he found out that I was capable in the Force, he _choked_ me, you know he did, because _B_ knew he did, and he reported everything back to you, didn’t he? You may not have gotten to see the bruises yourself, but you _knew_ I captured his special attention, you knew he tried to kill me, and yet you didn’t pull me out. You didn’t tell me what was going on. You just left me to struggle and fend for myself while they threw us in cells, while C bled to death on the floor in front of us.” You glare at him openly now. “Do you really think that I am immune to what he has done? He _tortured_ me, he probed my mind to read all of my thoughts, and in the early days, just after B was killed, he told me to touch his lightsaber. He froze my body and extended my hand towards his snapping blade and I had to watch as my hand got closer and closer, until I could feel the heat from it, sure it was burning off my fingertips and when I looked away, he _forced_ me to look, forced me to watch my hand burn in front of my eyes.”

               You can hear frightened gasps from around you, and that has the exact effect you are intending. Even still, you can’t help but catch a glimpse of Poe’s and Ani’s faces; they both look absolutely stunned into shocked, breathless silence. In the back of your mind, you realized you had never told either of them that story before; nevertheless, it wasn’t the kind of tale you wanted to dwell on. That part of Kylo had existed, but he was gone now, and you knew he would never do anything quite so disturbing as that to you ever again. “Fortunately for me, he didn’t go through with it,” you say with finality as you turn back to Ematt. “So don’t write me off as someone who cares for him blindly, because I don’t. I know who he is and what he’s capable of, I knew it the day he kidnapped me from D’Qar and took Ani hostage. During that time, I was able to see how the Kylo Ren that tortured me before had been tortured himself; Snoke was always in his mind, making him doubt himself, making him doubt that forgiveness was something that he could _ever_ achieve, and _that_ is what led him to murder Han Solo. But while on Naboo, I got to see the kind of person that he could become without Snoke constantly whispering in the back of his mind, and _that’s_ the kind of person he is now, someone who would give his life for someone he didn’t even like in order to do the _right thing_ , and you’re _punishing_ him for that, you’re punishing him for giving his life to protect yourself and everyone here, and in so doing, you are _feeding_ the dark side. I know you can’t feel it, but I can, I can feel it stirring, and it’s growing stronger. The Jedi are no longer around, Colonel, and you have just gravely upset three of the most powerful Force users in the known galaxy. When the time comes, you will need us on your side, and right now, I don’t see much worth fighting for.”

               “You say this as if you have a choice,” Ematt muses, and you can feel your spit turn dry in your throat. “When the time comes, when and if Snoke does return, you will aid us, you and your son both. When the time comes, neither of you will have a choice.”

               Your mouth opens and closes for a moment before you’re hit with the uncomfortable realization that you’ve literally been struck speechless. While you were trying to tell Ematt that he would need your help in order to defeat Snoke, Ematt was quick to turn the tables and point out that you and Ani were more likely to need the Resistance’s help if such an event were to ever occur again. You can feel your anger building, but there’s nothing you can say to him. The room is collectively holding its breath, waiting for your next move, perhaps waiting for you to yell at him, lash out at him, to take out your lightsaber and hold its glowing blade to his throat. Ematt stands there, eyebrows raised, looking almost pleased with himself, as if he knew he had you cornered with no way left to defend yourself. It was a deliberate blow to your ego, that after your vicious tirade you were struck down with such a simple comment, and for a moment you’re too shocked to even be angry. In a way, he was goading you on, just trying to entice you into lashing out at him so that he could have a reason to take any sort of disciplinary action against you if he so chose to, and while you had thought that you were smart enough not to fall for such a ruse, another part of you honestly didn’t care if it meant that you could wipe that expression off his face.

               In the back of your mind, you can almost hear Poe trying to reach out to you, silently begging you not to fall for this obvious trap, but you can’t let Ematt get away with this, not again. He hadn’t given you a choice in stepping foot on the Starkiller Base, but you had a choice now, and you were actively choosing not to let yourself appear weak, not to let yourself look like you would just blindly follow orders because you had no other options left. You _had_ other options, and right now, you were going to use them.

               You try take a step forward only to find that your feet seem almost rooted in place, and you’re not quite sure why. You make a subtle attempt to try to lift your arm but that is frozen too, and before the realization can even flicker across your features, Luke quickly brushes past Ematt as he makes his way towards you, and suddenly it becomes all too clear that he has frozen you in place with the Force.

               “That’s enough of this,” he says quickly as he walks towards you, and as his steel blue eyes meet yours, you can almost feel the intensity behind his gaze, as if you had done something wrong. But had you? You had thought that the Force was _encouraging_ this encounter, that _he_ was encouraging you to counter Ematt on this, but had you been wrong? “Come, Ani.” Ani immediately bows his head as Luke grabs you by the arm, forcibly pulling you away from Ematt as he leads you out of the hangar. You stumble for a moment before you finally find your feet again, and you’re surprised by how strong Luke’s grip seems to be despite his age. He pulls you along as if you were a small child, not letting go of you until you’re out of the hangar doors. “Come.”

               It wasn’t as though you seemingly had much of a choice, and so you just let your feet carry you forward as you walk along beside him down the narrow hallway. Suddenly, you can hear the hangar doors open behind you, but you don’t even have to turn around to know just who followed you out. Neither does, Luke, apparently, as he doesn’t even turn around as he addresses him. “This is not your concern, Poe.”

               “But-“ You can hear the confusion in Poe’s voice, uncertain of what had just transpired in front of him, and, if you weren’t mistaken, he was more than a little concerned that you had gotten yourself into trouble that you weren’t going to be able to talk yourself out of.

               “This isn’t your concern,” Luke repeats, pausing as he turns around to face him now. “This is family business.” Luke keeps walking, and you don’t stop to take a look back at Poe, afraid to see what expression you might find there. Family business? If that was the case, you could only assume one thing, and that meant that you were going to see Leia. Luke turns his head to the side as dips his head forward in what could barely be described as a nod, but you knew he was indicating the affirmative nonetheless. You couldn’t tell if that meant that you were in any sort of trouble or not, that you couldn’t read from his small gesture, but he didn’t seem all that interested in volunteering that information and so you just walked along beside him, figuring that he would reveal whatever he was thinking when you finally sat down with Leia. You didn’t feel particularly angry or impatient at the moment, just thoroughly confused, and so you resolved to just try to make the best of your situation in any way that you could.

               At least Ani didn’t seem to be in any trouble, and you were silently glad that your bout with Ematt had probably provided Poe with enough of a distraction to make sure he took care of that shuttle that Ani had apparently destroyed. You weren’t quite sure why he had done it, but that talk would have to come after this one. First, Luke was probably going to talk Leia into punishing you for speaking out of turn against Ematt, or at the very least give you a stern reprimanding for challenging him the way you had. Once they had gotten that out of the way, _then_ you could in turn try to figure out why Ani had done what he did. You weren’t sure what he was trying to accomplish, or if he was just intent on causing as much destruction to the Resistance as possible, but whatever the case, you had to work as a team, especially now that Kylo was gone, and you couldn’t risk Ani running off and doing whatever he felt like without talking to you about it first. Granted, you weren’t one of the best people to evaluate the consequences of your actions before they transpired, but regardless, you were still Ani’s parent, and although you had tried to more or less act like his friend, you still had to step up and punish him whenever he did something wrong. His misdemeanors had been infrequent, they had _always_ been infrequent, and Kylo had always usually been there to deal out any punishments that Ani had coming his way. But Kylo was gone now, and you had absolutely no idea if your little _talk_ with Ematt helped or hindered your ultimate goal of bringing him home.

               These are the thoughts that follow you all the way to Leia’s quarters, and if Luke is listening in on them, he does so silently, without judgement. You had nothing to hide from him, and considered that it was more than possible that he could end up being a potential ally to your cause, although you weren’t sure how he really felt about bringing Kylo home. At the trial, he had talked at length about the impending destruction the darkness could cause if it ever rose again, but you weren’t sure how he truly felt about Kylo, considering how much hurt Kylo had already caused him. Granted, that had been so long ago, long before you had ever even met him, but old wounds ran deep, and you didn’t think it would be likely for Luke to forgive _all_ of Kylo’s transgressions against him, even with enough time.

               As soon as you approach her chamber, the door opens and Leia is standing in the doorway, her grey hair swept back into two short buns on either side of her head. “Good,” she says as she nods her head in approval. “You’re here.” You weren’t quite sure if Luke had mentally reached out to Leia to let her know that you were close, or if Leia had seemingly sensed your arrival through the Force, but whatever the case, you quickly bowed your head as you ducked inside, avoiding her eyes, prepared to face whatever punishments you had coming your way.

               “Please, sit,” Leia offers, and you quickly realize that tea has already been set out on the table, although thankfully that annoying humanoid droid was nowhere to be seen. Luke immediately takes a seat next to Leia in one of the stiffer arm chairs, and you quickly sit down on the small loveseat that you had sat down on previously, scooting aside to give Ani room to sit down beside you.

               “It’s done,” Luke tells her, and the corners of her lips quirk upwards into a smile as she looks at you.

               “Thank you,” she says as she looks over you. “The both of you. I know it couldn’t have been easy-“ Her eyes rest on Ani as she says this, and Ani beams at her, as if he was pleased that she thought he had done whatever she had asked so well.

               She turns to you, seemingly with more interest now. “And you spoke with Ematt? I can’t thank you enough for that.”

               “Yeah,” you say with a quick nod of your head, before you seemingly change your mind as you shake it from side to side. “Yeah, no, I’m sorry, I am very confused. I need someone to explain this to me, because I feel very out of the loop right now and I don’t have a clue what’s going on.”

               “You had to be,” Leia says quickly as she turns to Luke, and he purses his lips together as he stares at you, seemingly turning something over in his mind before he speaks.

               “It was Ani’s idea,” he offers as he gestures towards your son. “Perhaps he’s the one who should explain this.”

               You spin around so suddenly to look at Ani that he almost seems to slip off the side of the couch, his eyes going wide as if he was honestly afraid of you. In that moment, he really should have been. “Explain,” you order immediately. You didn’t care if Ani was your son or not, right now you didn’t know who was sitting next to you. Ani wasn’t the type to create elaborate schemes like this, especially ones that you were left out of. You had thought you were a team, or, at least, that’s what you had _thought_. Maybe something had changed while you weren’t paying attention, although you really couldn’t be sure quite when that would have been.

               “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Ani says quietly. “We just thought it would be better if you didn’t, well, if you didn’t know.” You stare at Ani incredulously, unable to believe what you were hearing. You honestly didn’t know which was worse, the fact that your son didn’t trust you enough to be honest with you, or the fact that he had been deliberately been acting this way to throw you off his trail, to keep you from suspecting something was up.

               “He thought your response would be more authentic if you weren’t briefed on the plan beforehand,” Leia offers, and Ani shoots her a grateful look. “Ematt wasn’t listening to us. He wasn’t listening to me or Luke, and he certainly wasn’t going to listen to Ani-“

               “-but you think he’ll listen to me?” you interject, and Leia nods her head in slow consideration. “I am pretty sure Ematt hates me, but at the very least, it’s really clear that he doesn’t like me. If anything, he’s probably begging me to give him a reason to throw me off D’Qar. What makes you think he would _ever_ listen to what I have to say, especially concerning Kylo?”

               “Because you have power,” Luke speaks up, and you turn to him, silently begging him to just tell you what was going on. “Not just in terms of the Force, although that does play a signifigant role here. You have the ability to control not only Ren, but Ani. If Snoke does return, I must do what I can and work with the Resistance in order to defeat him. You, however, have no such ties to them. It’s more than possible that you could turn your back on the Resistance in their time of need, and there would be nothing that Ematt or anyone could do to convince you to help them.”

               “But why would I do that?” you ask slowly as you shake your head from side to side. “After everything that just happened, I’m pretty sure Snoke has a personal vendetta against me and my family. Helping the Resistance take him down would be the smartest thing for us.”

               “We know that,” Luke agrees. “But the Resistance, as of now, can’t be sure where your loyalties lie. You helped the Resistance, and then in turn rose to the level of Commander from within the First Order. They are not sure what you would do if Snoke ever returned, and they aren’t presuming to say they know otherwise. It’s more than possible that you could take your family and run to the other end of the galaxy, leaving the Resistance to fend for themselves.”

               You pause for a moment, thinking over what he was saying. If Snoke returned, you knew that you would all have to work together in order to defeat him, especially considering how you and Kylo had lost your lives trying to take him down before. Even still, it seemed the other upper echelons of the Resistance didn’t necessarily trust you, and they seemed to know that they had absolutely no way of forcing you to cooperate with them if you didn’t want to.

               “So I’m leverage,” you say after a moment as you think it over. “You wanted me to confront Ematt to scare him, to make him think that there was a chance that I could oppose him, because-“ You pause for a moment, still unclear as to why they had needed you to challenge Ematt.

               “To get Ben back,” Leia says firmly, and you can’t help but turn to her quickly, the surprise evident on your face. “Ematt and the others, they don’t understand how he’s changed. We both know, you and I know the damage Snoke has done to him, but if Snoke ever does return, we’re going to need him here.”

               “It’s not just that,” Luke adds. “The reason Ren was able to start coming back to himself was because he found something that he was willing to live for, something to cast the darkness aside for, and that was you and your son. If he sees the Resistance as trying to separate him from that, it’s only going to be a matter of time before he loses hope and surrenders to the darkness within himself again.”

               “And then it’ll be all too easy for Snoke to take over him next,” you say softly with the sudden realization, and Luke nods his head forward, as if he was pleased that you were finally catching on. You had thought that you were alone in this, that trying to convince the Resistance to bring Kylo back was going to be a solitary mission, but apparently you had help where you weren’t looking. Putting aside the terrible things he had done, Kylo was her son, and he was family, and you could understand why she would want him back, although all things considered, Luke did have a point. You remembered how out of control Kylo had been before you had met him, and how desperate he was after years went by and you saw him again on the _Resolute._ If Kylo was certain that was never going to see you or Ani again, what would that mean for him? Would he recklessly charge into battle in the hopes of losing his life so he would be unshackled from the restraints of the Resistance? Or would he turn against them, in order to punish them for making you both suffer needlessly for his crimes? You couldn’t be sure, but then again, you were too far away to get inside Kylo’s mind right now and read his thoughts for yourself.

               “When Snoke returns, we need to be ready,” Luke says firmly. “And Ren must be a part of that, not only so that we can keep him better protected here, but so that he can also train and become stronger when and if that time comes.” You pause for a moment, his words helping you to see things from the side of the Resistance. If Ematt or anyone else heard that Luke not only wanted to keep Kylo here, but train him to be stronger, they would think he was crazy. They didn’t understand that Luke wanted to train Kylo in the light side of the Force, you knew that implicitly, but you honestly weren’t too sure about how receptive Kylo would be to that idea either.

               “But I still don’t understand,” you venture, sitting forward on the edge of your seat while you press your elbows into your knees. “Why didn’t you just _ask_ me to talk to Ematt and explain the situation?”

               “It needed to be authentic,” Ani offers, his expression turning cheerful as he sensed your anger dissipating. “We knew you couldn’t be nervous, or it would have just seemed rehearsed. The more Ematt and the others think that they won’t be able to control us, the more they’ll have to at least take our demands seriously. Like Luke said, they need us to help, and if they’re not helping us, there’s no reason to help them.”

               You stare at Ani cautiously for a moment, and suddenly something dawns on you. “That was all an act,” you say at length, and Ani glances down sheepishly. “The way you’ve been acting, all miserable and angry, that was just an act to get me fired up enough to take on Ematt?”

               “Not just,” Ani offers quickly. “This is about both of us. Poe would listen, but he wouldn’t understand either. Like I said, they _have_ to think that they are unable to control both of us, and they need to see it firsthand. They need to see what it would look like if one of us started losing themselves to the darkness, and it couldn’t be you. You’ve already done too much, but I’m just a kid. If I make it look like I’m losing control of myself _because_ Father’s not here and Luke can explain how vital it is that he’s here to look after me, then they almost don’t have a choice but to let him come back.”

               This is nefarious, even for him, although you can’t help but wonder if this had been Ani’s plan all along, or this had been Luke or Leia’s plan, and they had just talked him into helping. You knew that Ani’s pain was authentic, at least, that he wanted Kylo back just as much as you did, and he would do anything, absolutely anything, to try to ensure that. “So what about the ship?” you ask crossly. “Did you honestly go off and destroy a ship just to prove a point?”

               “It’s not destroyed,” Luke says quickly, and if you’re not mistaken, he seems to find the whole situation quite amusing. “I’m sure it looks bad at a glance, but once Poe actually takes a look at the wiring, he’ll be able to piece everything back together and fly it home within a matter of minutes.”

               You cross your arms over your chest, suddenly feeling your maternal instincts kicking in. “And you don’t think they’re going to punish Ani for this?” you ask dryly as you raise an eyebrow. “You may have told him what to do, but Ani still did it. How can you be sure that they’re not going to revoke his clearance to the hangar like they did mine?”

               “Because if they look carefully, you’ll see that the navigation systems were disabled before Ani even took the ship,” Luke replies evenly. “And yet the Controller gave him the go ahead regardless. The whole thing was a mistake, a miscommunication, and it seems doubtful to ever happen again.” You narrow your eyes, wondering just what exactly Luke _did_ , before you figured that it probably wasn’t all that important that you got an answer to that question. Perhaps, at least in this instance, the less you knew, the better.

               Everyone seems to be looking at you now, but there’s nothing you can do but sigh as you sink your forehead into the heel of your palm. They give you a moment to collect yourself before you look back up at them, facing each one of them in turn, but you’re still not quite sure what you should say. “You still should have told me,” you say at length, and while Ani looks down and away, Leia and Luke stay composed, their reactions measured.

               “We needed your response to be authentic,” Leia repeats. “We’ve already tried logically explaining the situation to them, but they don’t seem to want to listen. They’ll never admit it, but they’re afraid of you and what you can do. They know Luke would never hurt them, but you? They’re not sure what you would do, but Ani and Ren will both listen to you, they know that much, and they know you can convince them whether or not you should work for or against the New Republic. You’re each powerful on your own, but together you were able to overpower Rey with ease and your united strength was enough to defeat Snoke, when even Luke, Rey, and Finn couldn’t. This power that you have cannot be underestimated, and you could use it for real good, _if_ you’re willing to help.”

               You suddenly realize that this had been what you wanted all along. You wanted to be powerful and influential in order to protect your family, but you had been constantly going about it in all the wrong ways. The truth was, as Leia pointed out, you didn’t have to actively do anything. You just had to sit back and keep making idle threats to the Resistance, insinuating that you would refuse to come to their aid without exchange for something in return, and they would be forced to take you seriously, lest they were dealing with another situation like they did with Ren before. You _had_ been a part of the First Order, and they felt that it was more than possible that you held a serious vendetta against them for luring you onto the Starkiller Base and involving you in this war to begin with. You had even brought it up to Ematt today, and that had been completely without prompting. Apparently it was something that you still held against them, deep down, and while it wasn’t something that you actively wanted to dwell upon anymore, it still had pushed you into the situation that you were now in, and you couldn’t deny just how influential their deception was in shaping your future.

               “All right, I’m in,” you say at length. You weren’t sure what else there was that you could possibly do to help, but right now you could recognize a valuable alliance when you saw one. The notion of family had always been tricky to you considering you had never had parents of your own, but you knew implicitly that Kylo and Ani were your family, Leia and Luke were theirs, and so by extension, they were your family as well. You all had a common goal in mind, to get Kylo back to the relative safety of the Resistance base, and you were ready to do as much as you could to help. “What else do you need me to do?”

               “Nothing,” Luke says as he leans back in his chair, and you can’t help but gape at him as your shoulders slump. “You’ve already done all we need you to do. Your response was authentic and has certainly given him enough to think about, especially considering how much everyone else in the hangar heard as well. We’ll give it some time to give people room to talk, for rumors to start to spread, and then we’ll have another meeting to reconsider whether or not Ren should be allowed back on base, and hopefully this time we can convince them that both you and Ani are determined enough to do all you can to get him back that it’s worth the possible risks.”

               “And if they decide to throw us off base instead?” you ask nervously, but Leia just shakes her head.

               “They won’t,” Leia says firmly. “They already know how important it is to train Ani here so that he doesn’t fall victim to the same influences that Ben did.” She looks like she is about to say more before she just sits back and looks away, perhaps recalling a memory she wished she hadn’t just remembered.

               Luke turns to her, as if he’s troubled, and you wonder if they’re both thinking about Han Solo. “We should go,” you say quickly, wanting to offer them some moment of privacy. You had never met Han Solo, never knew him, and it felt wrong to talk about Kylo’s father with them when it was something that Kylo refused to open up to you about himself. “But thank you for what you’re doing to help Kylo. I don’t like that I wasn’t in the loop on things, but I can at least understand why you did it, and I hope they’ll let him back on base, for all our sakes.”

               “One last thing,” Luke says, staying seated as you and Ani get to your feet. “No mention of this to Poe. I’m sure he’ll suspect something once he sees the ship, but I’d rather him come straight to me about this.”

               You just shrug your shoulders, almost silently relieved that you weren’t going to have to explain anything to him yourself. You hadn’t been in on the plan so you weren’t really sure how the whole thing came together, as you were sure that there were elements that you still weren’t in on. Nevertheless, if they could get Kylo back on base, then that was all that mattered to you. “If he asks anything, I’ll send him your way,” you reply calmly, and Luke nods his head as you quickly turn and walk out of the room, with Ani following at your heels.

               “So am I in trouble?” Ani asks as he walks slightly behind you to leave you some room in the narrow corridor.

               “I don’t know,” you reply with an idle shrug. “I’m disappointed in you, I know that much. I thought we were a team, that we did everything together. You _played_ me, Ani, you had me seriously worried about you and it was all just a giant ruse this entire time?”

               “It wasn’t _all_ an act,” Ani admits quietly after a moment. “I miss dad, I really do, and a part of me felt good to just, not care?” You can feel the fine hairs on the back of your neck stand on end as he talks. “It felt good to just not care about the consequences of anything I did, and at first I only thought I felt this way was because I knew Luke was protecting me, but then I began to think about other stuff, about other things that I could do that I wouldn’t get in trouble for if I wasn’t caught. I don’t know, but since dad’s gone, I just feel like I’m not responsible to anyone-“

               “But you are,” you say firmly as you whirl around to face him. “You’re responsible to me, and Luke, and Leia, and you will listen and do what we say. We are a team, and we work together, but that does _not_ mean that you can just go off and do whatever you want thinking that you won’t get in trouble for it because we’ll be here to bail you out. Kylo may not be here, but I still am, and you need to respect me just as much as you do him, do I make myself clear?”

               “I do respect you,” Ani says quickly, his eyes wide and at the height of childish innocence. “That’s not what I meant at all. It’s just that things are different between us than they ever were with dad. You were always protecting me and looking out for me, and I know that no matter what I did, that you would always be there for me if I needed help. I’m not sure-“ He glances away. “I’m not sure that he would be, if I did something truly awful, I’m not sure he would just blindly forgive me like you would.”

               “For the record, I wouldn’t just blindly forgive you,” you say firmly, but even still, your voice weakens slightly. “But I’m sure Kylo would forgive you, no matter what you did.”

               “Not if something happened to you,” Ani offers, and you can’t help but let a smile pull at the corners of your lips as you put an arm around his shoulders.

               “We’re a team,” you remind him. “We all look out for each other, and do you know why?”

               “Because we’re family,” Ani replies immediately. “But so are Luke, and Leia. We don’t have to be alone in this anymore. We have other people looking out for our best interests too, and they can help us. We all want the same thing, and I think we should trust them.”

               You can’t help but smile again as you thought back to your Force visions, especially the ones you had with Anakin. Maybe there was a reason why you kept seeing him again and again in your mind, while you felt that your connection to him was stronger than it ever was to Obi-Wan or any other Force ghost on the other side. You thought at first that it might have just been because you two were so alike, but maybe it was more than that. Maybe it was because he was, in a way, part of your family, if working with his children to help save Kylo was any indication.

               Maybe it was the cautious optimism that Luke and Leia would be able to finally bring him home, maybe it was because Ani was by your side, or maybe it was because you felt Kylo reaching out to you through the Force bond, but whatever the case, you suddenly didn’t feel alone anymore. You were not weak, you were not helpless, and you finally had the power and influence you had always craved, although not in the way that you had initially expected. The only thing that was missing from your life was Kylo himself, and he would come back to you. If you had any trust in the Force at all, they would be able to convince the others to allow Kylo to come home to you, once and for all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longer chapter today, but the chapters are going to get a bit longer as this story winds down to a close. Each step, each action, each decision, each _mistake_ is now one step closer to Reader's ultimate goal of bringing Kylo home for good. But is this a goal that will ever be realized? It certainly seems promising, especially considering she has Luke and Leia on her side, but will they be enough to convince Ematt and the other echelons of the Resistance? We don't have long to wait for those answers, my friends! And PS: Saturday is my birthday, so I'm going to be posting the chapter really early in the morning before I leave for the day, and then later that night I am going to be releasing a special Kylo Ren smutty one shot through my [Tumblr](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6468130/chapters/14804356) and my [prompt collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6468130/chapters/14804356) here on ao3. I know it's been a while since I've written smut for this story specifically, but this story ain't over yet and I don't want you all going into withdrawal on me. ;) Until Saturday, cheers!!


	73. Chapter 73

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today is my adsfka birthday!! I say adsfka because I don't want to admit my age...let's just say I graduated uni several years ago and yet I _still_ get carded when I go to buy Robitussin at the store because the clerk insisted I looked like I was still in high school. So....take that as you will, but I'm about to run out because today is about to get crazy, we've got so much planned, I've been up since 4 AM and I hope my excitement's contagious!! Enjoy the chapter, everybody!!  <3

               “You’re coming back.”

               You can’t help but grin as the words leave your lips, feeling lighter than you had in weeks. Luke and Leia had done the seemingly impossible, convincing Ematt and the others to let Kylo come back on base for brief interims during lulls in the fighting. A part of you thought that you had almost been too optimistic in expecting the Resistance to ever concede to anything that you wanted, but it seemed that they understood just how important it was for Ani to not only see his father again, but also that Kylo was able to see his family if they ever wanted him to cooperate with helping to take down the First Order for good. Not only that, but you knew he was more likely to cooperate with the Resistance as a whole if he was able to see you again. You understood that the Resistance wanted to punish him, wanted him to suffer in order to hold him accountable for his misdeeds, but all of the wrongs that he had ever committed were in the past, and as you were sure Luke had pointed out, the mistakes of the past didn’t matter if they weren’t doing anything to safeguard their future against the same kinds of mistakes.

               Regardless, you’re expecting Kylo to smile, to show that he’s relieved in some way, but he does no such thing. Instead, he just narrows his eyes through the holo, and you can almost hear him let out the breath that he had been holding in. “What did you do?” he asks, and you tilt your head to the side in confusion, genuinely not understanding why he didn’t seem more elated to hear this news.

               “What do you mean?” you ask quickly, but Kylo seems more impatient than ever as he raises his voice, giving you no time to fix this miscommunication.

               “What did you do?” Kylo repeats, his voice loud and rough, almost grating through the distortion of the holo. “There is no way that Ematt or any of the others would have just conceded in allowing me to return to base unless there was something that you did in order to persuade them otherwise.”

               “I barely did anything,” you tell him, but now Kylo is waiting for you to respond, arms crossed over his chest, and to be honest, you’re more than just a little upset that you have to defend yourself to him this way when you had thought that he would be happy, no, _ecstatic_ , to hear that he would be allowed back on base to see you and Ani again. “Okay, me and Ematt just had a little conversation in the hangar, but that’s all. The rest of it you can thank Luke and Leia for.”

               Kylo just looks away as he grinds his temple into the heel of his palm, and you wonder if maybe he’s had contact with Leia or Luke that you weren’t aware of. In either case, you only take the time now to appreciate how tired he looks, as if he had gone days and days without sleep. You want to mention it, want to ask him if he’s doing okay, but you know implicitly that he’s not. Ematt was intent on making him suffer, and if the distance from you wasn’t hard enough, then the fact that he was trying to survive in the middle of an active warzone was.

               “I told you to stay at the Resistance base,” he reminds you irritably. “Why must you insist on undermining me at every turn? Why would you risk it? What would you do if they sent you away? Where would you go?”

               “Probably just back to my old academia,” you offer, but your calm answer seems to frustrate him more than anything.

               “And you truly think you’ll be safe there?” Kylo demands, and you can practically feel his anger now, coursing off of him like a heat wave through the holo. “You have no idea what it’s like out here. The First Order is _not_ happy that I have seemingly turned against them, and they will do anything in their power to get to me, including hurting you and Ani. You are safe on D’Qar, and I don’t want you doing anything to jeopardize that. If they send you away, I won’t be able to protect you.”

               “But that’s what I’m trying to tell you,” you offer, trying to stay collected for his sake. He was angry, and while you had no doubt that it was more with the situation than with you, you couldn’t deny how much his words still hurt, as if he had completely foregone the thought of trying to make it home to you. Maybe that was no longer important to him, and he was determined to try to leave both you and Ani in his past. “Luke thought you might like it more if I delivered the good news. In between the lulls in fighting, you’ll be allowed to come back to D’Qar. You’ll have to be stuck in a cell again, probably, under heavy guard, but you can see me and Ani again and-“

               “Do you even hear yourself right now?” Kylo demands, the bitterness in his voice palpable. “Are you really foolish enough to believe that they’ll keep their word?”

               “Luke-“ you manage, but suddenly the words just won’t come. Kylo was irritable, and angry, and you knew immediately that this Kylo was not your Kylo.

               “What about Luke?” Kylo snorts as he crosses his arms over your chest, and you open and close your mouth a few times, trying to figure out what you wanted to say to someone that you weren’t sure that you could recognize.

               “He helped you,” you offer quickly. “He and Leia both. They both want you to come home, and they managed to convince the others of that as well.” You take a deep breath and let it out. “We’re not alone in this anymore, Kylo. I know the three of us are a family, but Luke and Leia care about you as well, and they-“

               “Want what’s best for me,” Kylo finishes for you, but his voice is dry and sarcastic. “They want to keep me locked up in a cell for the rest of my days, where they can be sure that I can never be tempted by the dark side again, where they can ensure that I won’t cause them any more trouble than I’ve already given them.”

               “They just want you to come home,” you try to reassure him, but your slow steady resolve was quickly collapsing. You had finally thought that things were looking up, that things were going to get better, but Kylo was suddenly someone who you no longer recognized. You didn’t know if this was a temporary change brought on by his circumstances, or if Luke was right when he said that Kylo really was losing hope, but you were beginning to suspect that maybe there was more to this than you realized. Luke had known Kylo for much longer than you did, and you suspected that he had been there personally to watch Kylo surrender to the dark side. If anyone was able to sense that Kylo was slowly slipping, it was him. It had only been eight days since you had seen him last, a little over a week, but you could only imagine that the ends of Kylo’s nerves were beginning to fray in the middle of an active battlefield when you doubted he had more than a moment’s rest.  

               “That’s not what they want,” Kylo says as he regards you coldly. “And you must be pretty desperate to risk your safety and comfort on the Resistance base in a foolish attempt to bring me home. Are things with the pilot not going well?”

               Your jaw drops, and you honestly can’t believe those words had just left his mouth and entered your ears. Kylo looks to be at the height of his anger, jaw set, dark eyes blazing, but for once you don’t respond to his anger with your own. Instead, you feel yourself backing down, unsure of what to even say to him. “Kylo-“

               “I’m not coming back,” he says firmly. “Despite what they may tell you, believe me when I tell you that Ematt has no intention of ever letting me return to D’Qar. You should do what you can to simply forget about me and move on.”

               “Not possible,” you want to tell him as firmly as you can, but the words leave your lips as no more than a whisper, unable to be picked up by the sensitive nature of the holo. You stare at him for a moment, trying to figure out who this person was. He looked like Kylo, but for all intents and purposes, he wasn’t. His nose was too sharp, his jaw was too angled, and his eyes even seemed to be set differently in his head. You had no idea how you were looking at Kylo and seeing someone completely different, but you were all the same.

               “What’s happening to you?” you ask suddenly, unable to contain yourself any longer. “I know who you are, Kylo, and I know you wouldn’t be saying things like this unless something was really wrong. Talk to me.”

               Kylo just sniffs and shakes his head like he doesn’t even know where to begin. “You need to listen to me,” he says firmly as he centers himself on the holo. “They are _never_ letting me come back to D’Qar, despite what Luke and the others may have told you, Ematt will not change his mind. The best thing that both you and Ani can do is forget about me. I don’t want to find out that you’ve done something drastic to get me back and been escorted off the Resistance Base where I won’t be able to come to your aid-“

               “You wouldn’t need to _come to my aid_ ,” you say firmly, finally finding some of your inner strength. “Ani and I would come and find you.”

               “No,” Kylo repeats, and his voice is stern. “It’s too dangerous for you and Ani both. If you came to find me, I’d only send you away.”

               “Then what am I supposed to do?” you demand angrily. “Luke and Leia said that that Ematt already agreed that you could come home for brief intervals at a time while there’s lulls in the fighting, so I don’t know why you’re so against this. You could at least wait and see if he keeps his word, and then we’ll address it if he doesn’t.”

               “I’m not going back,” Kylo says as he shakes his head. “I can’t go back there only to be imprisoned again. I won’t.”

               “So you won’t come back now and again, even just to see me and Ani?” you demand. “I don’t know what’s going on, but this isn’t you talking, Kylo, and I’m not hearing any of this.”

               “Why do you have to make this difficult?” Kylo snaps, and you can feel your heart freeze in your chest. “You can have a life there. You have friends, you have the pilot, and you have Ani. You don’t _need_ me. You are not weak and you are not needy, so stop acting as though your life will come crashing down around you if I’m not there. The only thing you’ll accomplish if you insist on trying to get me back is getting exiled from D’Qar yourself, and I will have no sympathy for you if that happens.”

               Your mouth opens, but no sound comes out. Vaguely, you’re aware that your lower lip is trembling and for some reason you almost get the vague notion that this is actually a dream, that this wasn’t really happening. But Kylo’s there, standing in front of you, and suddenly all of your motions seem stiff as you just stare straight ahead of you, trying to piece together what he was saying without saying it out right. You don’t know the right questions to ask, or the right words to say, but thankfully you don’t have to think of anything to say as the doors slide open behind you and you quickly spin around to see who it is. Mercifully, it’s just Poe, and you silently thank the Force that it’s not Ematt or someone else who you might be tempted to lash out at. “Captain,” you say, your voice devoid of all emotion as you walk past him, and you can tell by Poe’s troubled expression as you pass that he knows something’s wrong. Regardless, you head back to his room slowly, step by step, trying to figure out what had just occurred, and thankfully, Poe does not follow.

               Kylo didn’t want to come back to base, and although you could understand that he didn’t trust Ematt or even Luke, he should have trusted _you._ Instead, he seemed as though he didn’t want to see you at all, and you weren’t sure quite how to feel about that. It was the stress, you told yourself, Kylo was just frustrated because of whatever suicidal missions the Resistance had him running, but a part of you almost couldn’t be sure. Maybe in the time you had spent apart, he realized that he didn’t want to be with you anymore. You couldn’t imagine why, or what would have led him to make this decision, but he wasn’t tender like he had always been with you in the past. He was colder now, and while you almost wanted to say that he had lost himself to the dark side, you didn’t really want to admit that possibility either. He may have been drawing on more of his dark side abilities during the fighting, but he knew the penalty of losing himself to the dark side and you knew he would never take that risk again.

               You honestly couldn’t think of any one reason why Kylo _wouldn’t_ want to return to you, and a part of you honestly almost couldn’t believe that that conversation had just transpired the way it had. You were still in shock, still trying to make sense of your thoughts, in a situation where applying logic didn’t help you to feel any better about what had just occurred. It seemed that Kylo truly didn’t want to return to base, didn’t want to see you again, didn’t care to, and you had no idea if it was because you had done something wrong or because of all the stress that he was under, wherever he was, but it wasn’t as though the reasons really mattered. He had said what he had said, and there was no way he could take his words back now.

               You walk into Poe’s room and slowly sit down on the end of his bed, still trying to make sense of your thoughts. You didn’t know what to say or what to think; the only thing that kept running through your mind was how you honestly couldn’t believe Kylo had said that to you, how he had treated you like he would a stranger, and then, on top of that, said that you should just move on from him as if that’s what he had done as well. Did he really just assume that you would be fine leaving him behind because Poe was here? You still couldn’t believe what he had said to you, assuming you only wanted him back because things weren’t going well with Poe, when you thought you had made it more than clear to him before the trial that you would always put him first, ahead of everyone and everything.

               It feels like you’re alone with your thoughts for no more than a few minutes before the door opens and Poe comes in, looking visibly distressed. You could only imagine what Kylo had probably said to him after you had left; if he had taken no consideration to your feelings, you doubted that he was anything even close to civil with Poe. “How bad was it?” you echo hollowly, and Poe seems confused for a moment before he catches on to what you were asking.

               “Pretty bad,” he admits, and you just continue to stare straight ahead, not all that surprised. Poe seems to hesitate for a moment before he continues, and when he does, his voice is quick and alert. “Look,” he says quickly. “I know you’re not going to be happy to hear this, but I heard everything. We have his communication monitored for security purposes, but I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want it to take away from the only time you have left to see him. I can assure you, though, that I’m the only one that heard it, and-“

               “It’s fine,” you say quietly, but you still can’t bring yourself to meet his eyes. Poe still seems nervous as to how you’re going to react, and so you quickly scoot your gaze in his direction, but you still can’t bring yourself to look at his face. “It’s fine, I figured as much. I figured the conversation was probably being recorded; it just makes sense. The Resistance doesn’t trust him, or me, so it makes sense they want to hear what we’re saying behind closed doors.”

               Poe just lets out a sigh as he comes to sit beside you, and you waste no time curling into his arm as you rest your head on his shoulder, trying to find at least some small bit of comfort in anything that you could. “Do you really think he meant all of that stuff he said?”

               “No,” Poe replies immediately. “No, they just got back from a difficult mission, and there were heavy casualties. He’s upset about that, although it’d be a lie to say that he wasn’t worried about you too.”

               “He didn’t seem worried about me,” you say, unable to keep a harsh laugh low in your throat. “If anything, it seemed like he couldn’t care less about me.”

               “He just wants you to stay safe and he knows that this is the best place for you,” Poe tells you patiently as he smooths your hair back. “There are a lot of people who are after him now, and it’s not just the First Order. People of the New Republic are also not happy with how things turned out, they claim he escaped justice, and they’ll do anything to take things into their own hands. There are bounty hunters after him, and you and Ani by extension. There are plenty of people who would use you as bait to lure him in, and Ren knows that. He’s already risking his life out there, and he doesn’t want to be distracted worrying about what you and Ani are doing while he’s away.”

               “It sounds so rational when you put it that way,” you say with a light laugh as you press yourself further into the circle of his arm. “But what about the other stuff he said? He said he didn’t _want_ to come back.”

               “I think we both know that’s not quite true,” Poe says with a light chuckle. “You know how much he cares for you and for Ani. Do you think he would ever really leave you two behind?”

               “In my worst nightmares, maybe,” you reply bitterly. “I just can’t get over what he said.”

               “He doesn’t trust the Resistance,” Poe reminds you. “Right now he just got back from combat, he hasn’t had any rest, and he’s not thinking straight.”

               “But what if he doesn’t change his mind?” you ask softly. “What if he really meant what he said and he doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore?”

               To his credit, Poe just lets out a chuckle. “I think we both know that’s not true,” he repeats softly. “Ren cares about you, and he would do just about anything to keep you safe. You and Ani are the only two things that matter in this world to him.”

               “And if we’re gone, then he has nothing left,” you agree softly. And with nothing left to fight for, you knew implicitly that Kylo would be at greater risk for falling victim to the dark side of the Force than ever. You almost didn’t want to believe it, but his increased reliance on his dark side abilities to keep him alive combined with his isolation was a recipe for disaster, and you suddenly could understand why Luke had asked Ani to go to such great lengths to make sure that Kylo came home. Perhaps he sensed something in the Force that you couldn’t, or perhaps he had the incredible gift of foresight that you apparently lacked, but whatever the case, you wanted to do all you could to keep Kylo safe, so he never had to slip down the path to the dark side ever again.  

               Suddenly, as if on cue, the door opens and Ani comes walking in, although he looks almost as distressed as you feel. “What happened?” he asks as Poe subtly slips his arm off from around your shoulders. “I felt something was wrong. How is Father? Is he okay?”

               Poe immediately turns to you, but you just look down, trying to gather your thoughts before you answer. “He’s doing okay,” you say after a brief pause. “I mean, you know how he is. The battles are, uh, taking a bit of a toll on him, but he’s more or less okay.”

               Ani immediately turns from you to Poe, as if expecting a different answer. “Physically, he’s okay,” he agrees, not daring to undermine you in front of your child, and you were silently thankful for that.

               “But aside from that?” Ani asks. “I can feel how upset you are, something must have happened. Did Ematt go back on his word?”

               “No,” you say quickly. “No, but uh, Kylo doesn’t think that he’ll actually keep to his word, either. He advised us that we should just, uh, stay here, not making any waves, and that we should, uh, move on and try to forget about him.” Ani stares at you incredulously, and you can’t help but hang your head as you let out a sigh. “Okay, come here.”

               Poe makes a move like he’s about to get up to let Ani sit down next to you, but you quickly grab his hand, interlacing his fingers between yours as Ani walks towards you. You take Ani’s hand as you guide it to your temple, closing your eyes as you squeeze Poe’s hand just a little bit tighter, bracing yourself for the pain you know you’re about to experience. “Okay, go ahead, Ani. Take a look.”

               You can feel the familiar push, and you let Ani look back through the whole conversation, look at what exactly Kylo had said to you when you had told him that he was returning back to D’Qar. It doesn’t take long, and after about a minute, Ani pulls away, clearly perplexed by what he had just witnessed as well. “I don’t understand,” he says with a quick shake of his head, and you can’t help but snort good-naturedly in agreement.

               “He just returned from a disastrous mission,” Poe explains as you untangle your hand from his. “There were a lot of casualties, bad intel. I don’t have all the information yet myself, but he’s probably still shaken by what he just witnessed.”

               “No, this is different,” Ani insists. “He’s never said anything like that to me, and he would never say anything like that to her, no matter what. Right, mom?”

               “I don’t know,” you admit as you shake your head. “It’s possible that he was just stressed. As Poe pointed out before, he wants us to be safe, and he may be concerned that we’re doing too much here that could get us into trouble. He doesn’t want to see that happen, and he doesn’t want to feel that he’s the one responsible for the consequences we might face trying to bring him home.”

               “Maybe,” Ani admits, but he still looks decidedly hesitant. “I think maybe we should tell Luke about this. He knows how important it is for Father to return home more than anyone.”

               “Agreed,” you say with a firm nod of your head. “I don’t sense the dark side at work, so this really could just be Kylo lashing out against inopportune circumstances, but I don’t want to take the risk and find out something too late.”

               “So you trust Luke?” Ani asks you, eyebrows raised in surprise, and all you can do is shrug half-heartedly.

               “I do,” you reply after a brief pause. “I mean, he’s family, right? And he seems to have Kylo’s best interests at heart too, and that’s all I care about. Kylo needs to remember that there are people here who care about him so he doesn’t fall victim to the dark side of the Force again, and we have to do whatever we can to make sure that won’t happen.”

               “He won’t fall,” Ani tells you, sounding much more confident than you feel. “But it’s better to be safe than sorry. I’ll talk to Luke; maybe he can try to get him home sooner rather than later.”

               “Sounds like a plan,” you say as you offer him a small smile. “Do you want me to go with you?”

               “No,” Ani says quickly as he shakes his head. “No, you stay here and try to keep your mind busy. I’ll let you know what he decides.” You have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but you don’t have time to ask as he quickly heads back out the door again to seek Luke’s counsel.

               “I swear, sometimes I’m not sure who’s the parent and who’s the child,” you mutter under your breath as you grind your forehead into the heel of your palm, and Poe just lets out a sympathetic laugh as he slowly rubs his hand up and down your back in a comforting gesture.

               “He seems to be doing okay,” he assures you, and you can’t help but force a smile in his direction as well as you sit up a little straighter.

               “Have you talked to Luke about what happened yet?” you ask as you get to your feet.

               “About the shuttle?” Poe clarifies, and you just nod your head. “Yeah, he explained the whole situation to me. Can’t say I agree with what he did, but he had his reasons.”

               “It worked,” you admit with an idle shrug. “That’s all I care about.” You hesitate for a moment before you shake your head from side to side. “I can’t just sit here. I need to go do something, only I’m not quite sure what.” You pause suddenly as you turn back to him. “Is Rey in her Green Room right now?”

               “She might be?” Poe offers as he spreads his hands by his side. “I’m not sure. Why? Do you think meditating with her will help you right now?”

               “No,” you reply with a quick shake of your head. “No, I need to hit something.” You don’t even wait for Poe’s reaction as you head out the door, and he is quick to follow at your heels.

               “I’m not sure fighting Rey is the best way to accomplish what you want right now,” he advises, but you just shake your head from side to side as you head down the corridor.

               “Not fighting, sparring,” you tell him. “It’s not like we haven’t done it before.”

               “You haven’t done it _recently_ ,” Poe points out, but you can’t help but shrug as you walk the rest of the way in silence to the Green Room. You’re almost not surprised to see Rey inside, standing with the hilt of her lightsaber staff held out at an angle. She tilts her chin up and smirks as you and Poe enter, and you can’t help but return her steady gaze as you grin back at her in return.

               “Poe doesn’t think this is a good idea,” you tell her, and she cracks a grin as her eyes glance over in Poe’s direction.

               “I didn’t say that,” Poe says good-naturedly as he walks into the room. The place looks more green than ever, filled with new plants of different varieties, and the only really safe space for him to stand is right behind the door. He crosses his arms over his chest as he leans against the wall, planting his foot behind him for support. “But I was there to watch you two fight on Tatooine, remember? I don’t want a repeat of that happening.”

               “We shouldn’t be in any danger,” Rey tells him before she glances at you. “As long as we dim our blades this time.”

               “I think I can manage that,” you tell her with a light smirk as you pull out your own lightsaber and ignite your amber blades, dimming them slightly as you hold your staff out across your body in the formal dueling salute. Rey ignites her own green blades, and you can’t help but notice that they suddenly seem a lot brighter surrounded by the verdant green of the room you were in.

               “So, green,” you mention casually as she spins her lightsaber around in a figure-eight across either side of her body. “Is it because of the room? Is that your favorite color? I don’t think you’ve ever told me.”

               “It’s a long story,” Rey tells you. “And if I’m not mistaken, right now you don’t seem in much of a mood to listen.”

               “Let’s go then,” you reply, and you don’t even wait to give her the first move like you usually do. Instead, you just charge at her, launching two quick strikes one after the other. Rey blocks them one by one, first with an underhanded parry, and the second by launching an attack of her own in your direction. You take two steps back as she pushes you to defend yourself, before stopping, seemingly deciding that it was better to let you continue your offensive.

               You needed a way to channel your anger, and although you weren’t sure how Kylo would feel about knowing that this was the way you were going about it, at least you weren’t hurting anyone this way. Your swings were still methodical and precise, and yet you knew with every blow and with every counter, you would have to remain focused, and the more focused you were, the more it distracted you from your earlier conversation with Kylo. You didn’t want to think about it, truly, you didn’t want to think about what he had said to you, or what he had implied. You hoped he would apologize later for everything he had said, but you couldn’t be sure that the damage hadn’t already been done.

               “Stop thinking and focus,” Rey admonishes as she brings down a parry over your head, and you quickly duck to the side and roll to avoid it, almost rolling headlong into the small stream that surrounded the circular stone platform.

               “I’d have an easier time doing that if you made this more of a challenge,” you tease, and for some reason you can’t help but glance over at Poe, who shakes his head from side to side. “And why do you look so nervous?”

               “Because I remember what happened the last time,” Poe reminds you. “I don’t want either one of you to get a flashback and start losing control, because I don’t think I’m the best person to get in there and stop you.”

               “No trust,” you reply casually as you get to your feet, disengaging the blades of your lightsaber. Rey looks surprised for a moment before she extinguishes her blades as well, clipping the hilt back into the belt at her side. “It’s not really helping me feel better when I can feel how worried he is over there that one of us is going to hurt each other.”

               “You can feel me?” Poe asks, and you nod in his direction, although you can’t deny that you’re at least somewhat troubled by this. You could feel Poe’s emotions readily, and you weren’t sure if it was because his sense of worry was that great, or if it was because of something else, something you didn’t want to dwell on.

               “I can feel it too,” Rey says reassuringly, putting a hand on your shoulder in a comforting gesture. “Come on, let’s go get you some food. I think everyone is already at dinner; we should join them. It might help you take your mind off things, and then we can come back here and meditate after, all right?”

               You glance back nervously towards Poe, but his expression is impassive, letting you make this decision on your own. You wanted to tell them that you just wanted to go back to his room, but you couldn’t isolate yourself forever. If anything, Poe seemed to appear just as troubled as you were, and that was something that you wanted to avoid, if you could help it. You remembered what had transpired back on the _Propitiate_ to make Kylo so concerned about you, and you didn’t need Poe constantly worried about how you were going to react. You were past that now, and despite what was happening with Kylo, you wanted to show them that you could overcome this, that they didn’t need to be concerned that you were at risk for slipping back to the dark side yourself.

               “I think that will help,” you say as brightly as you can manage, and the look of surprise on Poe’s face is palpable, although it quickly morphs into one of relief as you force a smile in his direction.

               You needed Kylo, that wouldn’t change, he was a part of you now as much as he ever was, but you had friends here, people that cared about you, and you didn’t want to burden them with constantly trying to make sure that you were all right. Kylo had been harsh, perhaps even cruel, but he did have a point. You could not allow yourself to be weak just because he was no longer around. You could still fight and do everything you could to bring him home, and you still would regardless, but you could not let your life stop and hover in abeyance until he returned. That had been a cruel lesson that you learned previously, and though you had forgotten it before, it held as true then as it did now. For Ani’s sake, and for the sake of your friends, you could not afford to fall apart just because he wasn’t here.

               You had to be strong, on your own terms, and although you had no idea what that meant, it seemed you had plenty of time to figure that out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Definitely not the way Reader expected that conversation to go. What's eating at Kylo? Is it simply a turn of mood or is it the forces of the dark side at work? Only 12 chapters left until the end of the story so you don't have long to wait to find out!! ^_^ 
> 
> PS: Don't forget, tonight I am going to be releasing a special Knights of Ren!Reader x Kylo Ren smutty one shot through my [Tumblr](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6468130/chapters/14804356) and my [prompt collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6468130/chapters/14804356) here on ao3. Basically, Kylo Ren orders you to lick his dirty, blood-stained boots, and you are oddly not opposed to this. There's not a lot of dialogue or back story, it basically just gets right down to the dirty, good old-fashioned smut. So if that's the sort of thing you're interested in, it'll be up tonight. Until then, cheers!!


	74. Chapter 74

               “How are you doing, Ladson?” you ask as you sit down to dinner that night. Everyone was there, sitting in their familiar spots at the table, and you couldn’t help but notice that Ani and Ladson were sitting next to each other, conversing as if nothing was wrong. You had almost forgotten that Ani had choked him, and judging by the tears that had stained Ani’s face, that had _not_ been part of the ruse he had set up with Luke. On some level, he had allowed himself to get carried away, and he was afraid of that part of himself, the uninhibited, raw side of himself that exhibited the same primal urge that had compelled him to punch Hux across the face back on Naboo. For a moment, you considered that that might have actually been Snoke at the time instead of Hux, and you were glad that Ani got at least one blow in on the monster that had killed both of his parents.

               Still, it should have concerned you more that you hadn’t checked on Ladson in the interim, too weighed down by your thoughts of Kylo to allow your mind to focus on much else, and Ladson seems to realize this as he rubs the side of his neck. “Been better,” he replies, giving Ani a nudge with his elbow that looked like it could have been painful. “Nah, I’m fine, no harm done. Just freaked me out is all.”

               “Sorry I didn’t ask sooner,” you offer, as if this in some way made it okay. “I’ve just been, uh, busy, you know, with stuff with Kylo.”

               “It’s all right,” Ladson replies dismissively with a small wave of his hand that quickly slips into the Tortutarune gesture for _fine_ , outstretched fingers resting idly while his thumb bounces off the center of his chest. “To be honest, it’s been so long, I’ve almost just gotten used to the fact that you’re not the first person I run to when something happens.”

               “Oh,” you reply quietly, and Ladson seems to realize how bad that sounded as his mouth opens and closes again.

               “No,” he says quickly as he shakes his head from side to side. “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-“

               “No, it’s fine,” you say quickly as you force a smile in his direction. “You should have other people to talk to about things like this when they happen. Though, I mean, this isn’t going to happen again; I’m sure Ani’s already assured you of that.”

               “It was a mistake,” Ladson insists as he shakes his head from side to side. “He tried to leave and I grabbed his arm. I should have known better than to mess with Ren’s kid. It’s like sticking your hand inside a Nexu’s cage and expecting him not to scratch.” Ani lets out a snort of good humor, but you can’t help but let your expression sour somewhat.

               “You have nothing to fear from Ani,” you say defensively as you cross your arms over your chest. You can tell by Ladson’s tone that he’s only teasing, but you still don’t like the insinuation that anyone had _anything_ to fear from Ani nonetheless. You knew what sort of reputation Kylo Ren had, especially on this base, and you didn’t want his, or your, legacy to impact Ani in any way.

               “So, how is Ren?” Ladson asks, and although you know that he’s just trying to make friendly conversation, he can tell by the looks on everyone’s faces that he was clearly out of the loop. “Oh no, what’s happened now?”

               “He’s fine,” you say quickly, ignoring the looks from the others at the table. “A little stressed from everything that’s going on, but, you know, that’s to be expected.” You discreetly glance up at Ani to see his reaction, but he just dips his head forward in what could barely be called a nod, as if confirming that you made the right call. You weren’t sure when you started keeping secrets from Ladson, considering he used to be your best friend that you had once shared _everything_ with, but you supposed some things just changed over time, and there wasn’t much you could do about it. Many things had transpired since the nights you used to sit together in your room on the Starkiller Base and drink Sadie’s Alderaanian wine while you sparred and sweated. Although that time had been absolutely chaotic and filled with doubt and uncertainty, you couldn’t deny the nostalgia that the memory brought with it all the same.

               You knew you could always try to repair your relationship, but the truth was that you no longer needed each other as much as you once did, not through anyone’s fault, but merely because the circumstances had changed. After what had happened on the Starkiller Base, you had needed each other to help come to terms with what had happened, and that had included Sadie too, but now things were different. Now Sadie was married and was creating a family of her own, and Ladson had Asher and a ton of new friends from the Resistance Base that he was comfortable talking to and opening up to about anything. You had Kylo, and you had Ani, but beyond that, you knew you would never get as close to anyone else, not even Poe or Rey, like you were with them. There were just certain things that changed while you were growing up, and your relationship with Ladson was apparently one of them, and for whatever reason, you didn’t feel comfortable being as open with him as you once did. You had no idea if this was brought on by your extended absence from base, or if it would have happened regardless as you both found your separate ways in life and he found his own family, but whatever the case, you decided it might again be best to just let things play out the way they should and not try to force anything to happen in any one particular way. You had to be a leaf afloat in the winds of the Force in order to keep you from being weighed down by any one path, and although it was difficult, you resolved to do your best to maintain that course.

               “At least he’ll be off the planet soon, right?” Finn offers, and you can’t help but look up at him sharply. “Well, you know, because they decided to-“ Finn’s voice cuts off with a sharp look from Poe, and you can’t help but lower your eyes as you turn back to your plate of food. “I’m sorry,” Finn offers. “I forgot that you weren’t-“

               “It’s fine,” you say quickly. You weren’t in the need to know. The Resistance did not trust you with knowing _any_ information about their strategies, probably as a safeguard in case you were still in contact with the First Order, and that of course meant that you would not be told anything about Kylo or his whereabouts. You can’t help but glance aside at Poe, but he seems just as determined not to look at you as you are to him. He was keeping this from you, intentionally, keeping information about Kylo from you that he knew you would want to know.

               _He won’t tell me anything, either_ , Ani offers you silently, although he pretends to be focused on eating the food in front of him. _I’ve tried to get what little I can out of Ladson or Asher, but it seems they aren’t telling them anything either, in case they relay it back to us. The only person who will tell us anything is Luke, I’m not sure why._

 _Because Luke’s untouchable,_ you respond immediately. _Because he’s Leia’s brother and for what he did for the Alliance and because I think he’s one of the most powerful Jedi_ left. _They don’t have a choice, there’s nothing they can do to touch him._ You pause for a moment, thinking things over. _I just thought Poe would have been a bit more open with me, but I guess not. I don’t want him to risk things for me, but-_

 _You don’t feel anything for him anymore,_ Ani says back, as if he’s just stating a fact. _It was bound to happen sooner or later._

               You can’t help but tilt your head to the side in interest. The others are having some other kind of conversation, quick to try to get your thoughts off Kylo, but none of them seem to have any idea that you and Ani are having your own silent communication in your minds. If Rey noticed anything, she, to her credit, at least pretended not to notice. _And what do you mean by that?_

 _Forbidden fruit,_ Ani offers with an idle shrug as he pops a bit of food into his mouth. _Now that dad said you_ can _be with him, now that the opportunity presents itself and you can be, you don’t want him anymore. It’s not just the stress of everything that dad’s going through either. Something changed; I can feel it._

You can’t help but let out a snort, and Poe quickly looks over at you, but you determinedly look away, hoping beyond hope that you weren’t blushing and giving away your secret conversation. A part of you almost couldn’t believe that you were talking to your _son_ about this, but considering that there honestly wasn’t anyone else you felt comfortable talking to about such a thing, you supposed it was only natural that the topic of conversation was going to come up sooner or later. _For the record, dying changes a lot of things, Ani, including your priorities. Last time, when you were practically just a baby, I left Poe to help get Kylo back to the Resistance base, and things were really over between us from that point on, even though neither of us knew it at the time. I chose Kylo, and I would do it again in a heartbeat._

 _We’re going to get him back,_ Ani tells you reassuringly. _Not that I don’t like Poe, he’s okay, but he’s not_ dad.

               _No, he’s not_ , you agree, not saying what else you were thinking. He wasn’t Kylo, but he was familiar, and there was a sort of comfort in that sense of familiarity. What you really and truly wanted was to not be alone right now, that was what you wanted more than anything, and at least going to bed with him at night helped provide you with some semblance of comfort, just feeling someone else’s presence and knowing that you weren’t alone. You had no idea what Poe himself made of the situation, or his feelings on the matter, but you figured that conversation would either happen later or never. Either he understood implicitly what you needed from him because he needed you the same way in return, or he was just making things up as he went along and would deal with things however they turned out.

               You were guessing that it was much more of the second, considering how Poe always seemed like someone who was much better than you were about adapting to his situation and going where he felt things needed to go, but even then, you couldn’t absolutely say for sure what he was thinking. You at least knew what _you_ wanted right now, and that was bringing Kylo home despite his objections, and you knew that you would work to make that happen no matter what he said. It wasn’t just about you, or your affection for him anymore. Ani was growing up, but he still needed his father there, to help him to provide some sense of balance against the darkness, just as he had ever since he was a child, and that was something no one, not even you, could help him with. Back as a child on Naboo, Ani always went to train alone with his father in the mornings while you slept in, and that was a bond that they had established together. You had your own special connection to Kylo, and so you knew how important that bond was, and how you knew implicitly that it could never be replaced with anyone or anything.  

               These were the thoughts that accompanied you all throughout dinner and into your meditation in the Green Room with Rey, although this seemed to bring its own unique sense of nostalgia along with it. For some reason, you couldn’t stop thinking about when Ani was a child, and you had raised him with the help of Sadie and Ladson back on your old academia. Kylo hadn’t been with you then either, but you still felt cared for him all the same. You had been a little lonely, yes, even despite the fact that Ladson barely left your side, but at least you knew that they would be there for you and you could talk to them about anything that came to your mind. Now the situation had changed, and you couldn’t talk to anyone here, about anything. They would listen, you knew that implicitly, but too much had happened and too much had changed, and you didn’t feel comfortable opening up to anyone about any one thing anymore.

               “You know, I was much like you when I first arrived,” Rey offers as she opens one eye, and you look up in alarm, unaware just how much you were projecting your thoughts. “I thought I was always lonely on Jakku when there was no one around, but here? There were so many people; I felt more alone than ever. The desert can seem isolating, but when you’re surrounded by so many people with no one to talk to, it can be even worse than the sand.”

               “It’s not that I don’t trust any of you,” you explain quickly. “Please don’t think that, but I know on some level you don’t trust me, or you can’t. There’s things going on now that directly affect me that I’m not allowed to know about, and it’s frustrating.”

               Rey just smiles her knowing smile as she nods her head forward in understanding. “I wish I could be of more help,” she offers. “But I think in your heart you are starting to accept what you always knew to be true, that your home was never here with the Resistance.”

               “It’s not,” you agree as you shake your head. “But I don’t really know where to go now. Kylo wants me to stay here to stay safe, but it’s so awkward being here with Poe and with everyone when they can’t be honest with me. It’s like I’m always going to have to wonder if they’re not telling me something that I really should know, and I don’t want to live like that.”

               Rey nods her head a few times, appearing deep in thought, a far-off look taking over her features. You let her sit in silence like this for a short while before she finally looks back up at you, ready to speak. “Luke and I are leaving soon,” she offers, and your eyes immediately widen in surprise. “We’re going to attempt to restart what Luke had started all those years ago before Ren destroyed his school. We are going to gather all the Force users we can find and try to train them, so if Snoke ever does return, we’ll be prepared to fight.”

               “That’s good,” you tell her, forcing a smile in her direction, although you’re not quite sure how to feel about it quite yet. “I mean, I’m sure that Luke has plenty of legitimate concerns about the whole thing, but you’re an excellent teacher. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble.”

               “Oh, I hope not,” Rey says with a sly smile. “Especially if I have some help.”

               It takes you a moment before you pick up on what she’s saying, but even then, it almost takes you another minute to link her knowing smile to the fact that she was talking about you. “You want _me_ to go with you?” you practically exclaim. “Where?”

               “We haven’t decided yet,” Rey admits. “Although there is the Jedi Temple on Ahch-To that Luke thinks might be a good place to train new students. Admittedly, though, we need to find some first, and that requires travel. It only stands to reason that we bring an interpreter with a vast knowledge of cultures and customs on board to assist us.”

               Your mouth opens and closes again as you think this over. Did Kylo know that this was coming? Was that why he wanted you to move on and forget about him? Had Luke mentioned this to him? No, he couldn’t have, as Kylo had insisted that you stay put on D’Qar for your own safety. Even still, you could imagine that you would probably be incredibly safe travelling with Luke and Rey, but that only brought another question to your mind. “Would Ani go with us?”

               “If he would like,” Rey offers. “Luke wanted to wait until we had more details confirmed before approaching you two with the idea, but I thought that you could use something to cheer you up now, especially with the celebration tomorrow.”

               “Celebration?” you echo hollowly. With everything that had happened the past few days, it had completely slipped your mind. “You mean with everyone toasting in Ematt’s honor? I think I’ll pass on that.”

               “I understand,” Rey says quickly, and you can almost tell by how quickly she seems to dismiss the idea that you hadn’t even been invited regardless. Not that that really mattered; you could understand why they wouldn’t have wanted you to be there. If the situation had been reversed and you weren’t in Ematt’s position, you wouldn’t want yourself to show up and possibly make things difficult for them either. “But we’re having a little _after_ celebration celebration, mostly for Poe and the others, and it only feels right that you should attend.”

               “Poe and I aren’t anything,” you tell her flatly as you cross your arms over your chest, and Rey almost looks taken aback by your sudden assertion. “I mean, if people are expecting me to show up as his-“

               “No,” Rey says quickly as she shakes her head. “Despite what happened on Tatooine, which I can guarantee you only a _handful_ of people know about, I think everyone knows just how connected you are to Ren.”

               You just nod your head forward a few times in understanding. You had disappeared with him for years and essentially left Poe behind without another thought. It had been difficult in the first few months, but considering what you had went through with Kylo, you honestly couldn’t imagine truly being with anyone else, or loving anyone else as much as you knew you loved him.

               “He was mad at me today.”

               The words just sort of slip out of their own accord, and you almost regret that you had said them at all. To her credit, Rey just sits there, patiently waiting to see if you wanted to continue your train of thought or drop the line of inquiry all together. But the damage had been done, the words had been said, and there was no way that you could take them back now. “He told me that I should just stay here, that he wasn’t coming back, that I should just forget about him and move on.”

               “He doesn’t mean it,” Rey says with a quick shake of her head, and you’re not sure whether to be comforted or irked by her dismissive tone. “I’ve thankfully only interacted with him a handful of times here, but I could tell that you occupied his every waking thought. There is nothing in the galaxy that he values more than you or Ani, don’t lose sight of that.”

               “I don’t think the distance is helping,” you venture. “This is the longest and the furthest we’ve been apart in over a decade, and he’s so far away I can barely feel him again. It’s just like the last time I was here; I’m still questioning how much he cares about me and if he ever wants to see me again, only this time, Snoke isn’t getting in the way of that. It’s the Resistance.”

               “I know it’s hard,” Rey says patiently. “But he must make amends for the harm he’s done.”

               “And for the people he’s killed?” you ask dryly as you arch an eyebrow. “I know it probably makes me a bad person to be saying this, but it doesn’t matter. Those people are dead, and making Kylo suffer now will not give them any peace. I know I can’t exactly ask for much myself with all the harm I’ve done, but Ani has literally done nothing to deserve this. It’s not fair.”

               “No, it’s not,” Rey agrees, but her voice is firm. She looks like she wants to say more, but holds back, and you can understand why. Life wasn’t fair, and yet here you were, acting like the universe should make some sort of an exception for you and Ani simply _because_. It sometimes felt as though you were special, given all that you had managed to do and accomplish with your Force abilities, but in the end you supposed you weren’t really any luckier or more entitled than anyone else in the galaxy.

               “I should get to bed,” you say suddenly, and Rey shoots you a sympathetic look, as though she knows she said the wrong thing. “It’s not that, it’s just that I should get some rest before the celebration tomorrow, if I really have to go, and it sounds like I do, so-“

               “Ani already said he’d be there,” Rey adds quickly. “And we’re _all_ going to be there. I think it might help you. I know you feel isolated here but there are people here who have wanted to meet you for a while, and-“

               “Don’t tell me that,” you say quickly as you get to your feet. “That’ll just psyche me out.”

               “Would you rather I didn’t warn you and left you unprepared?” Rey asks as she gets to her feet as well, and you can’t help but tilt your head to the side as you acknowledged her point.

               The truth was that you weren’t really afraid to meet anyone at the Resistance base, but you couldn’t help but think about how Ladson had told you that they wanted to throw a party for you so that everyone could meet you all the way back when you had been dating Poe. The situation between you now was completely different, and yet you didn’t know how to explain it to others if you tried. You were still sleeping in his room, and although part of it was because the upper echelons of the Resistance didn’t trust you enough to just leave you to your own devices and wanted you to be looked after, there was always the option of just sleeping in the top bunk. You had no idea if that’s what most people assumed you did or not, but at the end of every night, you and Poe always somehow ended up together on the bottom bunk. He had told you it was because of your nightmares, that you seemed to sleep better when he was close by, but you couldn’t be sure that it was because of him, or just because you felt like you needed someone. You didn’t want to see Poe as a replacement, and yet you couldn’t be sure that you weren’t providing him with the same benefit.

               And yet, as you entered Poe’s room that night, you found him sleeping gently on the lower bunk, outstretched on his back. Burdened with thoughts, you found it surprisingly easy to quiet your mind as you walked over to him, taking off your belt and laying it on the floor beside the bed before you crawled into bed beside him. Poe stirs slightly in his sleep before he seems to sense you, moving his arm underneath your pillow so that you can curl up closer to him. You lean into it slightly, and Poe rolls over onto his side, lazily draping his other arm over you as he tucks your head underneath his chin. You just lie there, not moving, feeling the heat emanate from his body, even through his shirt. You can feel the rough, scratchy fabric against your forehead, but you don’t even entertain the notion of asking him to take it off. If anything, it only makes you come to the glum realization that Kylo never wore a shirt to bed, and as you closed your eyes, you tried to picture him now, trying to replace Poe’s warmth with his so you could imagine yourself curled up beside him instead.

               The steady warmth from Poe’s body didn’t change, but inside, you only felt colder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is a bit late today. I actually added a whole bunch of stuff to the back half of this chapter really late last night so we've been going back and forth deciding whether to release a long chapter or cut it in half for like the past hour and we eventually decided to cut this in half here. Let's just say, expect something to go horribly wrong next chapter, which could potentially result in something going horribly right, at least as far as Kylo's concerned. Part 2 will be up at it's normal time on Thursday. Until then, cheers!!


	75. Chapter 75

                As much as you didn’t want to go to the celebration that night, you knew implicitly that you really didn’t have a choice, and you didn’t want to make the others uncomfortable by making it seem like they were forcing you to go. While at the same time you were grateful that at least you had Ani to accompany you, you didn’t want to be the mother that was constantly looking over his shoulder and dictating who he should talk to. No, Ani was getting older now, and you wanted to him to start making friends of his own, and you knew that would never happen with you and your unfortunate family legacy hovering over his shoulder, so you decided to keep your distance from him, more for his sake than for yours.

               But that did prompt the question of who you were going to talk to while you were there. You weren’t exactly the type to start a conversation with someone you barely knew, especially after everything that had happened. Ladson had already filled you in on all the rumors about you, and while you assumed that people would be too afraid to confront you directly about them, it still didn’t help the fact that the words had already been said, and the whispers would start as soon as you turned your back. You wanted to stick close to Poe, but considering you and he weren’t really, well, anything, you didn’t want the rumor mill to start back up again and make his life any more of a living hell than you were already making it.

               The same held true of Rey or Finn. You could talk to them, sure, but you didn’t want to be glued to their back the whole time like a permanent shadow, sulking from one social circle to the next. You could follow Ladson around, but he had his own pilot buddies that he was friends with now, and you had no doubts that he would probably be off with Asher for the rest of it. Everyone had someone, and you were supposed to have Kylo, but that wasn’t something that you wanted to think about right at this moment, not when you still hadn’t heard anything from him. You knew he was travelling to another planet now, but you didn’t know how long it would take, or if he was in any danger, or if he was even thinking of you. You were hoping he was, hoping that he regretted what he had said and was thinking about you now, maybe just waiting for a chance for communication to come back online so that he could contact you and apologize.

               But until then, you had to continue living your life as if he wasn’t and just wait for Luke to get back to you about what was going on. Considering both he and Leia wanted him back on base, you knew that he would return eventually, and when he got back you could straighten everything out and figure out why he had been acting the way that he had lately. You considered that he was only trying to protect you, trying to stop you from digging yourself any deeper with Ematt by trying to help him, but you honestly couldn’t say for sure and you hated that more than anything.

               Poe and the others were headed straight from the other celebration to the one you were supposed to go to, and so you headed there on your own, knowing that you would probably meet Ani there. Unfortunately, by the time you arrived, not many people were there already, and although you wanted to just go back to your room and wait, you knew that once you got back to your room you probably couldn’t be tempted to go back out again, and so you just shuffled into the room, glancing around at the different faces that you didn’t really recognize. A few of them were pilots, or so you thought, faces you could just barely say you had seen before on your way to and from the hangar or perhaps passed in the halls.

               Regardless, you didn’t see anyone you knew well enough to walk over and start up a conversation with, and so you just slumped yourself down on a couch that had been pushed along the back corner. There was another couch placed directly across from it, with a small table in the middle, and you put your feet up on the edge of the table as you slumped back and crossed your arms over your chest, dropping your chin to your chest as you stared at the tops of your boots. To be fair, it wasn’t the most friendliest of positions, but then again, you weren’t actually eager to talk to anyone either. You were here simply to fulfill a social obligation, to be here because you wanted to show Rey and the others that you were at least making an effort to step outside of Poe’s room, although you couldn’t say how much you were really wanted there.

               You notice more people starting to come into the room now, but you just keep your head focused on the table and the couch opposite you, picking out small flaws and scuffs in the upholstery, hoping no one would pay too much attention to you. You had no idea where Ani was, but you didn’t want to call out to him as thought this was a situation you felt you needed to be rescued from. If anything, you were perfectly content to just _sit_ , although if you were being honest, you much preferred to do it in a place that wasn’t so exposed, where there weren’t people who could watch you every time you had to sneeze or scratch your nose.

               “Told you I’d see you again.” You look up to see a familiar face looking down at you, and it takes you no more than a moment to recognize the smiling face of Asher.  

               “Hey,” you say quickly, the surprise in your voice evident as you accept the drink that Asher was offering you. “How’s it going?”

               Asher just shrugs his shoulders as he literally plops down on the couch across from you, and you don’t know how he manages to keep himself from spilling his own drink. “I’m officially off suspension,” he tells you. “So if you ever want to fly again, you know where to find me.”

               “Thanks,” you say quickly, nodding your head to show your appreciation, but you honestly didn’t know how Poe would feel about that, especially considering what had happened the last time. You still weren’t sure what your own flight status was, and so you decided it was better to maybe just not say anything. “Where’s, uh, where’s Ladson?”

               “Still finishing up with the other thing,” Asher replies, lazily jerking his head to the left. “I left early. Thought those assholes couldn’t jerk themselves off enough, but they sure proved me wrong.”

               “Assholes?” you muse, unable to conceal your grin. “So you don’t like them either?”

               “When we first got to base, they imprisoned us,” Asher explains as you take a quick sip of the drink he handed you. It was sweet, really sweet, but you shrugged it off and kept drinking nonetheless. “Thought that we were loyal to the First Order, and that’s all we’d ever be, and we’d turn our backs and betray the Resistance at the soonest opportunity.” He shrugs his shoulders. “Finn told them off and we proved them wrong, but you don’t forget shit like that. When someone doesn’t trust you, there’s nothing you can do to earn that trust, so I’ll listen to them, I’ll follow their orders, but it doesn’t mean I’ll like them much.”

               “I hear that,” you reply as you nod your head in quick agreement. “From the moment I got back, the first thing I found out before I was even out of the medbay was how they were having a trial to determine if I was guilty of conspiring with the First Order and what to do with me. No one bothered to even tell me it was going on, and Poe tricked me into giving him a testimony of the things that I’d done that he played for all of them.” You shake your head, unable to properly put into words how uncomfortable that made you feel.

               “Ladson told me about that,” Asher offers as he nods his head in recollection. “It was right around the time his friend Sadie came to stay with us, right? Apparently he was against not letting you speak for yourself, but, you know, I don’t think the rest of them trusted you not to freak out and kill them all or something.”

               “I mean, a part of me understands,” you admit as you take another sip of your drink. “But I mean, the other part of me is like, the only reason I’m here is because of them. They lied to me, got me thrown onto the Starkiller Base to begin with, so everything that I’ve done is technically really their fault anyway. If they had just left me out of their games, then I wouldn’t be in this position and they wouldn’t have to worry about me choking them to death in their sleep.”

               “Loose lips drop ships,” Asher warns, and you quickly shut your mouth as you glance around you suspiciously. There was no one around you nearby, but you could bet that if anyone heard you, they would not be pleased to hear you spouting off anti-Resistance propaganda and making idle threats about killing its leaders.

               “But I mean, I’m still here, they’re still letting me stay, and I’m thankful for that,” you finish quickly as you settle back into your seat and take another sip. “So, um, what is this, anyway?”

               “It’s a mixture of Pallie, Muja, and some other stuff,” Asher says as he looks down at his own drink. “I think there’s some Corellian brandy in here too.”

               You look down at your drink and swish it around, tilting your head to the side. For some reason you had a feeling that it was stronger than Corellian brandy, but you were unable to taste anything besides _sweet_ , and you silently cursed yourself for your utter lack of olfactory senses. You had already been poisoned once because you hadn’t been able to taste it, and you definitely did not want to go through that a second time. Regardless, you at least trusted Asher enough not to poison you or to taint your drink with anything too foul for you to drink, and so you just keep drinking as the room slowly begins to fill with more people that you don’t recognize. By the time anyone notices where you and Asher are sitting, he’s already brought you your third drink.

               “Hey, when did you get here?” Rey asks as she slides onto the couch beside you. Her face is slightly flushed, and you can tell that she’s been drinking as well from the slight slur in her voice, which, combined with her accent, was amusing to your ears.

               “Uh, a while ago?” you ask as you glance towards Asher, who just shrugs in response. “How was the, uh, other celebration?”

               “Quite what you would expect,” Rey replies as she takes a drink of something else. “Lots of congratulations on a job well done, no talk of Ren, you would have despised it.”

               “Hence why I wasn’t invited,” you reply simply. Rey gives you a nervous glance, as if she couldn’t believe you had said that aloud, but you just shrug your shoulders as you slump back down into the couch and take another sip.

               “How many of those have you had?” Rey asks, and you can’t help but snort as you grin and shake your head.

               “How many have _you_ had?” you counter, but Rey doesn’t seem to be all that eager to answer either as Ladson comes over and plops down beside Asher.

               “You’re both smashed,” Ladson observes as he looks from Asher to you, but Asher just shrugs again, as if it didn’t really make much difference to him.

               “I am not,” you exclaim, heat rising to your cheeks. “Like you’d even know what I’m like when I’m drunk.”

               “If you really can’t remember all the time we spent drinking together on the Starkiller Base, then you’re worse off than you realize,” Ladson says pointedly as he takes a drink of something out of Asher’s cup, and you can’t help but pause for a moment as you try to think back.

               “Aldeeranian wine from Sadie’s stash,” you say after a moment, closing your eyes as you recite this to yourself like a mantra. “Then you used to come into my room and spar before Kylo came over.” You open your eyes again. “The good old days.”

               Ladson lets out a snort. “To the good old days,” he replies as he holds out his cup, and you can’t help but toast him before you take another drink.

               “Hey, have you seen Ani?” you ask him, leaning forward slightly to make sure that you could hear him over the din of people talking in the room. “I thought he was supposed to be here, but I haven’t seen him.”

               “Oh, he went off to do something with Luke,” Ladson replies with a shrug. “Although at this point, I’m inclined to say that’s a good thing. I don’t think he’s ever seen you drunk before and I don’t think you want that to start now.”

               “I’m not _that_ bad,” you reply as you roll your eyes, but Ladson just looks over at Rey, as if waiting for her to say something.

               “You’re kind of loud,” Asher offers, and Ladson points to him as he nods his head in quick agreement.

               “I can’t hear out of one ear,” you snap back, feeling your anger rise in your chest, and Rey puts a hand on your arm as if to steady you. “I’m fine,” you say quickly as you turn to her. “But, you know, with all of these people?”

               “I understand,” Rey says quickly. “Just, you know, watch yourself. I know you’re in control of yourself, but your emotions are delicate right now.”

               “I’m fine,” you say dismissively as you shake your head. “I mean, I know I need to watch myself, and I am. I’m not talking about Kylo or the Republic or anything that’s going to get me riled up. I’m just sitting here talk about-“ You glance back towards Asher. “What was I talking about?”

               “I don’t know,” Asher says as he shakes his head. “You talk fast, I stopped listening.”

               “See?” you exclaim excitedly as you turn back to Rey. “No one’s listening to me anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

               “Volume,” Rey says as she puts her hand over your mouth to silence you, and you can’t help but jut your tongue out to lick her palm as she quickly pulls her hand away with a small yelp, laughing as she wipes it against the side of her pants.

               “What’s going on over here?” Finn asks as he walks over with Poe, and for a moment you cast your eyes down and away, trying not to look too closely at him. If there was anyone on this base who was going to be mad at you for drinking too much, it was Poe, and you didn’t want to disappoint him any more than you felt you already had in these past few days.

               “She licked me,” Rey exclaims, still brushing her palm furiously against her pants, and both of them look to you for an explanation, but you don’t have one at the ready.

               “She started it,” you tell them quickly, and Rey just shoots you a scandalized look before she breaks into more laughter.

               “They’re both smashed,” Ladson tells them as he sits back to throw his arm casually around Asher, who still seems quiet and taciturn by comparison to you and Rey.

               “What are you drinking?” Poe asks as he looks to you, and you can’t help but shrug.

               “I don’t know,” you reply as you look away, making sure not to meet his eyes. “Whatever Asher gave me.”

               “Let me,” Poe says, holding out his hand for the cup, and you’re about to hand it to him before you pull back.

               “Wait, wait-“ you say quickly as you pick one hand up in the air, trying to focus, and summoning as much Force as you can muster, levitate the drink into the air and float it slowly in Poe’s direction, placing it gently into his extended hand.

               “Okay, considering how smashed you are, that’s mildly impressive,” Rey teases, and you can’t help but jab her in the side of the arm good-naturedly with your elbow.

               Poe, meanwhile, takes a big slug of your drink and quickly shakes his head as he comes up, forcing himself to swallow it down. “Ugh,” he says, prompting another giggle from you. “And how many of these have you had?”

               “Uh, three?” you offer, but Asher only laughs, and Ladson and Rey both look from him to you. “I thought it was three,” you offer, and suddenly all eyes turn to Poe.

               “What’s in that?” Ladson asks as he takes Asher’s cup from him again, taking a more cautious sip than he had before.

               “I don’t know what’s in that one,” Poe says as he takes a much gentler sip from your cup this time. “But this one is definitely boga noga.”

               “No it’s not,” you say quickly, knowing immediately that you would be in _far_ worse shape if it was. First of all, you didn’t even know how they would get Hutt ale all the way over to D’Qar, but what was more, boga noga was so intoxicating that it was said that just two containers would be able to knock out an entire squadron of Storm Troopers, and some even said it was so potent that they used it as a good engine flush.

               “Definitely boga noga,” Finn agrees as he takes the cup from Poe and has a taste of his own, and you can’t help but groan as you rub your temple with your fingertips, as if it was finally starting to kick in.

               “I wanted to introduce you to some people,” Poe offers. “But maybe we should get you back.”

               “No, no, I’m fine,” you tell him, but Poe doesn’t look too sure. You look up at him now, really look at him, to see that he and Finn have also been drinking, although they were doing a much better job of holding their liquor than you were. Both of them look dubious about your claim, in fact, all of them look more or less unsure of what you had just said, and you can’t help but roll your eyes. “Okay, how about this, I meet whoever you want me to meet and then I go to bed without a fuss, does that work?”

               “If you think you’re up for it,” Poe says patiently, and Rey pauses for a moment as she looks at you, really looks at you, like she’s trying to see into your mind. You don’t feel her probing, but you return her steady gaze and try to appear as sincere as possible nonetheless.

               “I think she’s okay,” Rey ventures as she turns back to Poe, and you just smirk good-naturedly as you get to your feet. The room sways for just a moment before it evens out, but you don’t even notice as you hop up into the air and over Rey’s legs to get out, tucking your knees into your chest as you jump. You land right in front of Finn, and your right shoulder clashes with his left as you crash into him for balance. “Or maybe not.”

               “I meant to do that,” you say as Finn holds out his hand to steady you. “No, really, I needed something to break my momentum, so thanks for that.”

               “Just take her back,” Ladson calls from his spot on the couch. “Before she decides she wants to fight you. Believe it or not, she actually has much better aim when she’s snoggered than I originally wanted to give her credit for.”

               “Really?” you say as you turn around to face him. “Want to go a few rounds? Test your theory? It’s been so long I’m sure you’ve got some cool new moves to show me.”

               “Not right now,” Ladson says with a laugh, and you just shrug as you turn to Poe and give him a quick nod of your head to show him that you were ready. Poe sighs, before he gestures for you to follow him, leaving Finn to take your spot beside Rey.

               “Are you sure about this?” Poe asks you quietly. “I know you ordinarily don’t like meeting new people, and-“

               “It’s fine,” you say quickly, waving your hand dismissively. “Seriously, I’m more or less okay.”

               “More or less?” Poe muses, and you can’t help but return his grin.

               “Why? How many have you had?” you ask, but Poe just shakes his head like that wasn’t a question he was going to answer. “Okay, fine but can you at least tell me-“ You don’t have time to finish your question as Poe suddenly grabs you by your shoulders and turning you around so that you can face a bunch of people who were talking in a circle. At first you thought he was going to introduce you to everyone, right here, all at once, and suddenly you couldn’t help but feel a pit form in your throat that you couldn’t swallow no matter how much you tried.

               “Jess? Snap?” Poe asks, and as two people turn around, you immediately recognize the man as the one Poe had been talking to before in the hangar when you had gone to retrieve Ani.

               “Oh, hey again,” the man says as he offers a smile in your direction. “How’s it going?”

               “Good,” you reply, your voice as clear and bright and confident as its ever sounded. “Oh, so you’re Snap Wexley? I remember Poe used to talk about you. It’s good to finally have a face to put to the name.”

               Poe literally does a double-take, as though he almost wasn’t sure who you had suddenly become, but if he notices, Snap doesn’t call any attention to it. “Only good things, I hope,” he says with a light chuckle. “Poe’s been known to exaggerate.”

               Poe shoots him a dry look, and you can’t help but grin at him. “He does,” the girl confirms as she turns to you. “I’m Jess, Jess Pava.”

               “Nice to meet you,” you say as you introduce yourself, taking another sip of your drink to enhance you with extra boldness as you point to a series of golden ornamental threads that have been woven into her braid along the left side of her hair just behind her ear. “That’s really pretty.”

               “Oh, thanks,” Jess says with genuine sincerity in her voice as she reaches up to run her fingertips through her long dark hair. “My girlfriend Nichole made it for me. She’s always making stuff like that for me when I’m away.”

               “Well, it’s really pretty,” you repeat. “And it looks really nice against your dark hair. I saw it from across the room and wanted to say something, but I thought it’d be weird to just have a stranger walk up to you and start talking about your hair.”

               “No,” Jess laughs as she hits your arm lightly before she turns to Poe. “Seriously, why have you not introduced us sooner?”

               “I-“ Poe shakes his head as he opens his mouth and then shuts it again, perhaps deciding against what he planned to say.

               “It’s my fault,” you say quickly, as you rub Poe’s arm affectionately. “I’m usually very shy, and it’s sort of weird being back here again after all this time. So much has changed and yet it feels like nothing’s changed at all, you know?”

               “I said that,” Jess says as she turns to Snap. “Didn’t I just tell you that? I can’t believe how many years we’ve been here. Sometimes it feels like I’ve spent my whole life here, and other times it feels like I got here only yesterday.”

               “I know what that’s like,” you echo. “It’ so weird how you can be in one place for so long that living somewhere else suddenly becomes unthinkable, like you know it happened to you but it almost feels as though it happened in another lifetime.”

               “Yes, exactly,” Jess replies with a grin as she shakes her head good-naturedly. “Sometimes I can’t even remember what life was like before I started flying with the Resistance.”

               “What did you do before?” you ask, tilting your head to the side to show the maximum amount of curiosity that you can muster without seeming too forced, but Jess doesn’t seem to notice at all as she launches into an elaborate tale that started when she first learned to fly as a child and how she looked up to Luke Skywalker and the tales of his exploits during the Galactic Civil War. You nodded your head in time to her words, laughing and providing commentary in all the right spots, occasionally echoing Snap’s sentiments about what things had been like during the first few years of the Resistance, before the Starkiller Base was destroyed. That then launched into a whole discussion of how Snap had met Leia many years before the Resistance had even started, and he briefly told you about what life was like as a New Republic pilot before he switched over to the Resistance. Again, you nodded and laughed and made comments and followed all the right cues, while Poe looked at you like he had never seen you before in his entire life.

               By the time the conversation ended, you’ve accepted Jess’ invitation to run off and meet her girlfriend, and left Poe standing there wondering how your demeanor suddenly changed from _stoic_ to _bubbly_ after just a couple of drinks. Jess’ girlfriend was nice enough, but by that point you had realized that the alcohol was starting to affect you more than you had first let on, and so you chose listening to be a better alternative to speaking, although it wouldn’t have mattered much. You were apparently not the only one who had gotten themselves just a bit in over their heads with drink that evening, and it took Jess to explain that celebrations such as this were much more rare and infrequent than they had been in years past. It seemed that the toll of the war dragging on was taking its toll on everyone, but that was not something you were particularly inclined to talk to them about. The First Order was a discussion that was off limits, it seemed, and you had no desire to bring it up either.

               By the time you made it back to Poe, he had had a few more drinks of his own, and it was starting to show. It wasn’t anything particularly noticeable in the way he stood, but there was something in his eyes that just seemed a little more unfocused than you had seen in them before. It was slightly unnerving to see, but then again, you brushed it off that maybe you were only seeing it because of your intoxicated stupor, and you were channeling your own levels of intoxication onto him. Even still, as you entered the hallway, you couldn’t notice that his gait was slightly off, and you couldn’t help but giggle. “Captain Dameron, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I think you’re drunk.”

               “Not drunk, tipsy,” Poe replies, and the way he says it makes you think that it had become almost like a mantra.

               “Well then,” you reply, and before you even realize what you’re doing, you’ve suddenly stooped down onto the round and hoisted Poe onto your back, holding his legs under each arm as you began to carry him back to his room, piggy-back style.

               “Um,” Poe says loudly, as if he wasn’t sure what had just happened, and to be fair, you weren’t quite sure you knew what you were doing either. “What if someone sees…?”

               “Didn’t think about that,” you reply as you slowly put him down, almost a bit embarrassed with yourself, but Poe just smiles good-naturedly at you as he looks you up and down.

               “I think you’re stronger than I’ve given you credit for,” Poe says appreciatively, and you can’t help but smile up at him as you walk back to the room. It doesn’t take you long, and it’s immediately clear that once you’re behind closed doors that that is a place that you two should not be together. The air is thick with words that you don’t know how to say, and it’s like you can almost hear the energy in the room charging as you stand there awkwardly next to each other, not looking at each other, until the tension finally breaks.

               You push Poe into the wall, kissing him fiercely, fisting your hands in both hair so harshly it’s almost as though you’re about to pull it out at the roots. Poe lets out a sound that’s somewhere between a gasp and a moan in your open mouth as you take charge, your hands fumbling underneath his dress uniform for any bit of exposed skin. But it’s tucked in at the belt and requires a fair amount of undoing, and you can’t help but roll your eyes in frustration as you struggle to get it off in your drunken stupor. “I hate this uniform on you,” you mutter before you finally tear his shirt off, and you immediately jump onto him again, wrapping your legs around his waist, as you begin to nip and bite at the base of his neck.

               “Easy, easy,” Poe says, his voice increasing in volume, and it’s almost painful to your ears. It flares something up inside of you, some kind of irritation that’s hard to describe, and something else, a sick sense of disgust, but it’s not with him. It’s with you. You were attacking Poe with the same fervor you wished you could be attacking Kylo with now, but what was good with Kylo was apparently too rough for Poe, and while you were frustrated that he couldn’t take it, a part of you knew what was really wrong. He just wasn’t Kylo, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to change that.

               Nor should he, and the thought is sobering as you quickly dismount off of him and head to Poe’s bed, plopping down on the bottom bunk, rolling over so that you’re facing the far wall. It’s only another moment until Poe joins you, as if he doesn’t know what to say. “You doing all right?” he asks at length, and while the question is a casual one, for some reason, it’s the final lit match in the gas that makes the bomb explode.

               “Yes, I’m fine,” you shout as you roll back over to him, and the words that you had held back over the past few weeks erupt out of you before you can even stop to think about what you’re saying. “Yes, I am fine. Stop doing that, stop treating me like glass, because I’m fine. All you’ve been doing lately, _Captain_ Dameron, is watching out for me and I’m so tired of it. Before things were different between us because we weren’t always on equal footing, because you were always the Commander, but the Resistance didn’t have anything against me. Now you’re supposed to be _watching_ me, right? You’re responsible for me? How can I trust you now? Like I’m supposed to answer to you, and anything I have to say there’s a chance that you’ll run right back to the Resistance with it and screw me over.”

               “What makes you think I’m going to screw you over?” Poe demands, as if he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing, but you just shake your head. “And why do you keep talking about the Resistance like they’re some foreign entity? I’m _part_ of the Resistance, and one time you were too.”

               “Not by choice,” you snap. “You heard me before, I was lured onto the Starkiller Base by their deception.”

               “And what about when you came here?” Poe asks. “I was the one who brought you here, remember? Was that a trick too? Was I, was I deceiving you then too?”

               “I came to get answers,” you reply flatly. “The whole thing was just different, okay? It was just different. I didn’t know what I was doing and if Kylo had been honest with me about why he left me there and what he had done in the past then there would’ve been no reason for me to go.”

               “You sure about that?” Poe asks, but you just shake your head. No, you weren’t sure of that. You couldn’t be sure, you couldn’t remember all of the various reasons as to why you had decided to accompany him to the Resistance, but now you were starting to wish you hadn’t. “You’ve been acting so different around me lately, one minute you’re pushing me away and treating me like I’m a threat to you, and the next you’re kissing me and curling up to me at night. I don’t know what you want from me.”

               “I want to know what your goal is,” you demand. “I want to know what game you’re playing; I want to know whatever agreement you worked out with Kylo. I want to know what _you_ want from _me._ ”

               “He asked me to take care of you,” Poe repeats. “To look out for you, to be there for you, in whatever way that meant.”

               “Oh, and your altruism shines again,” you snap at him, unable to hold yourself back. “Because you’re just taking care of me simply because he asked, right? You have no ulterior motives at all?”

               “Why do you keep acting like I’m the enemy here?” Poe demands. “Whatever reason have I ever given you not to trust me?”

               “Hmm, let’s see, have you ever heard of this little planet called Tatooine?” you spit at him. “Hot as hell fire with two spitting suns? What about that? Do you remember everything that happened there?”

               “I do,” Poe tells you. “But if you’re going to bring up Tatooine, don’t forget that you weren’t exactly honest with me either. You knew I was there with the Resistance. I didn’t tell you what I was doing, but at least I didn’t lie to your face.”

               “I lied to protect him,” you snap at him. “Because I will always lie to protect him, because-“ You know where the words are going, but right now you’re too drunk to stop yourself.

               “You don’t have to say it,” Poe says as he shakes his head. “Just don’t.”

               For some reason, though, you just can’t keep your mouth shut as you decide to throw gas into the fire. “This is your fault,” you spit at him, and Poe can’t help but let out an incredulous laugh.

               “My fault?” he echoes. “What could I have possibly done-?”

               “Because you like me,” you tell him. “You liked me when you knew I couldn’t be involved with anyone but him. You knew that, and yet-“

               “You kissed me first,” Poe says sternly. “You kissed me first, outside the command center, remember?”

               “Because you kept flirting with me,” you snap back. “You were the one who kept making eyes at me and kept, I don’t know, looking at me and smiling and pulling me on your lap and-“

               “Okay, okay,” Poe says as he leans away from the bed, running his hands through his hair. “But things were different then, remember? Ren wasn’t in the picture and you hadn’t seen him in years.”

               “You still shouldn’t have tried to get involved with me,” you tell him, although at this point even you could admit that your argument was childish at best, moronic at worst.

               “Why?” Poe asks as he turns around to look at you. “Are you back to your campaign that I’m too good for you or whatever shit you told yourself before?”

               “No,” you snap at him. “Oh hell no. No, you’re not better than me, if anything, you’re worse, because you’re completely delusional.” Poe lets out a bitter laugh, but you keep going. “You have given up everything for the Resistance, and you know what’s wrong with that? The Resistance has no mission statement, no ultimate unifying vision, no goal besides stopping the First Order from enslaving the galaxy. Do you really think Ematt’s going to let the First Order ever become eradicated completely? No, because the _second_ the last First Order base surrenders, the Resistance becomes a liability to the Republic, and they’re strong enough to get by just fine without it. Kylo’s never coming home, and you’ve wasted your life trying to find someone that didn’t want to be found, and you’re trying to end a war that is never going to end. Whatever goals you’ve ever had, you failed. The war will never end and I will never be yours.”

               “Why do you have to do that?” Poe demands as he shakes his head. “Why do you have to be so pessimistic all the time? When I first met you, you were so optimistic, hoping that things could change, hoping that things could be better, and now it’s like you’re waiting for someone to disappoint you so that you can say you knew they would all along.”

               “And where have I been wrong in that?” you demand. “I died to defeat Snoke and the next thing I know is you tricked me into recording everything that I’ve done for some stupid trial to determine if I was going to be executed next.”

               “There was never any danger of that,” Poe replies fiercely. “It was just a formality. No one there wanted to see any harm come to you, not even Ematt, who you seem convinced to hate for-“

               “Are you serious?” you demand. “Look at what he’s doing to Kylo, right now, running him ragged on the battlefield.”

               “Ematt is making the best calls he can given what he knows about the situation,” Poe responds curtly. “And Ren is following those orders.”

               “Because he doesn’t have a choice,” you spit back. “Do you really think I want to be stuck here on D’Qar? I’m your prisoner here. You relegate me to your room if I do something wrong, I have to be followed about everywhere, I hate this. You either treat me like a child that doesn’t know what I’m doing or like I’m a glass bomb that’s about to explode, and the only thing I can think is that I shouldn’t have come back, that when I was offered the choice that I should have _stayed dead._ ”

               Poe blinks for a moment as if he’s been slapped in the face before he just shakes his head and looks away. “What?” you demand as you get onto your knees from underneath the lower bunk. “What, do you think I’m being _dramatic_? You have no idea how much I’ve been through, how much pain I went through in order to kill Snoke, and I came back to watch everything slip away from me. I came back here and the only thing that keeps getting rubbed in my face is how _different_ everything is now from when I was here last. I’m not accepted here, I’m not wanted here, and I don’t _want_ to be here. I thought being here with you would at least make things bearable, but suddenly you’ve turned into this Resistance lackey who just follows orders and does whatever he’s told to do.”

               “That’s not true and you know it,” Poe says firmly. “I _just_ covered for Ani-“

               “No, you covered for Luke in some elaborate plot that still doesn’t make any sense to me,” you say firmly as you shake your head. “You know, I can’t believe how stupid this sounds to say this, but I’m almost upset that I don’t feel anything for you anymore. I don’t know when it changed and I thought it would be easier if I did, especially with Kylo gone, but I can’t, I don’t, I’m sorry, but it’s all wrong now.”

               “At least the feeling is likewise,” Poe replies. “Somewhere in the back of my mind I always had a feeling things would end terribly between us, and now at least I know I was right.”

               “Right, and _I’m_ the one who looks on the worst side of things,” you snap, although suddenly it was clear to you that you really were losing everything all at once. You were pushing Poe away, and now that you thought about it, you had probably done something to push Kylo away as well. But now that it was here, now that this was happening, you couldn’t stop yourself. You were like a cannonball in mid-fire, and there was no way to plug the cannon. “But hey, as long as you’re in the right, that’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

               “I don’t know why you’re so determined to hate me,” Poe snaps. “I don’t know if this has something to do with Ren or what happened earlier, but you can’t keep taking this out on me.” You just shake your head as you look away, and Poe seems to come to a decision about something. “You don’t want me to look after you? Fine. I’ll defer your custody over to Ladson, and then you don’t have to worry about reporting to me. I’ll find you your own room, and I’ll recommend that you should be free to move about the base as you wish, _excluding_ the hangar. It’s not as if you don’t already anyway.”

               “That’s so generous of you, thank you,” you snap, but Poe just shakes his head.

               “I wonder how much of this you’ll regret in the morning,” he wonders out loud as he pulls himself into the top of his bunk, but you just shake your head.

               “None of it,” you snap. “Because at the end of the day, I don’t need anyone. Not you, not Kylo, not anyone. I have myself, and that’s enough.”

               “Keep telling yourself that,” Poe replies curtly, and your mouth drops open as you glare the bottom of his bunk. Even still, there’s nothing that you can think to say to that, and so you just plop backwards down into the pillows and curl up into them, hugging them into your chest as you closed your eyes and wished you were someplace else.

               And when you opened your eyes, you were. You were back on the _Resolute_ , in the room where the hologram of Snoke had told Kylo to kill you, only this time, Kylo was nowhere to be found. Instead, it was Snoke standing there in the center of the room, his amber lightsaber glowing in front of you, and you couldn’t move. Your limbs felt as though they were somehow glued to your sides as Snoke advanced towards you, slowly, swinging his lightsaber around his body in figure-eights, as if trying to get a good feel for its weight. He finally stops about three feet in front of you, and there’s a gleam in his eye that chills you to your core as he reaches forward and gently hovers the amber blade above your left forearm, just enough so that it sears through your skin and turns your flesh black as you clothes burn away.

               You want to scream but even as you open your mouth, all that comes out is a choked sob as he does it again and again, scarring you all over your body, enough to just burn the clothes away and blacken your flesh with a permanent scar, but not deep enough to actually sever a limb. The pain is so intense you can’t take it, and your brain is about to explode with sensation when you finally open your eyes and sit bolt upright, almost smashing your head into the top of the bunk. You close your eyes again as you lean your head into the cool metal of the wall as you try to regulate your breathing, and as you move to wipe the sweat away from your hairline with the back of your wrist, you notice that your face feels slick with sweat and it’s only then that you realize that you’ve been crying actual tears in your sleep.

               Before you can pull any coherent thoughts together, you think you see something shift off to your left and you almost jump out of your skin when you see two eyes staring back at you. You immediately jump, the top of your head just gracing the bottom of the top bunk as you hold your hands out in front of your chest reflexively.

               “You okay?” Poe asks quietly, but there’s a bit of an edge to his voice that shows that he’s still incensed from your earlier conversation.

               “Fine,” you snap, echoing his tone, and Poe just looks at you like he’s not quite sure what he should say, if anything. “Sorry if I woke you, but apparently you won’t have to worry about that soon anyway, right?”

               Poe hesitates for a moment before he sighs and crawls into bed next to you. You’re about to ask what he’s doing when suddenly he reaches behind you and rubs a spot on the upper part of your neck, right where it meets the base of your skull. You’re about to ask what he’s doing as he moves his fingertips in slow circles around the area before you finally feel your head drop forward as a wave of calm washes over you. It feels better than words can describe, and you involuntarily curl up into his shoulder as he wraps his other arm around you, smoothing your hair back with his free hand as he continues to rub the area.

               You don’t know how long he continues the motion for, but when he pulls away you’re a mixture of calm and sleepy, the nightmare fading into the depths of your mind to resurface and haunt you another night. “How did you know how to do that?”

               “Ren told me,” Poe replies simply. “He said he started doing it when you had nightmares in your sleep, and it seemed to calm you right down. I’ve been doing it almost every night you’ve been here.”

               “Oh,” is all you can say, and Poe just shrugs as he pulls away from you.

               “Try to get some sleep,” he says as he pulls away, heading back up to the top bunk. A part of you wants to stop him, a part of you wants to tell him that you’re sorry, but you don’t say anything. It wasn’t Poe’s job to take care of you, or to provide you with whatever comfort that you needed. Right now, all you wanted was Kylo, all you needed was Kylo, and anything and everything else was just a distraction that prevented you from getting him back.

               If he even wanted to come back. Everything you had told Poe was true, and yet you couldn’t help but think that those words didn’t need to be said, and definitely not in that way. But they were there now, hovering in the growing space between you, and you doubted there was a chance at reconciliation now. Kylo had been pulled away, you had pushed Poe away, and the amount of people you could trust were slowly dwindling down to the point where you could count them on one hand.

               Under the quiet cover of darkness, you waited until Poe’s breathing had evened out as he fell back to sleep before you lay on your back and put the fleshy side of your forefinger into your mouth, grinding it between your teeth until you felt the salty, metallic taste of blood. Falling asleep meant constant nightmares and bouts of terror, and staying awake meant entertaining the same depressing thoughts over and over again, but at least your thoughts wouldn’t do any more damage than they already had, or at least, that’s what you hoped, but the way things had seemed to be going for you lately, even you couldn’t say for sure.

               You want to tell Poe you’re sorry, safe in the knowledge that he can’t hear you, but when you open your mouth to speak, the only whispered words that leave your lips are, “I hate this.”

               And you do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So to be honest with you guys, I've gotten more messages from people apologizing to me saying they can't read my story because they're too busy rather then actual comments on the story, which is kinda disappointing, I'm not going to lie, so I'm cutting the chapters back to only twice a week. Partly because I'm going to be spending the next week in Montreal on vacation, and partly because I don't want people to rush straight through to the ending to see Kylo again (which, if you are, you need only to wait til next week.) So for those of you still hanging in there and still reading, thank you very, very much. I know this story is super long and I really do appreciate the fact that people are still reading this story ten months after its initial release, like it's crazy to me to think of how much time and energy I put into this, and I wrote it for you guys, because I want you to enjoy this galaxy far, far away just as much as I do. So, thanks again for reading, and I'll see you all next Tuesday. <3 Until then, cheers!!


	76. Chapter 76

               “So, this is your new _room_.”

               Ladson swipes the keycard against the small panel on the side of the door, but it only opens halfway before it gives off a soft whine and suddenly stops, stuttering a little bit as it attempts to open itself completely. Ladson gives off a slight chuckle that sounds almost nervous to your ears before he pushes it open completely and gestures for you to follow in behind him. The room was small and dimly lit, only making the room look even smaller than it truly was. But, considering how it was towards the back of the base near the cells and where Leia was, you assumed that these were probably the first rooms to have been built, and they had probably been trying to conserve as much space as they could, considering they didn’t know how long the war would go on for or how big the Resistance would end up becoming. The walls were stark and the floor was a dark asphalt, making the already small room seem even more miniscule than it otherwise would have seemed even if the walls were perhaps a brighter color, giving the room a more open feeling. Instead, this place felt almost like a cave, with the walls threatening to close in on you and seal you off from the rest of the base at a moment’s notice. There was an open kitchen that made an inverted _U_ shape off to your immediate right, but besides the essentials like a fridge and a stove and a sink, there was only one free countertop and no tables or chairs. On the opposite of the kitchen to the left of the door was a couch pushed against one wall, but it looked old, like it had been sitting there for ages without being used.

               You silently walk past Ladson to walk down a narrow corridor that was only about four steps long. Regardless, on your right there is a door that you push open to reveal a tiny, narrow bathroom, no bigger than the one you had shared with Poe in Tatooine, consisting of just a toilet, a sink, and a shower spigot sticking out of the wall, and as you passed the bathroom into a final room, you could see just one decent-sized bed, just big enough to share with at least one other person, pushed up against the far wall, even though considering how how small the bedroom was, there was only about two feet of space between the edge of the bed and the opposing wall.

               Ladson doesn’t follow you in, and you supposed he had already seen it, or at least knew how small it was, considering he was standing no more than ten feet behind you in the living room and you were already as far away from him as you could possibly go in your new, tiny abode.

               “It’s-“

               _Dreary._

“-nice,” you finish as you turn back to face him. “Nice, uh, private-“

               “It’s crap,” Ladson finishes for you with a shrug of his shoulders. “But as I’m sure you’ve heard, we’re short on room and so this’ll have to do.” He crosses his arms over his chest and appears deep in thought as you rejoin him in the living room, looking off towards the kitchen, and Ladson uncrosses his arms for a moment to gesture vaguely in that direction. “I had them stock the cabinets with food so you don’t have to go out if you don’t feel up to it, all easy to cook things, because I don’t want you to choke trying to scarf down a meal packet.”

               You force a laugh, but the strain in your voice is palpable and you quickly force yourself to look away. “You’ve also got clearance reinstated,” Ladson offers. “So you’re free to walk around the base as you’d like, but you are not allowed to go into the hangar under _any_ circumstances, not even if you’re escorted. I don’t know what they think you’ll do, but it’s off limits.”

               “Roger that,” you say with a shrug.

               “Otherwise,” Ladson rolls his shoulders. “I don’t know what else there is to tell you. Basically I have to come check up on you at least once a week if I don’t already see you just to make sure you’re doing okay and see if there’s anything you need, and then I just have to go check in with someone and when they ask if you’re doing okay, I say, _yeah_ , and that’s really about it.”

               “Wait, that’s it?” you ask dubiously. “That’s all there is to it?”

               “Yeah,” Ladson says slowly. “Why, what did you think Poe did?”

               “I don’t know,” you reply with a shrug. “He didn’t tell me. I just assumed there were reports to be filed, like he was watching my behavior and filling out paperwork and keeping track of what I did and what I said and reporting everything back to the Resistance.”

               “No,” Ladson replies with a slow shake of his head. “No, it’s not like that at all. They’ve gotten what they wanted out of Ren, at least that’s what I’m hearing. I don’t think they really know what to do with you now, but you’re family to Leia so basically as long as you’re not causing a problem they don’t care about what you do.”

               “Well it would have been nice if Poe had fucking _explained_ that to me,” you snap bitterly as you fold your arms over your chest.

               “Yeah, what’s going on with you two?” Ladson asks, but you just shake your head, unwilling to answer him, and Ladson just lets out a sigh as he runs his hand down his face. “I shouldn’t even tell you this,” he begins. “But you have to thank Poe, for a lot.”

               “Yeah, I know that,” you snap. “Believe me, I know that.”

               “No, but seriously,” Ladson says, his tone compelling you to actually stop and listen to what he was saying. “Poe literally fought with everything he had to keep you on base after the trial. No one wanted to punish you for anything because they knew you were only in that situation because of Ren, but they wanted to expel you from base permanently and keep Ren and Ani here.”

               “That would _never_ have happened,” you snort, and Ladson tilts his head to the side in quick agreement.

               “I know,” he agrees. “Poe had some sort of conversation with Ren about it, and they made some sort of deal for his cooperation at the trial in exchange for letting you stay, to give him and Leia a bit more of a bartering chip to make sure the Resistance commanders wouldn’t just boot you off base the second the trial started.”

               “But why?” you ask. “Why were they so set on forcing me to leave D’Qar?”

               “They didn’t trust you,” Ladson says with a shrug. “You had been working with the First Order, and you could have easily helped Ren escape; you had plenty of motive for it.” You can’t help but sigh as you shake your head from side to side. From their perspective, you could admit that they had a point, but you hated to acknowledge it. “Like, we all fought for you, you know that, but finally one of the guys offered that you could stay on base if you stayed with Poe so that he could watch over you, because he trusted Poe. They had been friends since back in the Republic before he transferred over to our team about a year or two ago, and he didn’t know about all the drama or past history between you. Poe really didn’t want to, he wanted you to stay with Ren because he knew that’s what you would want, but suddenly everyone jumped on board with the idea and it was the only way to keep you on base, so he didn’t really have a choice.”

               “He never told me that,” you say as you shake your head, still trying to decide if that actually changed anything between you. “He never told me any of that.”

               “Yeah, well,” Ladson shrugs uncomfortably. “For a guy who’s always going to be second to Ren, he’s sure done a lot for you.”

               “Well, he shouldn’t have,” you snap angrily. “I didn’t ask for him to help me, and if I had been allowed to make my own decisions about things, maybe he wouldn’t have had to be put in that position. Maybe instead of fighting for what he thought was best for me, maybe he should have thought about letting me represent myself instead of worrying that I was going to say the wrong thing.”

               “That wasn’t just him, that was all of us,” Ladson offers, but you just shake your head. “You had just woken up, remember? You had just died; you were pretty out of it and we still weren’t sure how much of an effect Snoke had on you. We couldn’t be sure what might set you off, okay? Remember how you tried to skewer me back on the shuttle?”

               You shake your head, trying not to admit that he had a point. You didn’t want to think of yourself as this dangerous, unstable creature, but apparently that was exactly what you had become. “Well, he shouldn’t have done all of that for me,” you say firmly, still trying to keep to your resolve. “I’m not worth it and hopefully maybe now he’ll realize that.”

               “He _is_ kind of mad at you,” Ladson admits. “And not just because you’re not more grateful or appreciative of what he’s done for you, it’s not that at all, but you’re not communicating with him. You’re holding everything inside and then you just blew up at him instead of telling him how you felt, like, I’m pretty sure if you had told him how uncomfortable you were with the situation from the beginning, you wouldn’t have almost come to blows last night.”

               “Is that what he told you?” you demand. “We did _not_ almost come to blows, and if you remember, I had a _lot_ of stuff that I was trying to figure out on my own, like, oh hey, why am I not healing from this super painful gut wound? Is Kylo going to be okay? What can I do to help him? What can I do to help Ani? Like, I had more things to worry about then how _I_ was feeling, thanks.”

               “I’m just saying,” Ladson says as he holds his hands up in defeat. “I’m not getting involved with this. I at least know you well enough to know that you’d put Ren before anything, but as your friend, I just want you to remember that Ren’s not here right now, and I don’t know when he will be.”

               “And I won’t know because Poe won’t tell me anything,” you snap at him, suddenly incensed again. “You heard him at dinner, Finn started talking, and-“

               “There were rumors they were going to be nearby,” Ladson interjects quickly, cutting you off. “There were talks of _some_ troops coming back to base, but Ren was never one of them, and he didn’t want you to get your hopes up for something he knew was never going to happen.”

               “And yet again, why do I not know this?” you demand angrily. “Why not tell _me_ that? Why do you have to be the one to tell me that?”

               “Because you aren’t _supposed_ to know that,” Ladson points out. “You’re not involved with the Resistance anymore, right?”

               “It’s an issue of trust,” you say flatly as you gesture into the space between you. “Like, look at this, right now. You just told me-“

               “Yeah, but I’m not him,” Ladson replies. “In the grand scheme of things, I’m nobody. He’s risking a lot more for you than I am, and we both know that. You don’t know everything about how things went down here while you were gone, and things aren’t as simple as they look. There’s a lot of infighting here too; that’s not something that’s exclusive to the Republic. Remember, you kidnapped us, and yet Poe was still doing all he could to try to protect you when you could have easily killed him and me both. I know why, and you know why, but that looks suspicious to a lot of people.”

               “I feel bad,” you tell him, echoing his same, even tone. “I feel bad that he stuck his neck out for me and he risked a lot for me, like, yes, I do, but I can’t keep doing this. I’m barely holding on by a thread here, okay? I’m trying to play the role everyone wants me to play, I’m trying to be friendly and social and make it look like I’m doing okay and I can fit in here and belong here but I can’t, you know I can’t. It’s all forced, it’s all an act, and I am so tired of playing this game. I just want Kylo to be here, I just want him to be okay, and I want to know that he’s okay, but I don’t, and I can’t know that just sitting here, and there’s nothing I can do, I-“

               You sink your face into your palm as you shake your head back and forth. “You guys are trying hard to make sure I’m okay. I appreciate that, but at the same time, I’m not okay, and I’m not going to be, and the harder I try the more I just feel like I’m letting everyone down, and that’s making everything worse. I feel like I just want to be alone by myself for a little while, but if I do, then you’re all going to be really concerned about me trying to make sure I’m okay and I just, I don’t know, I don’t know what to do. This isn’t like last time. This isn’t like before. Before you could sort of understand what happened because we went through something terrible but we could at least talk each other through it because we knew what it was like and we didn’t change on the inside. This changed me on the inside. Snoke took control of me and then I died and I just still don’t feel okay. I have nightmares all the time, and I can’t help but wonder if they’re ever going to go away or if I’m going to be stuck feeling this way for the rest of my life. Like, is everyday going to be this hard? Is everyday going to feel like it’s a struggle just to breathe, because if so, I don’t know how to take this. A part of me wishes that I had just stayed there, and it would have been quiet, and I don’t know, maybe it would have been lonely but I think maybe that’s what I need right now. To just be alone until I can figure things out without having to worry about trying to convince everyone that I’m okay.”

               “I’ll tell everyone to give you your space,” Ladson says softly as he rubs your upper arm reassuringly. “I don’t know what it’s like to die, I don’t know what that feels like, but if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m still here for you, okay? As far as I’m concerned, Naboo never happened, the _Propitiate_ never happened, nothing’s changed, okay?”

               “Thanks, Lad,” you say quietly, and he just nods his head as he escorts himself out, leaving you alone with only silence hanging in the air as you glance around at your new furnishings. Your new apartment was small, and while that suited you just fine, your thoughts were so big and you hoped that the room would be large enough to contain them.

               Over the course of the next few days, you didn’t venture outside, and no one came to visit you, not even Ani, although you supposed he was probably monitoring your thoughts regardless, waiting for you to call out to him first if you needed him. You could only imagine what Poe had been telling the others about the argument that you had had, and you almost couldn’t believe that he had told Ladson that you had almost come to blows, although a part of you expected that that might have been Ladson filling in the gaps for himself, knowing how volatile you could become when you were incensed. In a way, you almost thought that you had become like Kylo used to be, although that was not a thought that you allowed yourself to entertain for very long, especially considering how your last conversation went. You played it again over and over in your head, trying to convince yourself that he had only said what he had said for your benefit, trying to make sure you stayed on base, trying to stop you from risking your own life for his, but no matter which way you spun his words, you couldn’t find solace in any of them.

               Nights were the hardest, although you had almost expected them to be. You lay on your bed at night staring up at the ceiling and thinking about Kylo, and in a way, it almost didn’t seem too unlike how things used to be on the Starkiller Base. There was a strange sense of nostalgia associated with your isolation, and you supposed that things really had gotten to the worst point that they could possibly go to when you preferred to just sit inside your room in silence day in and day out, rather than actually telling anyone what was wrong, although that was part of the problem. You yourself didn’t know what was wrong; some days you would just be sitting there, fine, and the next your mood would shift without your conscious recognition of it, and suddenly it was almost as though anything you did was an effort, from forcing food into your mouth or air into your lungs, and you didn’t know how it had gotten that way, or how to stop it. A part of you didn’t try to stop it, didn’t see the use in trying: as long as you were alone, your somber thoughts wouldn’t bother anyone, and that’s just the way you wanted to keep things. Trying to pretend that you were okay, that you were recovering, was exhausting, and you didn’t want to have to quantify or justify your emotions to anyone if you didn’t have to.

               Of course, that was only one part of it. You didn’t want to have to watch yourself tear anyone down either. A part of you did feel guilty about what you had said to Poe; it had all been more or less true, but you hadn’t needed to tell him so in quite those words. He had stuck his neck out for you and defended you more times than you could count, and yet you hadn’t even done him the courtesy of being honest with him about how uncomfortable you were. The worst part was that you hadn’t even truly entertained the notion. Did you think he wasn’t going to listen to you? Were you worried about hurting his feelings? Hurting your own feelings somehow? The worst part was, when you were lying there in the dark, sometimes you would listen to footsteps walking down the corridor, the sound of heavy boots reverberating against the metal grates outside, and for a moment you almost wished it was him reaching out to you so that you could work up the courage to apologize for taking things out on him the way you had, even if you meant every word of what you had said.

               But no, you began to realize by the regular cycle of footsteps that it was only a night guard making his rounds, and with that glum realization, it only furthered your sense of self-imposed isolation. Not that you really minded, considering you had wanted a place to pity yourself without having to explain yourself to anyone, but at the same time, as your distance from everyone increased, so did your nightmares. Snoke visited you often, although it wasn’t always him. Sometimes you were locked in the small white cell on the Starkiller Base again, throwing yourself into the door again and again in a desperate bid to free yourself while you still had strength, before your time ran out. Sometimes you dreamed that you were underwater, submerged in a large black lake and something was pulling you down deeper and deeper, and your lungs burned hotter and hotter as they tried to hold onto that last gulp of air before your brain finally popped like a balloon at the same second your lungs burst and collapsed in your chest.

               No, nights were not fun for you, and it became clear that the nightmares were just going to present themselves to you over and over again; so, by the third night, you decided that you weren’t going to bed if you could help it. You had barely slept more than an hour over the past two nights anyway, and you reasoned trying to fight for any more was a worthless effort that could better be spent doing other things. Instead, you decided to try to do something about the couch in your living room, and although you didn’t really want to touch it, it was an eyesore and you wanted to be rid of it, or at the very least, use it as some sort of a distraction from your current circumstances.

               You sat down on the floor in front of it, only now being able to appreciate how low to the ground it really was as you looked it over. Your eyes swept back and forth over the fabric, but you couldn’t make up your mind as to what exactly you wanted to do with the thing until you suddenly felt your hand reaching forward and grabbing one of the small wooden pegs that held it in place. With a quick flick of your wrist, you could hear the wood splintering in the silence, and with a squeeze and a quick jerk of your arm, the peg came loose in your hand, the couch toppling forward to one side as you robbed it of one of its supports.

               “Interesting,” you murmur under your breath as you turn the wooden peg over in your hands, although there really wasn’t anything novel about it. What was interesting was how much it reminded you of a certain chair leg, and that of course brought back unwelcome nostalgia as you thought back to how things were on the Starkiller Base yet again. A part of you had almost wished that you had been able to stay there, that Snoke had trained you, and that together you and Kylo had been able to defeat the Resistance and rule the First Order together. You had no idea what that would have meant for the rest of the galaxy, but at least you could imagine that your life would have been better for it, or at least, that’s what you had hoped. You didn’t know if you would have become someone that you wouldn’t recognize, someone who Kylo didn’t like, or if there was the chance that he could have been struck down in battle if he had continued to fight with the First Order. Then again, there was still the chance that Kylo could be struck down in battle _now_ , and that didn’t exactly help your wayward thoughts.

               You sat cross-legged on the floor, your back slumped against the wall, picking apart the wooden peg slowly, fragment by fragment, peeling the wood away from the base of the peg in long, narrow strips. You were bound to get a splinter, but a part of you couldn’t really care as you worked as slowly and methodically as possible, trying to see how many long strips of wood piling that the peg could possibly contain. You weren’t sure what you were going to do with it when it was all done, but the fact that you were focusing on such a detailed task kept your mind blissful quiet and distracted, and you were thankful for the small piece of silence that you were able to obtain on an otherwise restless night.

               You’re so focused, in fact, that you almost don’t hear the knock at your door, and it’s only when you hear two taps and think you feel a flash of irritation from the other side that you realize that it isn’t just the night guard on patrol, and there is actually someone standing on the other side of your door. You don’t know what time it is besides _late_ , sometime between midnight and the early morning, but you get up regardless, holding the half-peeled wooden peg in your fist like some kind of stake as you get up and open the door.

               It takes you a second to realize Poe’s standing there, and in that second, you realize that you’ve missed your opportunity to make the first move, to treat him with contempt and sarcasm and shoo him away perhaps forever. But no, you had waited, thus giving Poe the chance to speak first and perhaps changing history as you knew it. If you had shooed Poe away, there was always the chance that he would have given up on you for good, never speak to you again, and while that seemingly small event could have changed the course of your entire life, in the end, things just happened the way they happened, and you supposed there was nothing you could really do to try to change that.

               “I figured you’d still be up,” Poe says quietly, although if you’re not mistaken, he almost looks as tired as you feel. “Can’t sleep?”

               “I could if I tried,” you reply, trying to regain the upper hand, but Poe just shakes his head as he gestures towards the inside of the apartment, silently asking for permission to come inside. You hesitate for a moment before you push the faulty door open and allow him to come inside, although you weren’t quite sure if you wanted him there or not. You didn’t want to fight, but you weren’t sure if you wanted to be alone right now, either, although you weren’t sure that Poe was really the first person that you wanted to see, especially when, at least at this moment, you had no plans to apologize to him for what you had said before. You had been drunk, sure, but you had meant every word of it, and you were not going to try to hide behind excuses that would only serve to erase the core of the problem, and that was that you could no longer trust Poe or understand where he was coming from anymore. You could understand Kylo and his motivations and his thoughts because you could read _him_ , but Poe was an enigma to you now, and you could no longer ascertain just what made him tick. It had been too long, his priorities had changed, and for whatever reason, you simply hadn’t asked. Too many other things had occurred, and even trying to understand who Poe had now become had fallen to the very bottom of your priority list.

               “I got you something,” Poe says as he walks into the kitchen and places a small pill bottle on the counter. You just head back to your familiar spot against the wall, continuing to pick at the wooden peg leg of the sofa. “What’s that?” When you don’t answer, he looks between you and the couch, which still remained partially slumped over onto the floor, as if it was almost begging to be fixed. “Did you break that?”

               “It was broken when I got here,” you reply automatically, but Poe just shakes his head, as if it wasn’t worth starting a fight over.

               “I got you some pills to help you sleep,” he explains, but seems to sense that you’re in no mood to talk. “If you want them, they’re there.” He’s about to leave, you know he is, and while a part of you wants him to go, you can’t help yourself.

               “It looks like you could use some of those,” you offer without looking up at him, and Poe stops to turn around and look back at you.

               “I’m fine,” he replies, but you just shake your head.

               “No, you should take them,” you insist. “I’m not going to take them. They’re not going to help with what I’m going through, anyway.”

               “We should talk,” Poe says as he stands directly in front of you now, and it’s making it hard for you to focus on the wooden peg in front of you.

               “I don’t know what you want me to say,” you say with a shrug of your shoulders. “I said what I said, right? There’s no way to take it back, so I don’t know what you want from me.”

               “Fine,” Poe says as he shakes his head. “Fine, I can tell you don’t want to talk, so I’ll go, but I just wanted you to know that you were right. I have become disillusioned with the Resistance, and it’s only a matter of time until more people like Deso decide to turn around and blame us for whatever problems the galaxy has next. So far we’ve been doing all we can to just lie low and not upset that balance, but it’s delicate. We _do_ want to stop the First Order, that’s why the General built this place to begin with, but after that’s done? I don’t know what will happen, I really don’t. I’m just trying to do my best to make everyone happy and hope things stay that way.”

               You close your eyes and let out a sigh, finally lowering your peg as you let it drop to the floor at your feet. “Ladson told me some things,” you venture. “He told me, well, he told me probably a lot more than he should have, but he told me what you’ve done for me, and I don’t know if I ever really took the time to thank you for what you’ve done, so, I just, thank you.” You look away, and it almost bothers you how you can’t read the expression playing behind Poe’s eyes.

               “You know, you don’t make it easy for people to care about you,” he offers, and you can’t help but let out a small snort of amused agreement, but Poe isn’t laughing. “It’s hard to take care of you when you can’t even take care of yourself. When’s the last time you’ve even eaten anything?”

               You glance towards the kitchen and realize you haven’t even opened up the cabinets to see what little food you did have, and a part of you almost wondered if the cabinets had been left empty on purpose to see if you’d notice that you didn’t have anything to eat, forcing you to venture out on your own when you got desperate. If that had been their test, then it was more than clear that you had failed it.

               “It doesn’t matter,” you reply with a shake of your head. “Look, I know you all care about me and I should be a lot more appreciative and grateful for everything you’re all doing for me, I get that, but I don’t want to _be_ anyone’s problem. I don’t know how to cope with this, I don’t know what to think or say or do and the more you try to make me feel better, or look out for me, the worse I feel because I know I’m not doing as much as I can to feel better, but I just don’t know how, but then I feel guilty that you’re trying harder to make me feel better than I am and it just makes me feel worse and the cycle continues all over again.”

               “You need time,” Poe says gently. “And I get that, believe me, I do. You died, and none of us can imagine what that must have been like for you. But you need to talk to us. If you need space, you need to tell us. If you want to be left alone, you need to tell us. You don’t have to pretend to be happy all the time just to please us, because you think it’s what we want to hear.”

               “It’s not that,” you say as you shake your head. “Your place is here, and that goes for all of you, with Finn and even Rey, you can call D’Qar your home and you know that you’re wanted here, that you belong. It’s not like that for me. I don’t-“ You can’t help but roll your shoulders uncomfortably. “I don’t want to _be_ here, but if Kylo’s really gone there’s nowhere left for me to go. There’s nothing left for me. I know Rey offered to have me travel around with her and Luke, but I don’t-“ you shake your head. “I don’t want to, I can’t, that’s not for me.”

               “And that’s okay,” Poe says gently. “It’ll take some time to figure out where you fit back into things, but you will. You just have to take things one step at a time and let things figure themselves out.”

               “I don’t know how to tell you I don’t think that’s ever going to happen,” you say with a defeated shrug. “It sounds hopeless, I know, but I am hopeless, and that’s why I don’t want you wasting your time trying to defend me. You’re only going to get yourself hurt in the process.”

               “Look,” Poe says as he takes a step towards you and brushes your hair back and away from your face. “Believe it or not, I have seen this before, hell, I’ve felt this way before, probably not as strongly as you are right now, but this is what war does to people. I’ve seen people killed no more than two inches to my left, or to my right, and it would have been so easy for that to have been me. I’ve had people, good people, friends of mine, drop right out of the sky in front of me, and there’s been nothing I could do to erase what that felt like. I’ve lost friends, family, people I care about, and I know how hard it is to push through it when everyone’s counting on you to be strong when you feel like you’re going to collapse under the weight of it. I’ve seen people collapse, I’ve seen people give up, and I know you want to, because I want to, but we can’t, because we have a responsibility. We have people that are counting on us. I have my squadron that’s always looking to me to make the right call no matter what, and you have Ani, and Ren, and you have to pull through this, for them.”

               “What about the people that collapsed?” you ask quietly. “The ones who gave up? The ones who didn’t think they could make it?”

               “Most of them aren’t still here,” Poe tells you firmly. “But that’s not going to be you. I’m not going to let that be you, and not just because I made a promise to look after you, or because I care about you, but I can’t let that happen to you because I’m selfish too. You’re not the only one who has nightmares, and you’re not the only one who finds it hard to just get up in the morning, because there’s some days when I can’t, when I think I’ve given it my all and I just can’t push myself any further. But then I get up and I see you, still fighting, still trying, and it helps me to do that as well. I haven’t been doing what I’ve been doing just for your benefit; it’s for mine too. I don’t just like sleeping beside you because it helps you sleep better, it helps me too, but I’m okay with being that selfish because I know it’s helping the both of us.”

               “But, Kylo-“ you say quietly, but Poe just shakes his head.

               “Ren’s going to come back,” he says with a nod of his head. “You two are so connected now that I honestly can’t even begin to know what that feels like, and while he’s here, I’m not going to get in the way of that. But I need you to really hear me when I tell you when he comes back, it’s not going to be for very long, and he won’t be able to make any promises as to how long he’s going to be gone for. And I know it’s going to hurt you each and every time he goes, but I need you to be strong enough to handle that.”

               “But I’m not,” you whisper quietly as you shake your head back and forth, feeling tears start to pool behind your eyes. “I’m not strong enough. I don’t think I can do it, not again.”

               “You can,” Poe replies as he leans forward to kiss your forehead gently. “Because you are. You’ve survived this long, you’ve survived Snoke, you’ve survived the impossible, and you went _years_ without seeing him before. You can do it again. It’s not going to be easy, but Ani is still here, and he’s still counting on you to be strong for him.”

               “Well, I’m doing a shit job of that right now, aren’t I?” you ask with a dry laugh, but Poe just shakes his head.

               “You’re doing your best,” he tells you firmly. “And that’s all he wants, is for you to do your best.”

               “And what if my best isn’t good enough?” you ask as you finally dare yourself to look up into his eyes.

               “Then you have me to help you through it,” Poe tells you calmly. “And Ladson, and Finn, and Rey, and Ani. We’re all here for you, to help with whatever you need. All you need to do is ask for it.”

               “But I don’t know what to ask for,” you tell him, your voice cracking on the last words, but Poe just seems more resolved to help you through this than ever.

               “Time,” he says patiently. “Because we can give you that. We can give you all the time you need, but you need to be open with us. That’s the trade-off. We’ll help you with whatever you need, but you need to be honest with us and tell us what’s bothering you.” You just nod your head slowly as you look away, before Poe’s next words bring your eyes up to meet his again. “Do you trust us?”

               “I trust you,” you reply as you nod your head slowly, and Poe forces his lips into a tight smile which you quickly return. You hesitate for a moment before you lean forward and kiss him on the lips, softly, gently, a silent gesture of affection and trust. Poe seems to sense this as you lean into his shoulder, resting your face against his neck, and he immediately wraps his arms around you as he pulls you into a firm hug. “I wish I could smell you right now,” you say quietly. “You always smelled, I don’t know, comforting.”

               “Mm,” Poe murmurs, but something else suddenly strikes you.

               “You’re the last thing I smelled,” you tell him suddenly. “I remember when you were carrying me off the ship, and I was so out of it I thought it was Kylo at first, but then I felt your leather jacket and I smelled the machine oil and that’s what really made me realize that it was you.” It doesn’t really mean anything, you know it’s just coincidence, but you still need to pause for a moment as a much glummer realization sets in. “I wouldn’t still be here if it wasn’t for you.”

               “Like I said, we weren’t leaving you behind,” Poe says firmly, but there’s warmth in his voice now. “When we say we’re your friends and we care about you, we mean that. We didn’t leave you behind then, and we’re not going to do it now. We’re here with you, and if you’re struggling, we’re going to help you through this.”

               “But you would have left me behind, right?” you ask quickly. “If you saw the ship starting to explode, you would have made sure Ani had gotten out of there safely, right?”

               “Of course,” Poe replies automatically. “But Ani could still sense you, he sensed that we still had time, and I trusted his judgement.”

               “And he trusted you,” you point out. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he stayed on the ship where it was safe, and that he stayed with Kylo, but I would have thought he would have insisted to come charging in to save me himself.”

               “He trusted me to get you back,” Poe replies simply. “He knew I wouldn’t leave you behind.”

               “The man who’ll do anything to complete a mission,” you say as you smile up at him, pulling away slowly. “I guess there is something to appreciate in that after all.”

               “Yeah,” Poe says with a small laugh. “But I think we should get you to bed now. You look like you haven’t had a good night’s sleep in days.”

               He knows you haven’t, and you can’t help but snort as you shake your head from side to side. “Only if you do that neck rubbing thing again.” You pause, as a sudden thought occurs to you, and suddenly you glance down and to the side. “Sorry, I, um, did you want to stay?”

               “Do you want me to?” Poe asks, and you can tell by the way he gazes at you intently that he wants an answer. No deflections or jokes, just clear, honest communication.

               “Yes,” you tell him firmly, and Poe takes your hand as he leads you into the back room.

               “I’ve never slept on one of these beds before,” he tells you as he plops himself down, waiting for you to crawl in beside him. “They comfortable?”

               “I don’t know,” you reply. “Haven’t really slept on it much, but if you don’t like it we can always go back to your room, er – you can always go back to your room, I mean, if you don’t like it.”

               Poe laughs, and you can’t help but smile at the sound. “Yes, you can come too,” he says as you curl up into his arm. “Believe it or not, I haven’t been able to get any sleep at night without you either. Turns out I apparently can’t sleep very well unless you’re waking me every two hours.”

               “It’s not every two hours,” you say indignantly as you roll over to get a better look at his face. “Is it?”

               “Go to bed,” Poe says gently as he places another kiss against your forehead, and you just shake your head as you curl into his chest. It was difficult to imagine that Poe needed you the same way that you needed someone, but in a way, you could almost understand. You weren’t with the Resistance, and he could be open with you in ways that he couldn’t be open with others, emotionally vulnerable about his doubts and his fears that he had to conceal around the others for the sake of keeping up a sense of confidence in his mission. You were a source of comfort for him, and that was why he was more than eager to return the favor and be there for you.

               “It’s weird,” you mutter into his chest, slowly drifting in and out of sleep. “Lately it feels like every time I go out with people I wish I was alone and every time I’m alone I wish someone was there.”

               “I’m here,” Poe says soothingly as he runs his hand through your hair again, placing another gentle kiss against your forehead. “Just go to sleep, okay?” You nod your head slowly as you finally let yourself drift off before you can hear his last words.

               Regardless, you spend the rest of the night curled up against Poe’s chest, undisturbed by your habitual bouts of restlessness. It was only when you awoke that morning to find Poe sleeping soundly on his side beside you that you realized that you had passed the night, for the first time in a long while, free of the nightmares that so often haunted your dreams. You had no idea if this was a sign of better things to come, but you resolved not to try to think about it too deeply as you laid down again and slipped back into a peaceful doze.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greetings from Montreal!! Toute autre personne ici parlent francais? I'm so glad this hotel gets Wifi otherwise I would probably be going nuts...I already sort of am since I brought my netbook and this thing is tiny and slow as anything, but it still works!! xD But there's no broken bones yet, so that's some good news to report...if nothing else, if this is my first trip to Canada where I don't come back with a massive injury or a broken bone, I'll be a happy camper, so wish me luck!! xD In other news, Reader is slowly beginning to sort out her own issues, which is necessary if she and Kylo ever want to get back on track after what happened with Snoke and the subsequent trial. And speaking of Kylo, well, I don't want to spoil anything...I guess you'll just have to check back in on Thursday to find out. ;) Until then, cheers!!


	77. Chapter 77

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW content ahead

               “Okay, just move your feet like that, Ani.”

               “Like this?”

               “No, no, if you’ll do that, she’ll-“

               But it’s too late, and you quickly sweep one of your legs around his as Ani goes crashing backwards to the ground. He starts to sit up on instinct, but your lightsaber is already to his throat, and you can see Ani gulp as the amber light dances off the reflection in his dark eyes. You just manage a grin as you extinguish your blades quickly, offering a hand as you help him get to his feet.

               “You okay, Ani?” you ask, and Ani nods quickly as he grabs your hand and lets you jerk him upright again. You knew the stones on the floor of the Green Room could be uncomfortable to land on, and you brushed off his shoulders with motherly affection, trying to make it seem like you actually felt at least slightly guilty for knocking Ani off his guard.

               “Fine,” Ani says with a quick shake of his head. “Although I just can’t help but feel like I should be doing better than where I am now, that’s all.”

               “You will in time,” Rey says patiently from her spot beside the door, where she had been watching your mock duel. “Up until now, you’ve mostly just been training with your father, but you need to learn to fight against all sorts of opponents in order to help you enhance your abilities and develop your own style of fighting. You need to know just how you tend to react to situations before you can adjust your fighting style in order to compensate for them and adjust to match other techniques.”

               “Plus you’re up against me,” you offer as Ani looks back at you. “And I’ve been training for much, much longer than you have, but everything will come in time if you’re focused and dedicated to really learning and getting better. Remember when you were just a kid here and I gave you my staff? You couldn’t put that thing down.”

               “I’m still not sure what happened to that thing,” Ani sighs as he shakes his head from side to side. “I thought I had it with me on the _Propitiate_ , but now I’m not sure it even made it off Naboo. I’m sorry I lost it.”

               “It’s okay,” you say quickly as you give his forearm a reassuring squeeze of affection. In truth, you were almost glad that the staff was gone. It would only make you nostalgic for your time back on the Starkiller Base, and while you had once looked back on those memories fondly, as the time when you had really gotten to know Kylo Ren, it was quickly replaced by everything that had happened on Naboo. Not that that really mattered anyway. You didn’t want to think about Kylo Ren as much as possible, at least not if you could help it. You hadn’t heard anything from him in days, and that suited you just fine. If Kylo really was determined never to see you again, then it seemed you had no other option but to take his advice and push forward, taking care of Ani and doing the best you could on D’Qar to take care of yourself. It wasn’t as though you hadn’t been put in this position once before. You could only hope that Kylo wouldn’t go rogue again and put you in the unfortunate position of bringing him back again. You knew that those who didn’t learn from history were apt to repeat its mistakes, but you didn’t think the future could possibly be _that_ cyclic.

               “Let’s go again,” you say quickly, and from over Ani’s shoulder you can see Rey shoot you a concerned look. She hadn’t yet asked you again if you wanted to travel with her and Luke to help set up his new Jedi training academy, but you were beginning to think that you should. It would at least get you off D’Qar for a while, out of the Resistance’s watchful eye, and maybe that freedom and that sort of distraction was just what you needed in order to help get your thoughts fixated on something other than Kylo Ren. Of course, that would mean leaving Poe and Ladson behind, and you weren’t quite sure you were ready to move on from them just yet, especially after you had already been away for so long. Things finally felt like they were starting to develop at least somewhat more of a natural rhythm for you as you began to see Ladson more and more often, and you weren’t eager to lose his friendship again if you could help it.

               You signal for Ani to come towards you, and he pauses for a moment, his eyes dipping down to study your feet. You deceptively take a quick step off to your left, putting your weight on your back foot, trying to trick Ani into making a move which you could easily counter once you hopped back the other way. Fortunately, Ani doesn’t fall for it, and he quickly brings his blade up and around, forcing you to duck and bring your blade up and across your body in a strike you can just barely manage to block in time.

               “Very good, Ani,” Rey says with a firm nod of approval, and you and Ani repeat this dance a few more times, letting him cast each carefully planned strike, one after the other, watching your footwork and allowing him to compensate for form, until the door to the Green Room eventually opens up. You pull your lightsaber across your middle and hold it outstretched horizontally in front of you, palms up, to indicate to Ani that he should stop, and he quickly repeats the gesture with his own lightsaber in reverse, holding it palm down horizontally across his body in one fist before he extinguishes the blade and returns the hilt to his side.

               “Want to give it a try?” you ask Poe as you turn towards him, smiling brightly in his direction. Things between you had finally settled into a comfortable sense of normalcy that you could only now appreciate after everything that had transpired between you. There was no more awkwardness or skirting around each other, no more hostility or anger, just two people who were trying their best to make it through in this galaxy and comforting each other in whatever way that meant.

               “I don’t know,” Poe replies, but you can see his smirk as he crosses his arms thoughtfully across his chest. “Doesn’t that have a Force toggle on it? Would I even be able to wield it?”

               You bite your lip in hesitation, glancing over to Rey. You had never let anyone else wield your lightsaber before, not even Kylo or Ani, and you weren’t sure how you felt about letting someone else use it. Then again, Poe didn’t have his own lightsaber, and you didn’t know when he’d have another chance to use one-

               “Here,” Ani says quickly as he turns to him. “Use mine.”

               “You sure?” Poe asks, and Ani nods his head quickly.

               “No Force toggle, which means you shouldn’t have any problems,” Ani tells him as he hands it over, and Poe looks to Rey for approval, watching as she nods her head in quick agreement.

               _Is he going to be able to do it?_ you ask Rey excitedly in your head, and she turns to you with an almost nervous gleam in her eye.

               _He should be able to_ , she replies, although you can tell that she’s just as excited to see if he will as you are. _He –_

Suddenly you see a bright flash of blue emerge from the hilt, and Poe holds it up in front of him, his eyes travelling up and down the vertical blade. “Woah,” he murmurs, the awe evident on his face, and you can’t help but grin as you watch Poe Dameron, Captain of the Resistance, cautiously spin the blade of the lightsaber around his body in slow circles, trying to get a feel for the movement.

               “Yeah, woah,” you reply as you point the tip of your lightsaber at him. “Come on, try it out, come hit me.”

               “I don’t-“ Poe shakes his head quickly, but you just bounce on the toes of your boots like a little kid.

               “I won’t hit back,” you tell him. “I swear, you can trust me on this. I know how dangerous lightsabers are. Here-“ You tilt your blade at an angle, extending it far away from your body while still keeping your elbows bent. “Here, just strike and disengage. Super easy, and you’re not even near me.”

               “Go ahead,” Rey encourages, and Poe just shakes his head, as if he thinks it’s a bad idea, before he does it anyway, bringing the lightsaber up in a slow arc until it collides against your lightsaber with a small crackle. “See?”

               “Woah,” Poe repeats, and he seems visibly taken in by the current that flowed from the hilt into his hand. He repeats the motion, a little faster this time, and you make sure to keep your feet grounded in place, knees bent, as you absorb the force of impact and channel it into the ground beneath your heels.

               “See?” you tell him. “Nothing to it.”

               “It’s, uh, it’s interesting, I’ll give you that,” Poe offers as you swing your other blade around in a slow arc and bring it up against his blade incredibly slowly so that he can feel the force of impact for himself. He immediately throws one foot back as he tries to steady himself, bracing himself as your amber blade strikes against his blue one. You just barely bump them against each other in the air, disengaging before they could even connect, and Poe just shoots you a dry look. “Okay, you can hit me a bit harder than that.”

               “Okay, just make sure you’re ready,” you warn him, and Poe nods his head in confirmation. Even still, you give him another quick second in order to steady himself before you bring the blade around against for a much firmer strike. Poe lets out a grunt as the two blades make contact, but he maintains his grip on the lightsaber nonetheless.

               “Impressive,” Rey offers, and you nod your head in quick agreement.

               “It is,” you tell him as Poe extinguishes the blade and hands it back to Ani. “But you didn’t just come here to watch us train, did you?”

               “As much fun as that sounds,” Poe says with a heavy sigh. “No.” He seems to hesitate for a moment as he glances aside at Rey before he turns back to you. “Can I talk to you outside?”

               “Sure,” you say with a light shrug of your shoulders as you turn to Rey. “Mind filling in for me for a minute?”

               “Sure,” Rey echoes as she turns to your son. “Ready, Ani?”

               “Always am,” he replies steadily, and you pause for a moment, silently wondering where you had heard _that_ phrase before, as you follow Poe out the door. He stops in the hallway just outside the threshold to the room as he closes the door behind him, and you can’t help but notice that he looks almost nervous as he fidgets in front of you, as if he doesn’t know quite where to begin.

               “What’s up?” you ask as you look him up and down, trying to figure out what was causing him this level of distress. “You seem nervous, and it’s not a look you wear well.”

               “Not nervous,” Poe replies automatically with a quick shake of his head. “Though I do need to ask you a favor, and I’m not sure how you’re going to react to it.”

               “Well, you can ask,” you say with a light shrug of your shoulders. “I mean, seeing how much you’ve done for me, I don’t think there’s any way I can really say no to you.” You pause for a moment, trying to think things over. “Wait, this isn’t like anything I’ve had to do for the Resistance before, is it?”

               “No, no, nothing like that,” Poe says as he shakes his head. “But we do have a high profile prisoner that’s being temporarily escorted here to the base for safe keeping. He used to be in with the First Order and he’s definitely not someone they’re eager to trust, so they’re going to need someone who wouldn’t mind watching over him and keeping track of what he does pretty much the entire time he’s on base.”

               “Okay,” you say, slowly sounding out each syllable, mentally trying to figure out why Poe was asking _you_ to do this and not just one of the many guards they probably had trained for this task.

               “It’s only for a few days,” Poe assures you, but something still feels off to you.

               “So you just want me to camp out in front of his cell for a few days?” you ask as you quirk up an eyebrow, but Poe just shakes his head.

               “Well, that’s the thing,” he explains. “We weren’t going to keep him in a cell. You know space here is limited, but we were thinking about letting him stay in your room for a few days.”

               You just shake your head as if you’re trying to clear it, suddenly more confused than ever. “So let me get this straight,” you say slowly, trying to clarify his words in your mind. “There is someone of notable rank from the First Order being escorted here as prisoner for a few days, but instead of keeping him in a cell you want to keep him in my new room and you want me to watch over him the entire time he’s here?”

               “Pretty much,” Poe replies, and you just roll your shoulders up before you drop them again.

               “I mean, I _guess_ I can do that,” you reply with an idle shrug. “I mean, am I allowed to ask why you think that I should be the one to look after him, or are you just looking to give me something to do to help me feel like I’m contributing something here?”

               “Bit of both?” Poe offers as he spreads his hands, and you tilt your head to the side in consideration.

               “If it’s only for a few days, then sign me up,” you tell him, although there’s something on Poe’s face that you still can’t read, as if he’s still expecting something else from you. “Um, though, am I allowed to ask, why me?”

               “Just thought that you were the best person for the job, that’s all,” Poe replies simply, but there’s something else behind his words, some clandestine amusement that is lost on you.

               “Do I know him?” you press, and Poe doesn’t answer as he nods his head up and down. “Who do I know from the First Order-?” You stop dead in your tracks as you stare at him. “Is it Phasma?”

               Poe looks surprised for a moment before his face suddenly hardens and he shakes his head back and forth. “No, we still haven’t been able to locate her,” he says firmly, his voice suddenly turning serious. “We have reason to believe that she’s off in the Western Reaches, although what she’s doing there, I can’t say.”

               You realize this is the first time Poe’s actually opened up to you about any knowledge that the Resistance may have had concerning her whereabouts, or any information concerning the First Order at all, and you can’t tell if this was an unintentional slip or a sign that things were starting to return, more or less, to normal, and it was a sign that you could be trusted again. “You’ll find her,” you say reassuringly, and Poe just forces a tight smile in your direction.

               “But no, it’s not her,” he says as he shakes his head, almost as if he’s prompting you to ask again.

               “Well, if it’s not her, then-“ Your voice suddenly cuts off mid-sentence as you stare at Poe, almost begging him to confirm what had just ran through your mind. Poe lets out a brief snort of laughter as he realizes that you’ve finally clued in to what he’s been hinting at all along, and you can’t help but flush, unable to believe that you hadn’t put the pieces together sooner.

               “Oh, you _ass_ ,” you scoff as you hit his arm repeatedly, trying not to hit him as hard as you wanted. “Are you serious? How could you do that to me?”

               “I was waiting to see how long it would take you,” Poe replies with a slight laugh, but you just shake your head again.

               “So Kylo’s really coming here?” you ask, and as Poe nods his head, you just bite your lip as you look away. “Have you, uh, talked to him at all since we last-?”

               “No,” Poe says as he shakes his head. “There’s been a lot of interference on the comms lately, and we haven’t been able to get through.” You pause for a moment as you let his words sink in. The last time you had spoken to Kylo, he had told you to just move on with your life, to forget about him, and yet now Poe wanted you to basically watch over him as if nothing at all had changed.

               “Oh,” is all you can say, but Poe reaches out and puts a hand on your arm comfortingly.

               “He’s going to be happy to see you,” he tells you. “Whatever he said, he didn’t mean it, okay? You have to know that.”

               “No, I do,” you offer, but you weren’t really eager to discuss your concerns about your relationship with Kylo right then. “So, he’s going to be coming onto the base for a few days? Is there anything he’s supposed to do while he’s here?”

               “Rest up,” Poe says with a shrug. “They need to come back for supplies and he’s been involved in some pretty intense combat. I know he’s been injured, but I don’t know how badly, or what they meant by injured, considering what I’ve seen happen to him before, but there’s a chance that a few days could become as long as a week. I don’t know how likely that is, so don’t get your hopes up, but I just thought you’d like to have all the information beforehand.”

               “I appreciate it,” you tell him as you smile up at him, and it’s a smile that Poe quickly returns. “So when do they plan on getting in?”

               “Tonight,” Poe tells you, and your eyebrows shoot up in surprise, although that was hardly a bad thing. The less time you had to overthink this, the better. “Considering your status, I was thinking that Ani could meet him in the hangar and escort him down to the room. Would you be okay waiting for him there?”

               “Yeah,” you reply as you nod your head up and down, considering you weren’t sure exactly how happy Kylo would be to see you. “Yeah, no, that sounds like a good idea.”

               “He’s going to want to see you,” Poe tells you firmly. “If I have no doubts about that, then neither should you.”

               “No, I don’t,” you say quickly as you shake your head from side to side. “I want to see him, and I know he wants to see me, but I’m just worried about what’s going to happen when it’s over. He’s coming back for a few days, sure, maybe a week, but then he’s going to leave again, and I-“ You glance to the side, unable to meet his eyes. “I just don’t know how I’ll be able to handle that, losing him all over again.”

               “It’ll be rough,” Poe admits, and his candor forces you to look back up at him again. “But we’ll help you get through it, okay?”

               “Yeah,” you say quickly as you dip your head forward in a quick series of nods. “Yeah, um, do you mind telling Ani that he’s coming? I want to start, I don’t know, preparing the room or something for when he gets here. I should probably fix that couch.”

               “Sure thing,” Poe replies as he heads back into the Green Room, but the second he’s gone, you let the grateful smile slip from your features as you head down the hall heading to the privacy of your new room. Kylo was coming back, and in the back of your mind you knew that you should be ecstatic, but you just couldn’t be, not after what Kylo had said to you. You wanted to push it all behind you, to know that Poe was right, that Kylo hadn’t meant what he said and wanted to see you as well, but you couldn’t help but wonder if he _had_ really meant what he said, if he _had_ really wanted you to move on from him. You knew he might for his own unselfish reasons, wanting you to have a better life than what he could offer you now, knowing how much distance there would be between you, but you didn’t care about that, you truly and honestly didn’t. You wanted to be with him more than anything, wanted to tell him that you loved him again more than anything, and you would wait and scrape up every last second that you got to spend with him when he returned.

               In the back of your mind, you almost wanted to punish him for it, wanted to make him regret ever saying those words to you, either by storming out or refusing to touch him or by provoking a fight, but time was short and you didn’t want to waste any time on negativity when you had no idea how long he would be staying for or even how long it would take until you got to see him again. No, you wanted to make the most of the short amount of time you would have together, knowing just how much you would regret it if you wasted even a second of your time together.

               Of course, while that was _your_ plan, you had no idea how Kylo would feel, and you could only hope that he would share your sentiments. Even still, that was no guarantee, and as the hours passed on you found yourself growing increasingly nervous as to how the situation was going to play out. You had deemed the couch more or less unfixable, not that you truly cared much to fix it anyway, and spent the rest of your time sitting cross-legged on the edge of the bed facing the wall, idly peeling away at the wooden peg that was continuously diminishing in girth as you had before, trying to channel your thoughts into something more productive, but your nervous energy remained no matter how much you tried to distance yourself from it.

               You’re so focused on the slow, repetitive motions of your fingers that you don’t even notice how much time has slipped away from you as you hear the door open and close. You freeze, wooden peg still in your hand, as you slowly get to your feet. Kylo’s in the next room, you can sense him, and you let the peg slip out of your hand and onto the floor behind you as Kylo slowly comes into the room, perhaps nervous about seeing you as well.

               It only takes him seconds to walk into the room, but you wait until he’s standing directly in front of you for you to take him in. He still looked more or less like your Kylo, but he looked _tired_ , weary from battle, his face pale and dark circles underneath his eyes as though he hadn’t slept in a long, _long_ time. There was a gash along one side of his cheek that looked to be healing, and there looked to be some sort of contusion, a purple-yellow mark on the upper side of his forehead, as if he had taken a nasty blow from something, and the new helmet that Ematt had ordered he reconstruct had been unable to absorb most of the impact. His eyes are focused on you, trained on how you’re going to react to seeing him again, but the only thing you can do in response is dip your gaze. You could have prepared for how you wanted to react to his presence all you wanted, but there was nothing that could have prepared you for how to respond with him actually standing there in front of you, being able to feel his energy again in a way that was completely unique to him and him alone.

               “Hi,” you venture softly, your words almost getting swept away in the vastness of the silence between you.

               “Hi,” he replies, echoing your same gentle tone. He seems to actively study you for a moment, but you can’t be sure what he is hoping to see. “How are you?”

               “Fine,” you reply, and even though you can’t be sure why, you suddenly find yourself breathless with emotion, as if all the air had been sucked out of your lungs.

               “I’m sorry,” Kylo offers quickly, and you quickly force your eyes back up to look at him again. “I’m sorry, for what I said to you. I was tired, and I wasn’t thinking straight, I wasn’t thinking about the effect my words would have on you. All I knew was that you had put yourself at risk trying to help me, and I couldn’t let you do that. I couldn’t let you or Ani suffer because of my mistakes, and I couldn’t think of the right words to explain myself to you.”

               “It’s fine,” you say as you shake your head, but Kylo keeps going regardless.

               “It’s not,” he insists. “The pilot told me how affected you were by my words. I wanted to reach out to you again, but when I tried, I couldn’t get a signal, and-“ He just shakes his head, as if that didn’t matter. “I’ve gotten too accustomed to you being able to feel me, being able to sense what I mean without needing to explain myself, that I forgot that you can’t always sense my intentions as clearly when I’m away.”

               “It’s fine,” you repeat, although your voice is still shaking with emotion. “I knew that, I mean, a part of me knew that. It hurt to hear, that’s all, but I knew deep down that you were just trying to protect me and Ani, because that’s what you do, you look out for us.”

               Kylo just nods his head slowly, as if he’s struggling to figure out whether he should give you space or come and hold you. Even you weren’t sure what you wanted right now, you wanted not to be crying, you knew that implicitly, but beyond that, you just wanted him to stay, to say he was coming home for good, and you knew that was something you would never hear from him, not, at least, for a long while, and that was something that you were still struggling to figure out how to cope with, if you would be ever able to figure out how to cope with it, or if that loss would hit you like a wreck each and every time you had to watch him leave.

               “How are you?” Kylo asks again, and you can tell that this time he really wants you to answer him, wants you to open up to him and be vulnerable with him like you had in the past. “How have things been for you here?” You want to shrug dismissively, tell him that things have been fine, but you can’t, right now you can’t, because although you can recall specific events of happiness, like training with Ani or reconciling with Poe or meditating with Rey or playing in the simulator with Finn, or hanging out with Asher and Ladson, all of that suddenly falls away and you’re just left with a tangible sense of mourning and loneliness that seems to imbibe your whole sense of being.

               “I cry a lot,” you tell him, your voice finally breaking as you can feel all the fears and doubts and anxieties that you had since he left, all the ones you were too afraid to talk to anyone else about, suddenly come rushing up to the surface. “And I’m lonely and I’m sad and I hate this. I fucking hate this. I hate that you’re gone, and it’s worse that you still love me. It’s worse because we want to be together, we _should_ be together, and yet we’re not, because of your past, because of the choices you’ve made, because of the choices I’ve made, all the time we spent together and it’s brought us to a future where we’re forced to remain apart. I don’t know how to handle that and I don’t want to handle that. I don’t want to be an adult about this. All I know is when I go to bed at night, you’re not there, and when I wake up in the morning, you’re still gone. I don’t know how you want me to deal with that, Kylo, but I can’t. The truth is that I can’t and I’m tired of this, I’m tired of dealing with this pain. I know what it’s like for you, I can feel your pain too, but it will never get better and I don’t know how to deal with that. Tell me what to do, how I can fix it, because I can’t think of a way, I honestly can’t. Tell me how I’m supposed to deal with the fact that the best times that we’ve ever had together are behind us. Tell me how I’m supposed to deal with the fact that you won’t be there for me when I need you. Tell me how I’m supposed to deal with the fact that I can’t relay a thought to you when I want to because you’re too far out of reach. I know you’re suffering too. I know you’re going through the same feelings of doubt, the same pain, but I can’t fix that. I can only change how I feel, and right now there’s nothing. Right now I’m sad and I’m numb and I’m hollow and I go back and forth between feeling so empty it almost feels like I’m just floating in nothing, like the hollowness inside me is as big and empty as the galaxy itself, and other times I feel like I’m in so much pain that my shoulders are physically forced down under the weight of it and I can’t breathe, like it’s this massive thing that’s sitting on my shoulders and crushing me down, stuffing me inside this little invisible box that I will never be able to escape from. I just can’t deal with this anymore, I want to, believe me, I want to keep fighting, but I don’t know how, I honestly don’t know how.”

               “It’s going to be okay,” Kylo says calmly, and you hate that he’s calm and you hate that he’s being patient right now. Honestly, you needed him to hit you, to slap you across the face and tell you to stop acting like such a _fucking_ child. He was supposed to be immature, he was supposed to be the one throwing tantrums and fits, and yet he was the one comforting you right now, trying to remain calm and in control of himself, which he had no business being considering all the Resistance was putting him through. You weren’t going through _anything_ by comparison, and yet you were the one who was breaking down and blubbering like a child in front of him when you should have been the one to stay strong.

“You were able to get over me once, when you were here last,” Kylo reminds you, and you can only let out a muffled cry from behind your pursed lips as you wipe your face in your sleeve, trying to indicate that that was _not_ what you wanted, but Kylo keeps going. “I know; I _don’t_ want you to forget me. I don’t want to lose you, but I’m going to if things keep up the way they are and I can see that. As much as it pains me to say it, you need to rely on your friends here, and that includes the pilot. You need someone, I know you, you _need_ someone to help keep you grounded, to help you feel wanted, that’s just a part of who you are, you need someone around in ways that I can’t be there for you right now.”

               “Then I’ll just deal with it,” you sniff, hating that you were so fucking _emotional_ right now when you had so little time to spend with him as it was. “If that’s a part of who I am then I’ll just change who I am and I’ll just deal with it.”

               “No,” Kylo says as he shakes his head. “You know it doesn’t work that way. I am jealous, I am, of the time he gets to spend with you when I can’t be, but I am okay with you taking comfort in him because I know that’s what you need.”

               “How can you be?” you spit angrily, unable to help yourself. “How can you be okay that I’m off with him while you’re off fighting for your life? How can you be okay with anything? Because I’m not. I’m not okay. Every time I feel even an ounce of happiness, I feel guilty that you’re not here to enjoy it with me, guilty that you’re off in hell while I’m just here trying to figure out what I should do from one day to the next, struggling between whether I should go and reach out to someone and try to find some way to make this better or if I should just sit there missing you all day. I don’t know what to do and I don’t know how can you be okay with me trying to make my own life if you’re not here to experience any of it with me.”

               “Because you belong to me,” Kylo says firmly, his eyes full of fire as he takes a step towards you. “Because you are mine, and you always will be. We are bonded, we have a connection that most wouldn’t be able to comprehend, and I know that no matter happens, there is nothing in the galaxy that can change how we feel about each other. I used to be afraid that you would go back to him and leave me for him entirely, but I trust you. I trust that will never happen, because I can feel you as strongly as I can feel myself.” He pauses for a moment as he steadies himself, as if trying to choose the right words. “The next few years are going to be hard. I’m not going to be around, perhaps for months at a time, and I don’t want you to draw yourself deeper into isolation and start to resent me for this.”

               “Kylo, I would never-“

               “You would,” Kylo says firmly, and you decide it’s best not to argue. “You would, whether it’s me or yourself or the Resistance or even Ani, you would need to blame someone for this, and I know this because I know _you_. I know how you think and I know how you feel and I know what you need and I can look at this more objectively than you can. I’m trying to do what’s best for you in whatever way I can, but there is nothing I can do. The only thing I can do is try to destroy the First Order as quickly as possible so that there’s at least a small chance that I can return to you and never have to leave your side again.”

               “I want to help,” you tell him, your voice sounding absolutely pitiful and child-like through your tears. “I want to help you, Kylo. I don’t care if it’s dangerous, I want to be by your side. If you go down, we go down together, that’s how it works.”

               “No, it doesn’t,” Kylo says with a shake of his head. “I have made mistakes and I need to suffer for them, but you haven’t. Whatever ill you’ve done or the harm you’ve caused is only because of the manipulations of the dark side. When I met you, you were good, and light, and it was because of that that I was able to pull through. You have so much doubt now, so much pain, and I would do anything in my power if I could take it from you, but I can’t. The only thing I can do is to try to make the best of things here for you in the here and now, until I’m able to return to you.”

               “I know,” you say with a quick nod of your head. “I know that, I do.” You look back up at him, trying to harden your resolve. “Just promise me that you _will_ come home, after all of this is over, that you’ll come home to me, and then you’ll never have to leave my side again.”

               “I thought you hated promises,” Kylo muses gently, but you’re in no mood for this right now as you cross your arms over your chest and huff.

               “Please?” you plead, and Kylo’s expression hardens to show that he is taking your request seriously.

               “The Force will be with you, always,” Kylo says firmly as he steps forward. “Just as I will be.”

               You can’t take it anymore, and you feel like your whole body is shaking as you reach up to kiss him. Kylo kisses you back, wrapping a hand around the back of your neck while the other one brushes your hair back out of your face. He lifts you up suddenly, pushing you against the back wall, and you wrap your legs and arms around him, holding him so tightly you almost hoped that you’d leave him with a bruise that he could look back on for months and months.

               _I don’t want you to forget me_ , you tell him without breaking the kiss, and Kylo only kisses you harder in response, nipping down on your bottom lip as he draws it away before releasing it slowly.

               _Do you even_ think _there is a_ chance _that could ever happen?_ Kylo asks. _You could never be forgotten, nor replaced, and you know that for certain. Do not let yourself be overcome with doubts; I’ll try to contact you as much as I’m able, but I need you to remain strong while I’m away. Just know that there is nothing I wouldn’t do to be able to return to you._

You can’t help but tremble before you place both hands on his shoulders and quickly push him away, spinning your positions around so that you were now the one who was pinning him against the wall. You quickly dipped to your knees, pulling off his pants with both hands on your descent, before you quickly took his length in your mouth, teasing the tip with your tongue. Kylo lets out a breath as he puts his hand on the top of your head, and you can’t help but purr with sensation as he begins to gently stroke the top of your head while you work your mouth up and down his hardened length. Kylo stands there, eyes closed, making small noises of pleasure as you sat on your knees in front of him, gently running the fingertips of one hand up and down the back of his thigh as you fondled his balls delicately with the other.

               Suddenly Kylo clearly can’t take anymore as he lets out a grunt to show that he was holding himself back. “Not yet,” he tells you as he pushes you away from him, and suddenly you find yourself being pushed backwards onto the bed as Kylo hovers himself over you, trying to work off his shirt and kiss you at the same time. You make a move to remove your tunic, but Kylo seems to be at the height of impatience as he reaches down and literally rips your shirt in two equal halves in front of you, tearing it straight down the middle. You can’t help but let out a surprised breath of laughter that quickly dissolves into a moan as his lips find your cool skin, running a vertical line of kisses from your chest down to your navel while one hand kneads your breast. He sinks his teeth into the tender flesh just beneath your belly button and you can’t help but moan as you involuntarily arch your back up into him, silently begging for more. You weren’t sure what you wanted more of, whether it was his touch or sensation or just of _him_ , but Kylo seems to know what you mean to say as he slides down your pants and lazily trails his tongue over your groin where he gently begins to lap at your clit.

               You don’t have a word to describe how good that feels, and you doubt that in all of the cultures that you had studied and all of the languages you had learned, you doubted that any one civilization had a word to describe just how good it felt to have Kylo Ren lapping at your soaking entrance with a tenderness that felt almost like veneration. You run one hand through his hair as you slowly move your hips up and down in time to his rhythm, and you can’t help but feel yourself steadily building much faster than you would have thought you would have been able to, considering how upset you had been just a few moments before.

               Kylo can sense how close you are, as your breathing starts to take on frantic levels of desperation, and he quickly moves to kiss your thigh, still insisting on maintaining as much contact with your flushed skin as possible as he struggled out of his pants. Suddenly you can feel him on top of you, his warm chest against yours, and you can’t help but whimper with longing as his large hands caress your side, one hand moving up the length of your body while the other hand brushes your hair back and out of your face. You needed this, you needed him, and your mind was torn between whether you should just savor the moment or try to commit as much of what you could to memory so that you could just replay this moment again, over and over in your mind, until the next time you saw him again.

               _Both,_ Kylo urges you silently, and you can’t help but laugh as you pull away from him slightly, brushing your nose against his affectionately. You could feel how much Kylo had missed you with every kiss, with every new touch shared between you, and you could only imagine how he was trying to transcribe this to memory as well, to help get him through the lonely nights when there really was no one for him to talk to. You would have that conversation, you knew, but not now, it couldn’t be now, not when you wanted each other too desperately to be weighed down by such sober thoughts.

               As if sensing your need, Kylo positions his tip at your entrance, but just hovers it there, waiting for you to beg for him. You let out a strangled noise that was paired between desperation and frustration before Kylo finally decides to impart mercy on you and pushes into you, filling you as only he could. For some reason, this feels better than it has all the times before as you can feel your body making room for him, and even Kylo lets out a quick breath as he savors the sensation of your slick walls against his length.

               He hovers his body over yours again, and you quickly wrap your legs around his waist, linking your ankles together as Kylo starts in at a slow and steady rhythm. He dips his head to pull away from your lips, trailing his kisses down into the hollow where your jaw line met your neck, and you couldn’t help but let out a heavy breath as you bucked your hips up into his again, desperate for more sensation. Kylo tenderly works his way down your neck before he plants a gentle burst of suction against your sensitive skin, nipping and sucking with enough force to hopefully leave a bruise until the next time you saw him again.

               Eager to leave some marks of your own, you focus your grip on him and squeeze your legs together as you try to roll over, but Kylo seems to know what you’re planning as he rolls with you, sitting up so that you can adjust yourself into a seated position onto his lap. Your lips find his neck, and you avoid a gash just above his collarbone as you begin to kiss and nip at the tender flesh there, passionately and intently, while your hands run over and across his chest as you trail down his torso with your fingertips. His skin comes alive beneath your hands, filled with all new sorts of scars and marks that you had glimpsed but not taken much time to study, not wanting to focus any more attention on the spot where he had been stabbed with his own lightsaber than you already did. You can feel all sorts of marks and cuts, some that seemed to have healed over and some that had seemed fresh, but Kylo only grunts as you start to ease your pace, silently urging you to be as rough with him as you wanted to be.

               You quickly lace both arms around his neck as you return again to his lips, sinking your teeth into his lower lip as you slowly pull it away from his mouth, placing a series of firm kisses down and against his jawline, leading to his ear. Kylo moans gently as he lets you do what you want with him, letting you take full control as you travel up his jaw to his ear, where you gently nip his earlobe before pulling away slightly to lick it tenderly with the tip of your tongue.

               Kylo lets out a breath as his lips travel down to your collarbone, and you let yourself bury your face in his neck as you tried to remember what he smelled like, tried to remember just how much you used to be intoxicated just by the smell of his sweat as he pushed himself against you. You could still feel him, could still take him in, still connect with him mentally as much as you ever did through the Force, but you still couldn’t help but feel that there was that one little part of you that still felt that something was _off_ , that was still missing something, and you notice Kylo start to increase his rhythm, as if to distract you from your thoughts.

               “I’m okay,” you urge quietly, but Kylo doesn’t answer as he starts to increase his pace even faster now, and you can’t feel your eyelids flutter shut as you can feel yourself building rapidly against him. You can feel yourself quickening between your thighs, and you wrap your whole body around him as tight as you can, short fingernails digging into his back as you tried to make yourself last as long as you possibly could. You can feel the sweat dripping off Kylo’s hairline underneath your hands as you continue to kiss him, fervently, with everything you had, and as he suddenly bites down on the corner of your lip, you immediately lose yourself as you begin to find your release, climaxing hard and fast as you bite into his shoulder and try to ride it through, trying to urge yourself to last for as long as you could as Kylo found his own release inside of you.

               You feel dizzy, and lightheaded, and exhausted; _spent_ , in every sense of the word, but you didn’t want to let him go, and you didn’t want to stop. You knew your time with him was short, but you could almost feel as though you were dozing off, and you couldn’t let yourself sleep, couldn’t let yourself just drift away into unconsciousness while he was right here. There would be plenty of time to sleep later, when he wasn’t by your side, but right now he was, and you wanted to make the most of it.

               “I need to sleep too,” Kylo reminds you with a light chuckle, but that’s not good enough for you. That was fine, Kylo could sleep, in fact, you wanted him to sleep, wanted him to get the rest he needed while he was here, but that didn’t mean that you had to sleep as well. In fact, you wanted nothing more than to just lie there and watch him sleep, gently stroking his arm, or running a hand through his hair, as you got to study him for as long as you possibly could, unsure when you would next have the opportunity to be able to do such a thing again.

               “Sleep,” Kylo urges as he lays back, pulling you into his arms, and you’re too exhausted to fight him as you lay your head down as you snuggle against his chest. You’re fighting the waves of drowsiness that are quickly washing over you, but you keep trying to cling to the surface, keep trying to stay afloat, as you realize that there was something that you hadn’t yet told him. For all of your earlier emotional declarations, there was one important thing that you had forgotten to say.

               “Kylo, I love you,” you remind him, and you can almost feel Kylo fighting through his own waves of fatigue to figure out what you were saying. When the words finally make sense to him, the corner of his lip quirks up in a smile as he bends down to kiss you again.

               “I love you too,” he replies, and with that, you finally allow yourself to drift off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kylo's back and with him, there is smut!! Although, I mean, he's been gone so long, how could there not be? Are there any more trials in store for Kylo and Reader, or will things finally begin to settle down for them? In other words, how long will you have to wait to see them get the happy ending they truly deserve? I could tell you, but why spoil it? ;) 
> 
> Also, I've got a fun surprise for you all!! So one of my friends got the idea that I should host a little after-the-story Q&A, filled with any of the thoughts or comments that popped into your head while you were reading this story, whether it's a question about a chapter, or just overall questions about the story, about the Reader, like what her favorite color is or if she prefers dogs or cats or whatever you want. You can ask any questions you have about me, my process, where the inspiration came from for this story, what character I like the best, which Star Wars movie is my favorite, whatever your question is, go nuts, and I'll be releasing a short "chapter" and dedications page after the story ends with the answers to all of your questions!! There's no limit, so feel free to ask as many questions as you want. There's also no limit on the amount of times you can take this "survey" and I'll be posting it at the end of each chapter from here until the end, so if something comes up later that you want to ask, go nuts!! 
> 
> You can access it by clicking [here](https://goo.gl/forms/j3wBcEPerjFZVCSD2) (it's just a normal Google doc, so it should work on mobile and tablets too). I look forward to reading and answering all your questions at the end of your story, and I'll see you all again next Tuesday to see how Reader and Kylo's relationship continues from here. Until then, cheers!! <3


	78. Chapter 78

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to many people, but most of all, my mom, for reasons that will soon become clear to you as soon as you start reading. ;)
> 
> Sidenote: 
> 
> Remember how I dropped 3k on a Kylo Ren helmet? Last night I got a message from the company saying that production had been halted indefinitely, sorry for the inconvenience. Like...? I bought it 4 months ago and it was supposed to ship next week and I was so, so excited for this and now I'm just like...I literally waited 16 weeks for it to get here and the week it's supposed to ship suddenly I'm not getting it? Like what the hell have they been doing all this time???? 
> 
> Okay, I'm still bitter but thanks for all the love and support I received from you guys last night it was incredible, and thanks again for your patience while I went through all your lovely messages, was not expecting to get so many but holy cow do I feel loved now. <3 YOU GUYS ROCK. 
> 
> Okay, now without further ado, by far the weirdest chapter of this trilogy...

               At first the darkness in front of your vision is concerning, but once your eyes adjust to your surroundings and the form of Anakin Skywalker comes into view, you immediately relax. No matter where you had found yourself in your life, the presence of Anakin Skywalker was always a welcome sign for you, and you doubted that this vision would be an exception.

               The corner of Anakin’s lip quirks upwards into a smile, as if he was pleased to hear what you were thinking, and once again you couldn’t help but be reminded of how much that smile reminded you of Kylo. “There’s something I want to show you,” he begins, his voice clear and strong in the stillness that surrounded you.

               You tilt your head to the side, shaking your head to indicate your confusion. If there was something he wanted to show you, why didn’t he just take you there like he had back when he presented you with that image of Naboo. You had just appeared there, and yet for some reason, he felt that whatever he was going to show you next required some sort of disclaimer, and you weren’t quite sure how to feel about that. “What is it?”

               “Something you’ll want to see,” Anakin replies firmly, and you’re more than slightly unnerved by the fact that you still can’t make out his tone. “But something you’re not sure you want to see.”

               It sounds like another riddle to you, and you can’t help but let out a breath of frustration. Apparently, Anakin had been spending too much time around Obi-Wan again, and was starting to absorb his penchant for infuriating, indirect answers. Even still, Anakin had never steered you wrong before, and you tried to contain yourself. “What is it?” you ask as patiently as you can manage.

               Anakin begins to walk towards you in a series of slow, deliberate steps, taking his time to get to you. “You’ve always wondered what your life would have been like if you had never stepped foot on the Starkiller Base, haven’t you?”

               “I don’t want to think about that,” you reply immediately, feeling icy needles prick the core of your spine. “I don’t want to think about what life could have been like for me if I hadn’t gone and met Kylo. It’s not a life I’d want to lead, I know that much.”

               “Some things cannot be changed,” Anakin says as he shakes his head, stopping directly in front of you. “Some things were always fated.”

               You tilt your head to the side in confusion again as you look up at him, searching his dark eyes for some kind of a clue as to his true meaning. “Where is this coming from? What do you mean? Can you just tell me, clearly, what you’re trying to say?”

               “I think it would be best if I were to show you,” Anakin says softly as he places his hand on your shoulder. “Just remember, everything will play out like it should. Everything will play out as the Force intended.”

               You want to ask him what he means by this too, when suddenly he puts two fingers on your forehead and in the blink of an eye, the world around you falls away into blackness. Before you even have time to take stock of yourself, your eyes seemingly reopen, if you had ever closed them, and you find yourself standing in the middle of a shipyard. It only takes you another moment to realize that you’re on the planet housing your old academia, and for some unmistakable reason you feel as though you had just finished helping Sadie’s father in his shop. Because Sadie wasn’t there. Because while you had decided to back out for some reason that you couldn’t quite recall, Sadie had decided to go on B’s mission to the Starkiller Base regardless, and now for some reason you weren’t quite sure of, you were standing in the middle of the shipyard, staring at a ship that you had seen parked there before, a YT-Corellian freighter. Only this time, it wasn’t Poe standing in front of it; it was another man, older, by the looks of him, carrying something up the boarding dock.

               You stare at it for a moment, trying to figure out why you felt something subtle calling out to you, before you saw Chewie walking down the boarding ramp as he picks up another box and carries it back up the ramp. As the man walks around the ramp and surveys the stack of boxes that still had yet to be loaded, you watch as he puts a hand on the top of his head as he sighs, as if he was someone who had worked too hard for too long with so little to show for it. Suddenly he pauses for a moment as he turns around, and it doesn’t take you more than a second to realize that he’s not just looking in your direction, but staring directly at you.

               “What are you looking at?” he calls in a gruff voice, and you blink as you just shake your head, trying to figure out what to say.

               “I’m sorry, I just, uh, I think I’ve been on that ship before,” you offer, but the lines in the man’s face only deepens as he scowls.

               “What are you talking about?” he demands as he starts to take a few paces towards you. There’s something off about his gait, something that intimates his age and yet still seems mildly threatening all by the same hand. “This is my ship. This is the _Millennium_ _Falcon_.”

               “This is _the_ _Millennium Falcon_?” you echo, not quite sure if you should feign ignorance.

               “Yeah,” the man grunts as he continues to approach you, just a little too fast for your liking, until he stops directly in front of you, dead center, his face much too close to yours as he points back towards the _Falcon_. “You’ve been on this ship? You part of Ducain’s crew?”

               “No, no,” you stammer as you shake your head back and forth. “No, I think I was mistaken.”

               The man stares at you and fixes you with a stern gaze as he tilts his head to the side, as if he doesn’t quite believe you, before he suddenly throws out his arm and pushes you to the ground. “Hey, what-?” You drop to one knee, but before it even makes contact with the ground, you can see the blaster bolt sink into the dirt no more than two inches from where you were standing.

               “Don’t move, Solo,” a voice says from behind you, and you immediately spin around to see a humanoid Ubese glance down at you before _Solo_ raises both hands into the air on either side of his head.

               “Solo?” you echo harshly, your heart suddenly beating rapidly in your chest as you realize who you had been speaking to. “ _You’re_ Han Solo?”

               Han doesn’t answer as two men and the Ubese walk towards him, blasters raised in the air, their fingers still on the trigger. You quickly get to your feet and stand beside him, hands raised as well, trying to figure out how the hell you had gotten yourself in this positon, standing on your old academia with Chewie and your father-in-law, staring down the barrel of a blaster. “Those artifacts you gave me were counterfeit,” one of the men scoffs. “I knew we should have trusted someone other than a smuggler to get this job done.”

               “That artifact was an important piece of Sullustan culture,” Han replies with a slight growl in his throat. “They didn’t want it to be cracked open and studied; it belongs with their tribe, not in a museum.”

               “That wasn’t your call,” the man replies coldly as he turns his gaze over to you. “And who is this? Bringing some fresh meat on board? Doesn’t she know what happened to your last crew?”

               “She-“ Han Solo starts, but you’re not eager to be involved in whatever situation that was clearly playing out in front of you. Kylo didn’t like his father, he had _killed_ him, and what was more, he hadn’t talked to you about him, not once, not ever. Han Solo seemed to be a subject left in his past, and you didn’t want to make the already delicate situation between you worse by demanding answers about what his father had been like as a smuggler.

               “I have no idea who he is,” you say firmly, rolling and dropping your shoulders. “I have no part in this, so if you don’t mind-“ You start to move away, but the tip of the blaster follows your movements, and you just glance down at the blaster to the face behind it.

               “Did we say you could leave?” the man demands. “We-“ Suddenly the ground explodes next to Han’s foot, and while he quickly jumps back, you take advantage of the distraction to wrestle the blaster out of the man’s hands as you knock him backwards onto the ground. You hold it in both hands, trying to figure out what to do next, when it suddenly slips from your grasp as Han Solo grabs your arm, pulling you along behind him.

               “Wait, wait, what are you doing?” you demand as he pulls you towards the _Falcon._ “I don’t know who you are; I don’t want any part of this.”

               “A little late now,” Han Solo replies bluntly as he leads you past Chewie, who is standing at the base of the boarding ramp holding a bowcaster, continuing to exchange fire with the two men and the alien.  

               Chewie growls something about the cargo, but Han just shakes his head as he pulls you up the boarding ramp behind him. Despite his age, his grip is surprisingly strong, and you’re honestly not sure if you should try to fight him and run, or just go with this and see where it leads you. Regardless, as he releases you, you decide that it’s too late to back out now, driven onwards by a dark sense of curiousity.

               “Leave it, leave it,” he yells as he rushes towards the front of the ship, and you quickly follow after him as Chewie seals up the boarding ramp behind you.

               “Where are we going?” you demand as you watch Han quickly press some buttons on the console, starting up the ship as fast as he possibly could. Suddenly you feel yourself being pushed to the side as Chewie moves past you to take his seat in the copilot’s chair, and you glance back the way that you came, suddenly getting second thoughts about this. Maybe there were certain things about Kylo’s life that you were better off not knowing, and a list of those topics _definitely_ included anything that had to do with his father. “Seriously, maybe you should let me off. I-“

               Without warning, a sudden blast hits the ship and knocks you to your side, and you just miss your frantic grab for the door frame as you go down, landing painfully on the side of your arm as a jolt of static shoots up the delicate nerves in your bicep. “Strap in back there,” Han calls from the cockpit, and you throw back your head and groan as you reluctantly strap yourself into a seat while Han prepares to take you out of the atmosphere. If they sent you back out there now, that group would only think that you were working for Han Solo, and you knew that they could make life very unpleasant for you, or Sadie’s father, as a result.

               Han waits until he’s engaged the hyperdrive before he pats Chewie on the shoulder and tells him to keep his course before he emerges from the cockpit, heading straight for you. “Now I’m only going to ask this once,” he says sternly, although the deep lines in his face look a little softer than before. “Who are you?”

               “Me?” you ask, raising your eyebrows as you point to yourself. “Me, I’m no one, really.” He looks at you skeptically, and you can’t help but sigh. “I’m a student of the academia, really, that’s all.”

               “Then what were you doing out on the air field?” Han presses. “What were you doing there? Looked like you were waiting for someone.”

               Were you? A part of you couldn’t honestly remember just how you had gotten there, but the words escape from your lips almost of their own accord. “I was waiting for a shipment from a new supplier; my friend’s father owns a shop not too far from the school and I’m helping him while she’s away.”

               “That right?” Han asks, when suddenly the ship gives a firm lurch and you can hear Chewie yell for Han back in the cockpit. “What _now_?” he mutters under his breath as he heads back to the pilot’s chair, and you quickly unbuckle yourself as you follow after him.

               “What is it?” you ask quickly as you watch the _Falcon_ drop out of hyperspace. You can see a massive ship looming through the windshield, heading straight towards you, looking more and more intimidating as the seconds passed by. 

               “Oh, not them again,” Han mutters under his breath, and you can see him roll his eyes towards Chewie as he makes another grumble of frustration low in his throat.

               “Who?” you press anxiously as you dig your fingers into the back of his chair. “Who’s in that ship?”

               Chewie lets out a roar from beside you that sounds a lot like the _Guavian Death Gang_ , and you can’t help but roll your eyes. Your crew had been involved with minor scuffles and competition with the Guavian Death Gang for the better part of your upbringing in the dark dealings of the galaxy, but you had done your best to be an interpreter when you needed to be and stayed out of most of the fighting. Now, it seemed, you were caught up in something much bigger than yourself, and you had no idea how to get out of it.

               You watch as the _Millennium Falcon_ is suddenly overtaken by the much larger ship, completely eclipsing your view of the galaxy around you as you’re pulled into what you could only assume to be the cargo hold. Han just sighs as he casts a weary look over towards Chewie, who just growls some trite proverb of encouragement in Shyriiwook. “Come on,” he says as he gestures for you to follow him, and you slowly make your way through the ship and down the boarding ramp of the _Falcon_ , where you’re greeted by a group of men with red armor and obvious cybernetic augmentation. Some of them had metal arms, metal legs, and all of them looked as though they were ready to kill you the second you sneezed out of turn.

               “Han Solo,” a man snaps. He’s standing a little ways forward from the others, blaster cocked lazily over his shoulder, as if he has it more for the purpose of intimidation over any real desire to use it. “Just who I was looking for.”

               “Bala-Tik,” Han Solo replies, lowering his hands from atop his head. “Good to see you’re still alive after that mess on Taera-Neivu.”

               “That mess that _you_ left us with,” Bala-Tik points out angrily, and from beside Han, Chewie lets out a small growl of agreement. “Who’s the girl?”

               “Her?” Han asks, spinning around to face you as if he had never seen you before in his entire life. “No idea.”

               Bala-Tik turns his head to give an order to his men, and, in Ubese, orders them to search the ship for any valuable cargo. As the men proceed past you up the ramp and into the _Falcon_ , you notice Bala-Tik eying you with a look that you don’t like. Continuing in Ubese, he adds, “And bring the girl.”

               “Wait,” you reply, also channeling your voice into fluent Ubese. “Seriously, I’m no one. I’ve got nothing to offer you, I’m not with Han Solo; you don’t need me.”

               Still, the man seems intrigued by your fluent pronunciation, tilting his head to the side in consideration as he turns back to his men. “Definitely bring her.” Suddenly you feel two hands pick you up from behind as one of the men picks you up and throws you over his shoulder. You kick and squirm, fighting him as much as you’re able, but the man has two cybernetic legs and one cybernetic arm, and all in all it feels as though you might be struggling with a giant, humanoid robot.

               “Solo,” you call, looking to him desperately for help, but Han just lets out another weary sigh as he glances towards the ground, the tip of a blaster preventing him from doing much of anything to try to save you. Even Chewie offers you a regretful look of sympathy, but you continue to kick as they bring you out of their cargo hold and onto a new area of the ship not too far from the hangar. He instinctively makes a series of rights and lefts, clearly knowing where he was taking you, as he leads you to a long row of cells and drops you down inside the first one, closing and locking the door quickly behind him before you could get a chance to get to your feet and try to fight your way past him.

               “Wait,” you call after him. “Wait, I shouldn’t _be_ here.” The man ignores you as he begins to walk back towards the hangar and you just slump back against the small cot in your cell, grinding the heels of your palm into your temples. “It would have been safer for me if I had just went to the Starkiller Base,” you mutter to yourself, and from out in the long corridor, you can hear something that sounds suspiciously like the unmistakable growl of a Rancor, which quickly prompts you to shut your mouth. It was no secret that Jabba the Hutt had had a pet Rancor, and if these men were working with anyone near as notorious, you could assume that it had been captured for some monster’s entertainment as well. If that was the case, you quickly shut your mouth and hoped that they wouldn’t keep you alive only to use you as lunch meat.

               You don’t know how much time has passed as you sit in that cell, trying to figure out what they were planning to do with you. Days had gone by, and while someone had been by at least once a day to bring you food, no one made it clear what they were going to do with you, or would tell you what had happened to Han Solo. You assumed he had been able to escape somehow, given by the nasty look the guard gave you when you had asked, but you didn’t know if he was planning on coming back for you. In the back of your mind, you sort of doubted it.

               Still, you’re suddenly shaken from these thoughts as you hear shouting from the hangar, and as you get to your feet, you press yourself against the bars, trying to see what’s going on. You hear the unmistakable Rancor growl again, disturbed by all the noise and commotion that seemed to be rocking the ship, and suddenly someone rounds a corner, heading straight for you. “Um, I don’t-“ you begin nervously, slowly backing away from the bars, but one of the men quickly unlocks the cell and grabs your arm roughly, dragging you out with him.

               You follow him silently, trying to figure out what the _hell_ was going on or what was going to happen to you, when you find yourself being led out onto the ship onto the earthy surface of a temperate planet in the dead of night. You can’t help but blink at the bright lights that surrounded you as you found yourself surrounded by a small group of troop transports and at least one massive flagship. You immediately found yourself being pushed to your knees, staring up at the white helmeted Storm Troopers that surrounded you, heading on and off the ship.

               “What do you mean you don’t have it?”

               You turn to the side to see Bala-Tik being addressed by a Storm Trooper that was easily distinguishable from the others. This trooper was taller than the rest, made all the more notable by their long black cape and shining chrome armor. You had always thought that most Storm Troopers were men, but the voice that came out of the helmet sounded distinctly feminine to your ears.

               “We ran into trouble with Han Solo,” Bala-Tik replies. “But we _will_ have it.” He gestures over to you, and the one in the chrome armor immediately turns to look at you. “That girl was with him. I thought she might be worth something to the First Order.”

               “She may be.” They both approach you now, and you quickly cast your eyes down, trying not to look either of them in the eye if you could help it, lest they think that you were challenging them in some way.

               “What’s your name?” the Storm Trooper in the silver armor asks, but you just shake your head from side to side as you keep your eyes down, unwilling to answer.

               “Girl,” Bala-Tik snaps as he grabs you roughly by your hair, forcing you to look up at them. “You will address Captain Phasma when she speaks to you.”

               “I have no name,” you tell them roughly. “I’m not important, trust me. I’ve never met Han Solo before today; I don’t want any part of this.”

               “Hmm.” You can hear Captain Phasma considering you from behind her helmet, and Bala-Tik looks between you and her nervously, cautiously hoping that she would accept this consolation prize, considering it seemed that he didn’t have whatever the First Order wanted. “Bring her aboard.”

               As Bala-Tik breathes a sigh of relief, a jolt of alarm passes through you as you’re quickly pulled to your feet, being led towards the flagship by two Storm Troopers, followed closely by Captain Phasma. “I can walk myself,” you argue, trying to break free of their grasp, and one of them turns back to her for approval. As you plant a kick into the side shin of one of your captors and nearly send him sprawling off the boarding ramp, you can hear Captain Phasma let out a snicker from beneath her helmet.

               “Very well, release her,” she says, and you quickly pull your arms into your sides as you straighten yourself up. Nevertheless, you can’t help but risk a look back at the chrome helmet, and you think you can almost see a look of amusement reflected in its polished surface, as if she was seemingly impressed by your defiance in a situation where it was more than clear that you did not have the upper hand.

               You’re escorted to another cell block, this one not much better than the first, but at least you’re not there for very long. The ship takes off not long after you’re brought on board, and it seems as though only a day passes before the ship lands again, although you can’t be sure where you are or what the First Order plans to do with you. Even still, the First Order at least seems a lot more punctual than the Death Gang was as the door opens, and you’re escorted to yet another cell on what looks like to be some kind of military base, although no one would still tell you where you were or what they planned to do with you. You assumed that the Storm Troopers were just mindless drones following orders, and they had simply been told you to escort you to a cell block, and had no idea what the First Order _really_ planned to do with you. Whatever the case, you hoped that it wasn’t because they thought you were affiliated with Han Solo, lest that attract the wrong kind of attention.

               You had no idea what they wanted to do with you either, but you didn’t have long to wait as the door swings open a few hours later and a man rushes forward to meet you. “What are you _doing_ here?” he demands as he rushes forward to greet you, wrapping his arms around you in a tight hug, and for a moment you can almost feel tears rush to your eyes as you bury your face in his shoulder, allowing yourself to be comforted.

               “B,” you whisper, almost unable to believe that he, of all people, was the one standing in front of you when that cell door opened. “Where am I? What’s going on?”

               “You’re on the Starkiller Base,” B tells you as he pulls away slowly, straightening himself up. “C was just headed back from a meeting with General Hux when he thought he saw you being led down towards the cell blocks, and you have no idea how much I wished he was wrong, but here you are.”

               “Meeting with General Hux?” you echo as you shake your head from side to side in confusion. “I don’t understand, I thought you were supposed to be interpreting.”

               “The Tortutaru have been delayed,” B tells you steadily, although there’s something behind his eyes that you don’t quite like the look of. Regardless, you can’t place what it is and so you just let it go. “Regardless-“ His face brightens considerably as he puts a hand on your shoulder. “We were able to confirm your identification with the academia, and the First Order knows now that you’re _not_ a threat to them. It appears you got yourself caught up in some nasty smuggling business that I wish you hadn’t been involved in.” His voice darkens somewhat as he glances down at you. “I thought you had left those days behind you.”

               “Believe me, I have,” you tell him firmly as he puts an arm around you, leading you out of the cell. “It’s a crazy story, I doubt you’d even believe me if I told you, but there’ll be plenty of time for that later. What’s going to happen to me? Am I going to be sent back?”

               “Actually,” B says as he casts a sly smile in your direction. “I’ve managed to secure you a position on the team here. One of the others that we sent in to replace you also dropped out at the last minute, so I’m one person short. We already have a spare room prepared for you.”

               “But I don’t have anything with me,” you try to protest. “I didn’t pack, I don’t have any clothes-“

               B just waves his hand dismissively, as if this isn’t a concern. “I’m sure Sadie would be more than willing to lend you some of hers,” he says warmly. “Between us, you know I only brought her on base because of your recommendation. I was so disappointed when you dropped out; I know with your background you would have made a perfect candidate for the team.”

               “Well, it looks like I’m here now,” you say with a shrug of your shoulders. “So, what’s the plan?”

               “It looks like the Tortutaru should get in tonight, if we’re lucky,” he explains. “I’m taking a group of two in order to meet them, and then introduce them to General Hux and his associates. I’ve already chosen Ladson to accompany C and I for the introductions, but I would like you to join us as well.”

               “Sign me up,” you mutter with a slight shrug of your shoulders. “So we’re just supposed to be interpreting for the Tortutaru, right? Any other information I should know about?”

               “I haven’t briefed the others yet,” B says, but even still, you can’t help but notice his posture stiffen slightly as he walks. “We’ll do that when we get back. I know Sadie is going to be ecstatic to see you again, but under no circumstances are you to ask any questions while we’re here. The information that you received back home is the same as it is now. You are supposed to-“

               “Provide clear interpretations as quickly and efficiently as possible making sure to retain the cultural equivalence between each language and keeping all discourse exchanged at the height of confidentiality,” you reply automatically, and B beams down at you.

               “That’s my girl,” he says with a sigh. “To be honest, I’m glad you showed up here, not glad for the circumstances that brought you here, of course, but I just had a feeling that this mission would have all been for naught if you weren’t here.”

               “Well, I’m here now,” you say reassuringly as you force a smile back up at him. “And I’ll do exactly as I’m asked, I won’t make any waves, I won’t get myself into any trouble; I think I’ve already gotten into enough trouble for one lifetime, and I’m not exactly eager to get involved in any more.”

               “Good, good,” B says with a firm nod of his head. “Just keep your head down and do as you’re told and you should be just fine. You’re an interpreter, that’s all you are, just remember that.”

               You just nod your head as he escorts you back to your apartment. Sadie is, of course, no less than elated to see you again, wrapping her arms around you in a tight embrace that almost squeezes the very air out of your lungs. Even the other man, Ladson, introduces himself and surprises you with a quick hug of his own after hearing the story of how you arrived, and you can tell by the jealous smirk that pulls at the corners at Sadie’s lips that she already has her sights set on him. The other man that was in your party, Shayne, seemed taciturn to everyone else in the group, but you could tell by the speculative questions he asked about your _true_ mission on base that he was quickly causing B a headache, and you could tell now more than ever why B seemed so happy to have you there.

               Suddenly, time seemed to fast forward as you and Ladson went to meet the Tortutaru, as you introduced yourself to Taro and helped provide him a name for quick communication. You followed B and C through the halls while Ladson gives your hand a quick squeeze of reassurance as you head into a sort of command center surrounded by consoles on all sides. You stayed behind while B and C went to do the introductions, and suddenly you notice that there was a man standing there, dressed completely in black, and while his face was obscured by a blask mask with silver piping around the eyehole, you can’t help but feel that his gaze is set intensely on you.

               You can’t describe the feeling that jolts through you, a feeling that feels completely new and yet so familiar at the same time. In the back of your mind, you think you can get a glimpse of a face, of pale skin with burning dark eyes and raven colored hair, and then suddenly you find yourself outside your body, rushing through an intense vortex of scenes that play out in front of your vision like a dream, or perhaps a memory, as you watch yourself experience everything that you had aboard the Starkiller Base, watched you share your first kiss with Kylo, watched Phasma give you her staff, watched yourself getting drunk with Ladson, until you ended up back in Kylo’s room, where you supposed you were always meant to be.

               Through the haze, you can catch a glimpse of something specific, although in the present confusion of your current state of mind, you’re not sure if it’s a dream or a memory. You can see Kylo standing in his room, his helmet atop a table of ash. He’s standing a few feet away from it, still dressed in his signature armor, and you can see yourself standing beside him. He’s talking to you, you can’t hear what he’s saying, but he’s demonstrating how to stand with your legs spread, body slightly turned to the side, dominant hand extended out in front of your body in a classic gesture of the Force. You mimic his stance and his gesture and Kylo seems to stand back as he watches you try to move his helmet from the table, watches you train as you try to develop your Force abilities. Kylo watches you concentrate with his arms cross over his chest, watches you at the height of your focus, as you eventually shift his helmet a visible two inches to the left.

               You can see a smile quirk up at the corner of his lips, as he smiles softly, nodding his head in approval, while you jumped in the air and cheered as if that was the most magnificent thing you had ever done in your entire life. You turn around and jump into his arms, kissing him square on the mouth, and you can feel Kylo’s surprise as if he doesn’t expect it, surprised by how much joy you seemed to glean simply through his presence, but there’s a muted sense of his own happiness underneath that surprise, a quiet sense of contentment…

               And just like that, he’s telling you that you need to go, that you need to leave, and you take comfort in each other for a final time before Ladson pulls you off base, takes you to see Sadie, and then suddenly you can feel something stirring inside you, and _Ani-_

You know how this all plays out, and you don’t need to see anymore. As if sensing this, you suddenly open your eyes without ever having been aware that you had shut them as you see Anakin standing before you, and it’s such a welcome sight that you almost want to reach out and hug him. “What was that?” you ask breathlessly, feeling tears pool in your eyes after having experienced so many overwhelming emotions in so short a time. “What did you show me?”

               “You always wondered what would have happened if you hadn’t gone to Starkiller Base,” Anakin says with a faint smile playing on his lips. “And now you know.”

               “I would have met Han Solo,” you begin softly, trying to figure out what that meant, if it meant anything at all. “But that would have changed everything, right?”

               “Not necessarily,” Anakin explains as he shakes his head. “Small details may have changed, but as you saw, everything would have played out more or less like they always were supposed to.”

               “So this was unavoidable?” you ask him. “So even if I hadn’t gone with Han Solo, I would have ended up on the Starkiller Base regardless?”

               “Yes,” Anakin confirms. “Some events can be changed, but overall the future of the Force will unfold as it always meant to.”

               You tried to think about everything that you had just seen for a moment. You had never truly believed your life to be all that significant, but Ani was born because you and Kylo came together. If you had never met him, Ani would never have been born, and although you didn’t know what impact that could possibly play out on the future, it was possible that Ani had a substantial part to play in the world to come, and he had to be born at whatever the cost. Likewise, it had taken both you and Kylo to defeat Snoke, and it was more than possible if you had never met that Snoke would have continued to manipulate and control Kylo until it meant the end of the galaxy as you knew it. “So this was all planned from the very beginning?” you ask him. “I always would have wound up at the Resistance base somehow? I would have always ended up raising Ani on Naboo with Kylo, and I always would have died fighting Snoke?”

               “I can’t tell you all the subtleties that may have changed in your journey,” Anakin explains. “But I can tell you that your final destination is inevitable. Your destinies are intertwined, and your futures are linked.” You pause for a moment as you take this in. “But I must inform you that when you wake up, you won’t be able to recall any of what you have just seen.”

               “Then why show it to me?” you demand. “If I’m not allowed to remember any of it, then why show it to me at all?”

               “Because things are going to be difficult for you,” Anakin continues. “But if there’s anything I want you to take away from this, if there is one thing you _can_ remember, is that you can take solace in the fact that your destinies were always intertwined. Everything you saw showed you that this was inevitable, your futures are linked; it’s been fated.”

               “So this will eventually be over?” you ask him quickly. “The war will be over and Kylo will return to me and Ani and we can be a family again?”

               Anakin laughs as he shakes his head, his voice taking on an almost boyish quality. “You know I can’t tell you that,” he tells you, and with his voice still ringing in your ears, you open your eyes to see Kylo lying beside you.

               “Hey,” he says softly as he curls you closer into the warmth of his chest. “It didn’t sound like you had any nightmares last night. Have you been sleeping better?”

               “I think it’s only because you’re here,” you tell him as you rest your head against his shoulder.

               “I thought you’d want me to wake you up sooner,” Kylo tells you. “But you were sleeping so peacefully, I didn’t want to disturb you.”

               “It’s okay,” you tell him as you smile gently, holding him closer to you. “Because things are going to be hard right now, but in the end you’re going to come back to me. The war’s going to end and you’re going to come back, and then everything’s going to finally be okay.”

               Kylo just laughs as he brushes your hair out of your face and tilts his head down to kiss your forehead, but it’s true. You weren’t sure how you knew it, but deep down, you knew, whether by some stroke of stellar intuition or some eliciting compulsion from the Force, you knew that things would not be this way forever. One day, Kylo would return to you, and he would never leave your side again.

               You knew Kylo would only find your optimism entertaining, but it wasn’t optimism. It was truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, in complete and total honesty, I'm not a total fan of those episodes where the character wakes up and the whole thing turned out to be a dream, so that's why I prefaced it with Anakin sort of explaining things going in, although Reader went back and forth between moments where she knew it was some sort of dream/vision, and then other moments where she seemed totally immersed in this environment. My mom has been begging me for ages to add Han Solo in in some small way, and a lot of others have been asking me to write a, "Well, what would have happened if she _didn't_ end up on the Starkiller Base?" so I feel like this is a nice way to resolve that tension and answer that question: Small details would have changed, but Reader would have found her way to Kylo regardless (and they would have bonded over their mutual dislike/hatred of Han Solo in Chapter 5 of Flare, during Kylo's interrogation). Also, in the effort of full disclosure, this was part of a really bizarre dream I had not that long ago, so I basically took all those factors and they all came together to form this really weird chapter that I hope you enjoyed regardless!! 
> 
> By the way, I love all the questions that you guys have been sending in so far!! Keep 'em coming. As promised, I'll be posting the link with every chapter so if you haven't already, you can access it by clicking [here](https://goo.gl/forms/j3wBcEPerjFZVCSD2). Okay, now back to your regularly scheduled Kylo x Reader. Until Thursday, cheers!!


	79. Chapter 79

               Despite the fact that you somehow knew deep down that Kylo would return to you for good, it did nothing to erase the fact that he was leaving again in a few days, and you had no idea how long it would be until he returned to see you again. Even still, you tried to make the best of it, curled into his chest as he idly played with your hair, as if there was nothing in the galaxy that he’d rather be doing than just spending time lying there with you.

               “I don’t suppose you’d let me see it,” you venture softly as you run your fingertips carelessly up and down his side. “I mean, I want to see it. I want to know what you’re going through.”

               “You don’t want to see it,” Kylo says quietly as he shakes his head from side to side. “You worry enough as it is.”

               “Because I care about you,” you remind him, and Kylo lets out a snort as he bends down to kiss your forehead.

               “I know.”

               “Then?” you prompt as you turn yourself around, adjusting your position so that you can face him without straining your neck. “Talk to me about it so I can at least try to imagine what you’re going through? Is it like any of the other campaigns you fought for the First Order?”

               “Yes and no,” Kylo replies simply as a distant look crosses his face. “It is, but only because I’m on a different side.”

               “Is it hard?” you ask him at length. “Fighting against the First Order when you fought beside them for so long?”

               “Yes,” Kylo replies automatically, and you can’t help but let your shoulders slump. It wasn’t just the dejection in his voice; you can feel it emanating off of him in a steady, unwavering pulse. He hated that he was forced to do this, hated that it was necessary in order to not only protect his life, but to keep you and Ani safe as well. If it had simply been his life on the line and you and Ani weren’t involved, you honestly weren’t sure that Kylo would really be doing this. Honestly? You more than just doubted it. “When I fought beside the First Order, I knew that Hux’s troops would obey me without question, and I had nothing to fear from them.”

               He looks like he wants to say more but decides to hold back. Even still, you have more or less of an idea of what he wants to say. “But you don’t trust the soldiers that are fighting beside you,” you say quietly. That was fair, more than fair, especially considering all that Kylo had done. There was probably at least one or more members of the Resistance or the New Republic that wanted to try to take vigilante justice into their own hands and eliminate him in the dead of night while he was sleeping. “Do you feel safe there?”

               “It doesn’t matter,” Kylo replies, but even still, his voice is hollow. Still, he can sense your restlessness, your shift of unease through the Force, as he quickly tries to comfort you. “They keep me isolated, for my own protection,” he explains. “It’s incredibly isolating, but I am guarded at all times. No one can speak to me without authorization to do so, and that’s probably for the best. Believe me when I say that more than half of those people probably wish the tribunal had made a different call.”

               “But they didn’t,” you say firmly. “Believe me, I am not a fan of Ematt by any means, but he _did_ defend your life, Kylo. He really does want to see you pay for what you’ve done, as much as I wish you didn’t have to.”

               “I know,” Kylo says quietly as he strokes your hair back away from your face. “I know what I’ve done and I know why I need to make reparations, but I don’t like to see you or Ani suffer as a result of my crimes. You should not be punished for what I’ve done wrong.”

               “And yet,” you muse gently as you reach up to kiss his jaw. “Although we’re not the only ones who care about you, Kylo. This whole plot to get you back here was set up by Luke himself.”

               “He’s only doing it because he thinks it’s right,” Kylo says as he shakes his head.

               “Or maybe it’s because he sees that you changed,” you offer. “Remember, you were his padawan once. Even Leia says she noticed a change in you-“

               “They wouldn’t know,” he says harshly, and you can’t help but dip your eyes down. “When I was a child, she and my father sent me away to train because they thought it would be in my best interests. She knew Snoke was manipulating me even then, but she did _nothing_ to try and stop it.”

               “She sent you to train with Luke,” you tell him patiently. “She was scared; she didn’t know what else to do. She thought she was doing the best thing for you, at the time.”

               Kylo just shakes his head, almost as though he either didn’t agree or didn’t think it was worth discussing, perhaps both. “It was why I had to take Ani,” he says at length, again getting that far off gleam in his eye. “It was why I had to take you and Ani off of this base, no matter what your feelings were for me at the time. I couldn’t let him grow up like I did; I couldn’t do that.”

               “But it was risky,” you remind him. “It was risky and it was selfish, and…” You can’t help but smile up at him. “And I’m still really glad you did it.”

               “I think about that often,” Kylo tells you as he pulls you a little tighter into his embrace. “I remember all those early nights I spent on Naboo just watching you sleep, knowing there was nothing I could do or say that could make you forgive me. I just had to give you distance, and space, and time.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know which is worse, knowing how I was so close to you and you didn’t want me to touch you, or knowing how close you want me now and knowing that I can’t.”

               “The second one,” you reply automatically. “Because I always wanted you, even then, I just couldn’t allow myself to admit that I wanted you. I was afraid that it would make me weak, afraid that it would mean that I was losing something. I don’t know what it is I thought I would have lost, but I was afraid and I wasn’t thinking. I thought I had this whole big future with the Resistance mapped out in front of me, and when that all got taken away from me, I didn’t know what to do. I used to think it was because I wanted to stay, but now I know that wasn’t true, it was never true. If I had stayed on D’Qar, I would have had some sort of, I don’t know, _goal_ to work towards, some sort of plan in my life that I could take small steps towards and see it _maybe_ come to fruition. But going to Naboo with you meant that my future was again completely out of my control, that I wouldn’t know what would happen from one day to the next, and that scared me more than I ever cared to admit.” You shake your head from side to side sadly. “Power and control. Snoke could read me like an open book. He knew what I wanted all along. When I think back to those weird conversations I had when it was just me and Hux on Naboo, I can see it now. I always thought that he was just trying to groom me for a role that he wanted me to play in the First Order, but now I can see how he got to me so easily.”

               “Don’t dwell on this,” Kylo warns you, but you just shake your head. Pushing this to the back of your mind and distracting yourself from these unpleasant thoughts worked _sometimes_ , but you had to open up to someone about it at least once in a while, and there was no one you felt comfortable talking about this with. No one, of course, except Kylo, who could implicitly understand not only what it felt like to fall prey to Snoke’s manipulations, but he was someone who could understand _you_ as well. He knew exactly what you were thinking, what you were feeling, and you could trust him to be honest with you, really, brutally honest with you, if he knew that was what you needed to hear.

               “It’s hard to talk about,” you continue. “It’s hard to talk to anyone about it, and at first I thought it was just because I wanted to keep it inside, thinking maybe if I did I wouldn’t have to deal with it, but the truth is that they don’t understand because they never went through it. The only person who can understand, the only person I do feel comfortable talking to about it, is you. You know what it’s like to be manipulated by Snoke, and we both died trying to defeat him.” You shake your head again, as if lost in thought. “But it’s like we don’t even _need_ to talk about it, because when you’re here I can feel you and I know we feel the same things, and just knowing that you’re here, that you understand, it makes everything, I don’t know, better, somehow.”

               “I understand,” Kylo tells you, and you know he does, you know he feels it just as heavily as you do. “I wish that we never had to be parted again, but I don’t want to risk your life for the sake of my comfort.”

               You just let out a laugh as you shake your head. “It’s not as if I’m doing much here,” you remind him. “I’m just sort of sitting, I guess. I train with Ani, I meditate with Rey, I see Luke and Leia, on occasion, but there’s nothing here for me.” You shake your head from side to side. “I’ve never known what home felt like for me, I never really experienced that until I was with you and Ani on Naboo, but now that’s gone and I feel like our best days are behind us.”

               “Don’t say that,” Kylo admonishes gently as he kisses your temple, but he doesn’t refute you. He doesn’t tell you that you’re wrong, and you know that at least some small part of him agreed with you. Neither of you had experienced a conventional upbringing, neither of you had been raised by two loving parents that could support you, and yet both of you wanted to be there for Ani to the best of your combined abilities, to compensate for something that was lacking in your own lives.

               “Do you still have nightmares?” you ask him, leaning against his chest. You can feel Kylo’s confused energy through the Force, and you just roll your shoulders absent-mindedly. “Well, just thinking back to Naboo, you used to have nightmares all the time. Do you still get them now?”

               “Sometimes,” Kylo replies at length, but you can read between his words.

               “So, you mean, you only get them when you’re not with me?” you ask, and Kylo chuckles gently as he nods his head, although you can tell he’s unnerved as he thinks back to them. “I have nightmares too. I wish I didn’t, but I don’t know how to stop them. The only time I don’t think I really have them, or at least, don’t have them that badly or don’t remember them when I do, is when-“

               “You’re with someone,” Kylo replies, and you’re almost glad he doesn’t mention Poe’s name specifically. “I know, you need someone there with you. I don’t fault you for that, and I never will. You know what you need to do to cope with your nightmares, with my absence, with everything that’s happened-“

               “But so do you,” you insist. “It’s not fair that I can figure out ways to help me at least try to deal with what happened to me, but you’re forced to just suck it up and keep going. It’s not fair.”

               “It’s not supposed to be,” Kylo replies quietly as he shakes his head. “I’m supposed to suffer, remember? To pay for the things I’ve done?”

               “Not like this,” you reply, emotion creeping into your voice. “Not this way, Kylo. It’s not worth it if it destroys you.”

               He just shakes his head, and it’s a while before he responds. “When I’m fighting, when I’m in battle, everything switches off,” he explains. “I don’t think about anything but what’s in front of me. I don’t think about you, or Ani, I don’t even feel pain, everything just gets blocked out and it’s not so bad then.”

               “But what about when you’re not fighting?” you press. “What about when you’re trying to go to bed at night, or when you first wake up in the morning. What do you think about then?”

               “You,” Kylo says pointedly. “Sometimes. Other times I think about Ani. I wonder what the both of you are doing here. I wonder if both of you are okay, hoping you’re both not getting into too much trouble for my sake.”

               “I thought Ani was growing up,” you say softly. “I thought he didn’t need us anymore, that he was becoming more independent, but he seems to really need you, Kylo, and I don’t know how to help him with that.”

               “You can’t,” Kylo replies with a shake of his head. “I’m sorry, but Ani and I have a completely different sort of relationship from the one you have with him.”

               “Don’t be,” you say lightly. “Ani is your son; you should have a different connection with him than I do. To be fair, I wouldn’t have expected anything less. He has your blood running through his veins, and it’s that blood that’s going to get him into trouble.”

               “Our blood,” Kylo reminds you, and you can’t help but smirk as you thought about all the trouble that you had caused over the years. Was Ani predisposed to that same kind of trouble, constantly pulled towards that sense of chaos and disorder whether he wished for it or not? In truth, you could almost hardly blame Ani if he did; it was in his genes. His grandparents, at least on Kylo’s side, had done amazing things in order to stop the Empire from taking over the galaxy, trouble that his great-grandfather, Anakin Skywalker, had caused. Then again, he had committed those atrocities as Darth Vader, and you at least hoped that if Ani was going to follow in his family’s historical roots and fall to the dark side, that he would at least choose a decent name for himself. Darth Vader’s name clearly reflected his loyalty to the Sith, Kylo Ren’s name was feared throughout the galaxy as the Master of the Knights of Ren, but you doubted anyone would be intimidated by _Moonstaff._

               Regardless, as much time as you wanted to spend together with Kylo, you knew that you couldn’t be selfish with him. Ani wanted to see him just as much as you did, and you implicitly got the feeling that they needed to have some time to talk about things together, just father and son, leaving you to walk about the base in circles as you tried to figure out something you could do for Kylo. You wanted to give him something to remember you by, something that he could hold onto in order to keep you close and remind him of you while he was away, but you couldn’t think of what it could be. Poe had given you the amulet that you still never took off, but you weren’t quite sure what you could give to Kylo that would really mean something to him, something that he wouldn’t think was silly or pedantic.

               The only problem was, you had no idea what to give to him. You didn’t think that there was anything that you could give him that he could easily carry around with him, nor could you really picture him wearing an amulet of any kind like you did, something that might only distract him while he was fighting, as it beat against the inside of his shirt while he was running. No, it had to be something special, something _perfect_ , the only problem was that you had absolutely no idea what it could be, or if you’d be able to find it on base. Time was short, and you didn’t exactly want to be running around the galaxy, wasting time trying to find something you weren’t sure you could find, while the time Kylo got to spend with you decreased with every passing second.

               You stopped by Ladson and Asher’s room, but it appeared they weren’t there. Rey wasn’t in the Green Room either, and so you found yourself just slowly making your way back to Poe’s room, expecting to find it empty. Instead, you find him inside, lying on his back on his bed while glancing through something in his datapad. “Hey,” he says as he sits up, the surprise palpable in his voice. “What are you doing here? Things okay?”

               “Yeah, things are fine,” you reply glumly. “Just wanted to give Kylo and Ani some time together, that’s all.”

               Even still, Poe seems to detect something in your tone as he puts the datapad down and swings his legs out of bed so he can sit up as he turns to face you. “What’s up?”

               “Okay, things between me and Kylo are good,” you tell him quickly. “I just want to get that out of the way first. Things between us are really good, better than good, I just-“ You feel your arms collapse at your side as you let a stupid grin take over your face as you glance up and off to the side, and Poe just quirks up an eyebrow curiously in response. “I just, remember how you got me that amulet? I want to give Kylo something for him to remember me by when he’s off fighting, but I just, I don’t know what I can give him.”

               Poe raises both of his eyebrows as he nods his head slowly and glances down to the floor as if he’s seriously contemplating what you had just told him. “I can see your dilemma,” he says appreciatively, and you can’t help but force a tight smile in his direction.

               “Yeah,” you say, letting a small laugh escape you. “I mean, I know he doesn’t expect me to give him anything, he probably wouldn’t want me to give him anything, but I want to give him _something_. I’m sure you know how isolating it is for him being under guard and under watch all the time, and I just, I don’t know, maybe if he has something to physically hold onto, it’ll make things easier.”

               To his credit, Poe props his hand underneath his chin as if he’s seriously contemplating what it was that you could give to him. “I wish there was a way to give you something that would make communication easier,” Poe begins, but quickly shakes his head to show that that wasn’t something he thought he could get approved, or something that probably wouldn’t work out for some reason or another. “Maybe something through the Force? Although you know I’m the wrong person to ask about that.”

               “Yeah, I stopped by the Green Room to see if Rey had any ideas, but she wasn’t there,” you say glumly, but Poe just nods his head.

               “Yeah, she’s off with Luke,” Poe starts before he looks at you again, as if suddenly seeing you for the first time. “I know you’ve been pretty busy with Ren this whole time, but have you given any more thought to-?”

               “No,” you shake your head, before you quickly clarify your words. “No, I mean, I’m not going to go. Ani seems to want to stay here, at least for now, and I just, I don’t know, travelling around the galaxy doesn’t seem to be the best idea for me right now.”

               “Good call,” Poe agrees as he nods his head firmly, and you can’t help but shoot him a look. “I didn’t want to say anything that might influence your decision, but I know Ren’s already told you how dangerous it could be for you and Ani out there. There’s plenty of people who would love to get their hands on you to get to him and take justice into their own hands.”

               “Which is why it’s safer to stay here for now,” you agree with an errant shrug. “But even still, I don’t want to stay on this base forever.”

               “No,” Poe replies with a quick shake of his head. “But right now that’s a ways off, and Ren is leaving soon.”

               “Right,” you say, clapping your hands together as you try to get back to the topic at hand. “I want to give him something that he can physically hold in his hands, something he can use to feel close to me and Ani when he’s feeling isolated.”

               “What about a Kyber crystal?” Poe offers. “Again, I don’t want to sound like I really know what I’m talking about here, but wouldn’t you be able to channel some bit of yourself into the crystal so that he could feel you when you’re not there?”

               “Yeah,” you reply with a slight shrug of your shoulders. “But I don’t know, I can’t really see giving him a crystal. Not only am I pretty sure that we don’t have any just lying around on base anymore, but I can’t really see him wearing one around his neck like I do with the stone you gave me, and I don’t want something to happen to it when he’s in battle. I like the idea, I do, but I want it to be, I don’t know, functional.”

               “Functional,” Poe replies, clearly deep in thought. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t suggest this, considering I don’t know how many weapons they want him to have, but what about the staff that you had, you know, the one you gave to Ani after you finished building your lightsaber?”

               “That could work,” you admit as you tilt your head to the side. “I mean, he did spend a lot of time training with me on the Starkiller Base, and we spent a lot of time trying to make Ani float it in the air when we were first training him to use the Force back on Naboo.” It was a symbol of happier times, of better times, and for a moment you let yourself get lost in the optimism as to how perfect a gift it would be. “Only one problem with that, though.”

               “What’s that?”

               “The staff is gone,” you tell him flatly. “Ani can’t remember if he left it on the _Propitiate_ or what, but if he did, it’s definitely gone now.”

               “It’s not gone,” Poe tells you, and you can’t help but let your eyes go wide as you glance back up at him.

               “Not gone?” you repeat quietly as you look back up at him. “What do you mean it’s not gone? Where is it?”

               “I guess someone must have left it behind when you were in a hurry trying to leave,” Poe explains. “Because I saw Ladson carrying it with him when he returned from Naboo.”

               “Ani forgot it on _Naboo_?” you exclaim as you sink your forehead into the heel of your hand. You couldn’t ignore the flash of irritation that shoots through you before you quickly do your best to dismiss it. You had been in a hurry, and while a part of you was frustrated that he had left something so important behind, at least you had managed to escape safely and the staff hadn’t been lost for good.

               “Looks like,” Poe replies with a shrug of his shoulders, but that doesn’t answer your other question.

               “But Ladson has it?” you repeat, suddenly troubled. “Why wouldn’t he say something? Why wouldn’t he tell me that he still had it?”

               “Maybe he just forgot about it,” Poe says as he offers you an idle shrug, but that’s not good enough for you, not right now.

               “Time to go get it back,” you call over your shoulder as you head out of the room, and it doesn’t take Poe more than twenty seconds to hop off the bed and come running after you. “You know you don’t need to come with me.”

               “Maybe not,” Poe replies as he walks down the hall beside you. “But I’m not exactly eager to see what’ll happen if you find out he’s lost it.”

               “He wouldn’t,” you reply with a quick shake of your head. “He’s probably still holding onto it to figure out the right time to give it back to Ani.”

               “Or maybe he doesn’t want to give it back,” Poe offers. “I mean, you’ve both been here for a while now, and he hasn’t even mentioned it.”

               “Maybe he just forgot he had it,” you reply with an idle shrug, but Poe still seems more or less unconvinced.

               “Or maybe he doesn’t want to give it back,” he repeats, but you can’t help but shake your head.

               “Why wouldn’t he want to give it back?” you ask. “I mean, if he really wants one so badly, I’m sure there are other staffs that he could use to train with, right?”

               “But it was _your_ staff,” Poe says quietly, and for a moment it finally hits you what he was trying to say. You had been Ladson’s best friend, and back on Naboo you had completely betrayed him, leaving him to wonder how much of his old friend was even left. The staff could at least provide him with some small sense of nostalgia, some small reminder that you hadn’t been a terrible person, at least not when he had first met you. You were disappointed that he had even needed it in the first place, but then again, if you hadn’t survived your encounter with Snoke, it would have been the only thing he would have had left to remember you by.

               “Maybe we shouldn’t,” you say, stopping suddenly in the middle of the hallway as you consider his perspective. “I mean, if the staff really means a lot to him, I don’t feel right asking for it back.”

               “Hey, we don’t know,” Poe offers as he puts his hand comfortingly on your shoulder. “Maybe he just lost it. You won’t know until you ask.”

               “Yeah, but then if I ask I may not like the answer,” you reply with a shrug. “I stopped by before, but there was no answer at the door so I figured they were both in the hangar again anyway.”

               Poe narrows his eyes, and you suddenly get the feeling that you shouldn’t have just said that. “Asher’s not in the hangar,” he says quietly, and you quirk up an eyebrow in his direction.

               “Did he really get suspended again?” you ask incredulously as Poe just shakes his head, silently encouraging you not to ask questions you didn’t want to know the answer too.

               “Either way, now it looks like I’m going to have to check it out,” Poe sighs, and you let out a frustrated huff of your own as you again make your way back to Ladson and Asher’s room. Poe casts a weary glance back towards you before he raps on the door with his knuckles, and you can’t help but sigh as you cross your arms over your chest and slump against the wall opposite the door and wait for them to open it.

               “Think they’re in there?” Poe asks, but you just shrug your shoulders. They were in there, you could sense that now, but if they wanted you to think that they weren’t home, then you would respect that.

               “Guess not,” you reply with a shrug of your shoulders as you gently kick off the wall. “Come on, we should-“

               You’re just about to suggest leaving when suddenly the door opens up, and Asher is standing in the doorway, looking slightly out of sorts as he looks between you and Poe. “Were you the guys that knocked before?” he asks slowly. “You haven’t been standing out here waiting for us all this time, have you?”

               “No,” Poe says with a quick shake of his head. “I just wanted to drop by and make sure you were staying out of trouble.”

               “Trying,” Asher replies simply, but his eyes drift over from Poe to you, as if Poe had brought you along as backup in case he wasn’t.

               “Oh, she’s here to see Ladson,” Poe says quickly. “He around?”

               “Yeah, uh, yeah.” You can hear Ladson stumble into the room somewhere behind Asher, and suddenly it occurs to you why they didn’t open the door when you had knocked earlier. You feel a blush take over your cheeks, and Poe seems to have the same sort of thoughts as he looks back at you and quirks up an eyebrow. “Ash, let them in.”

               Asher quickly steps aside as he opens the door wide, and from just beneath the collar of his shirt, you can see a fresh crimson mark along the side of his neck, close to his collarbone. Ladson seems to follow your eyes and knows exactly where you’re looking as he pinches the collar of his shirt closed and shakes his head. “Oh, what, you’re the only one who gets to have any fun on this base?”

               “No, uh, no,” you reply quickly as you shake your head, still blushing. It wasn’t the fact that Ladson had sex that bothered you, it was the fact that now you were starting to picture it, and that was something that you didn’t exactly want to do. Ladson was your best friend, but his business was still his business, and even though he had walked in on you and Kylo, you were by no means eager to settle the score. “Look, I wouldn’t have come by if I knew you were busy-“

               “Yeah, why are you here?” Ladson asks, tilting his head to the side. “With Ren back on base I figured you would practically be glued to his side, all things considered.”

               “I would be,” you admit with an idle shrug of your shoulders. “But Ani could use some time alone with his dad, and I wanted to give them some space.”

               “So that’s where he ran off to,” Ladson says as he rolls his eyes over to Asher, as if that had been something they had been debating for a while.

               “Told you,” Asher shoots back, and you just shake your head, not wanting to get any more involved in anything than you hadn’t already walked in on.

               “We actually came here to ask for your help with something,” Poe offers, and you shoot him a grateful look as Ladson’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

               “Sure,” Ladson says as he spreads his hands by his sides. “What can I do for you?”

               “The staff,” you say eagerly. “Poe told me you found my staff, back on Naboo? Do you still have the staff with you now?”

               Ladson frowns visibly as his eyes drop to the floor, and he scratches the back of his head, as if he’s trying to remember himself. “I…think?” he begins slowly. He glances back towards Asher as if for confirmation, but Asher just shrugs his shoulders, as if he couldn’t remember either. “Could you just wait here a second? I think I remember where I might have put it, but it’s going to take some digging and the room is, uh, kind of a mess.”

               “Sure,” you reply quickly, and Ladson turns and ducks back inside his bedroom, propping the door almost shut behind him, giving you ample time to study the space around you. Ladson’s living room wasn’t just big, it was huge, and it appeared that he had a whole apartment to himself that was bigger than the one that you had shared with Kylo on board the Starkiller Base. The room was white, all white, not clean enough to feel overly sterile, but just enough to give the room a certain sense of purity about the place. There were long beige couches stretching the length of the living room on either side of the room just beyond the door, with a holoprojector located in the center of the room for easy viewing on all sides. In the far back of the room was a kitchen that was both black and white in design, with a marble countertop running the length of the room to separate it from the living room with an opening at either end, and four black stools to serve as a small bar. There were rooms on either side of the kitchen, two doors on each side, and although you hadn’t been told specifically, you knew that Ani’s room was off to your right, and not just because you had seen Ladson enter through the door on your left. You could still feel Ani’s energy emanating from his room, as though he had experienced a very strong emotional outburst in there, although you couldn’t be sure exactly as to why. You couldn’t be sure if it was positive or negative, it just hit you hard and fast and _strong_ , as if Ani had strong feelings about _something_ and didn’t know how to express it.

               You silently hoped that, now that Kylo was here, at least for a short while, he’d have a chance to really sit down and talk to Ani and help him work through whatever it was that he needed to work through. You wanted to be there for him, if you could, but if Ani didn’t feel comfortable opening up to you about one thing or another, then you didn’t want to push it. As Kylo had said, you had a different sort of relationship with Ani than he did, and you could understand if Ani didn’t want to worry you with his concerns, knowing how much else that you had been going through recently. That wasn’t fair and you didn’t like it; you were his mother and you were supposed to be putting your son first, but you could also understand if Ani almost felt the need to separate himself from you a bit and to reach out to others for his problems, considering he was growing up now and he would have to rely on others in order to grow. You had been there for him throughout his entire childhood, and it only made good sense that now Ani wanted to set out on his own and try to figure out who he was without his parents, while still keeping in mind the darkness that he was predisposed to because of his relationship to you and Kylo. It was a fine line to walk, and you could only hope that Luke would help him find the solace he needed, considering how, though tempted, Luke had never fallen to the dark side of the Force as you and Kylo both had.

               “Found it,” Ladson calls from the other room, and for an object that was supposedly lost, you were almost surprised at how little time that seemed to have taken as he opens the door, letting the staff and its holster hang around the edge of his finger. “Left it hanging in my closet for a while, so uh, fair warning, it may smell a bit.”

               “Not like I’m going to notice either way,” you point out, and Ladson tilts his head to the side in consideration as he hands it over to you, stepping back so you have room to take the staff out of its holster and look it over. It looked the same as you always remembered, and you couldn’t help but run your fingers along the narrow nicks and grooves that Ani had caused while he had been playing with it as a child. “Yeah, this, this is perfect.”

               “I’m surprised you still want it,” Ladson tells you as he crosses his arms over his chest. “Now that you both have your lightsabers and everything.”

               “Partially nostalgia,” you admit as you glance up at him. “But I was going to give it to Kylo as a way to remember us when he’s out on the battlefield. It’s kind of lonely out there for him, so I thought that maybe having something to remember me and Ani by would help, especially something that reminded him of all the time we spent together back on Naboo.” Ladson nods his head in understanding, but suddenly you can’t help but think back to what Poe had said to you on your way over. “I mean, that was the plan, but it sort of doesn’t feel right taking it from you now.”

               “What?” Ladson says as he shakes his head. “But it’s yours, it’s-“ He pauses for a moment, as if trying to think back. “I saw Ani set it down after he knocked out Sadie, but I figured he would pick it back up and take it with him when he left. It wasn’t until I was waking Sadie that I noticed it was still there, and I grabbed it as a weapon, in case I needed to use it against Hux.”

               “Snoke,” you correct him, although you still couldn’t be entirely sure.

               “Anyway,” Ladson says with an uncomfortable shrug of his shoulders. “I brought it back here in case I ever saw you and Ani again one day, to give it back, but then it just sort of slipped my mind. It’s yours, and you should keep it, or give it to Ren, if that’s what you want to do with it.”

               “You sure?” you ask hesitantly, and Ladson nods his head forward firmly.

               “We’ve got plenty more where that thing came from,” Ladson tells you. “And besides, that model is kind of out of date. The newest ones are a bit cooler, I’ll have to show them to you some time.”

               “Sounds like a plan,” you say as you spin the staff around your head for old time’s sake, before you slip it back into its holster. “I’m going to run and get this to Kylo, I don’t want to, you know, spend too much time away from him before he’s gone.”

               “Say no more,” Ladson says quickly. “If I were you, I’d take up every last second. I remember what it was like for you before, and I hope it’s at least better for you now that you’re, well, here.”

               “A bit,” you reply as you tilt your head to the side, but you can suddenly feel yourself becoming emotional, and that’s not something that you want to be, especially in front of Poe and Asher.

               “I don’t know if this will help,” Asher pipes up suddenly. “Considering how much, erm, trouble, I’ve been in recently-“ Poe glances over at him and quirks an eyebrow, as if that was a _massive_ understatement. “-but I’m signing up to help out with supply runs, so I might be able to slip a message or something small to Ren if you ever need me to.”

               “Thank you,” you tell him, and now the touch of emotion in your voice is palpable at his gesture. You figured Ladson had probably mentioned it, considering the look Asher gives Ladson and the nod of approval he returns, but it didn’t matter where the thought had originated from, Asher had still made the gesture, and while you wanted to go over and hug him, you didn’t think you really knew Asher well enough to know if he would be comfortable with it. Instead, you just give him another firm nod and give them a small wave with the staff still in your hand as you and Poe head back towards the door.

               “For that,” Poe says as he turns back around. “I’ll see if I can shave a week off your suspension.”

               The look on Asher’s face brightens, and you know it’s better than any hug you could have given him. “Thanks, Captain.”

               You and Poe head out into the hallway, Poe making sure to shut the door behind you as you start to walk. “See?” he starts. “That wasn’t so bad. I told you-“

               Suddenly the door opens up, and Ladson pokes his head through, checking to see if you had rounded the corner yet. Poe seems to read the situation as he gives your shoulder two firm pats to show that he was heading off, and you turn back to Ladson in confusion. “Hey,” you say quickly. “What’s up?”

               “I may have lied,” Ladson says before he quickly corrects himself. “Slightly. I grabbed the staff to use as more than just a weapon. I, um, I may have missed you while you were gone, Ani too, but it reminded me of the Starkiller Base and everything that we went through together, and I just thought, you know, considering after what happened on Naboo, that it was really the only thing that I had left of you.”

               “Ladson-“ you say softly, but he just shakes his head.

               “Keep it,” he tells you. “I just, you know. It was hard, but now you’re back.”

               “Well, I can’t take it now,” you say teasingly, trying to keep your voice light to offset the emotion you heard in Ladson’s voice. “Not after you just told me all that.”

               You hold out the staff in one hand for him to take, but Ladson just pushes it back towards you. “Keep it,” he says firmly. “You need that more than I do, and by that, I mean that Ren probably needs it more than I do. You’re not going anywhere but he is, and-“ He shakes his head. “I know how painful that can be, so keep it.” His face brightens considerably as he lightly punches you on the shoulder. “Plus, think of it as a safeguard. Now that you have that staff back, you’re not allowed to go running off anywhere you know I can’t follow.”

               “Agreed,” you reply with a light laugh as Ladson lifts up his hands and starts to take slow backwards steps towards his door.

               “Now go back,” he tells you as he points down the corridor with his chin. “I don’t want you to blame me when he’s gone and you say that I’m the one who monopolized all your time.”

               “Not going to happen,” you call over your shoulder, but you’ve already started heading back down the corridor to your room, or rather, Kylo’s room. In the back of your mind, you knew that you shouldn’t have left him alone with Ani in case anyone else came to check up on him, considering that _you_ were supposed to be watching him the whole time, but you knew that no one would probably step foot inside Kylo’s room, knowing how much your time alone with him meant.

               Unfortunately, you forgot about two people.

               As soon as you burst into Kylo’s room, you suddenly feel as though you should back out into the corridor, as the apartment is suddenly much, much too small. Luke and Leia are sitting on the couch on one end of the room, which was being suspended upright through the Force, in light of the missing peg leg that was lying somewhere on the floor of your bedroom. Ani was standing in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, and Kylo was standing in the narrow hallway to the bedroom, slumped against one wall with his arms crossed over his chest, as if he was merely tolerating their visit.

               Your eyes immediately flick to Luke and Leia, to Ani, before they rest on Kylo, where you see his facial expression soften an imperceptible bit to see you return. “Hi there,” you say as brightly as you can manage. “What’s, uh, what’s going on here?”

               Before anyone can answer, however, Ani immediately notices the staff that you have slung around your side. “You found my staff?” he asks incredulously as he runs over to embrace it, and you can’t help but let your heart drop as you reluctantly pull it off your shoulder and hand it over. Kylo tilts his head to the side curiously as he senses your shift in mood, but says nothing as Ani turns it over and over in his hands. “Where did you find it? Did Poe have it?”

               “Ladson,” you correct him. “He forgot he had it, but yeah, he found it back on Naboo, where a certain _someone_ seemed to have misplaced it.” As Ani turns the staff over and over in his hands with a sort of nostalgic wonder, you take the time to look about the room. “So, uh, what’s going on here?”

               “Well, we couldn’t really have a family meeting without you here, could we?” Ani pipes up as he glances up from admiring his staff. “It wouldn’t feel right.”

               “I’ll be leaving the morning after next,” Kylo tells you quietly, and your eyes glance towards him before they look back down to the floor, unsure of how exactly you should process this new bit of information. You knew that he would have to leave eventually, and yet knowing there was a tangible deadline almost made things worse.

               “Okay,” you say quickly as you nod your head, turning back to Luke. “Okay, but what’s that mean for him though? Have you gotten anywhere with Ematt?”

               “We have,” Leia replies, and your eyes immediately jump towards her instead. “We’ll get to have more communication with him, when we can, at any rate, although we can’t say for certain how long it will be until he can come back and visit, or how long those visits will last.”

               “Sort of expected that,” you say as you drop your ear to one shoulder. “But when you say more communication-?”

               “Preferably every night,” Leia replies as her eyes drift back towards Kylo. “But it’s a privilege he’s going to have to _earn_. If he doesn’t follow through with orders, that privilege can easily be revoked, and there’s little I can do to reinstate it if you decide to ignore their instructions and deliberately disobey orders.”

               “I won’t,” Kylo mutters quietly as his eyes drop to the ground, before seemingly finding his resolve. “Believe me, I have no plans to make my life any worse than they’re already set on making it.”

               “Ematt’s just trying to make sure that you fulfill your obligation to the New Republic,” you offer. “Granted he’s doing it in the most backwards way imaginable, but he doesn’t understand the Force like we do, and he doesn’t know what’s at stake.”

               “Which leads us into our next topic,” Luke says as he clears his throat. “Rey has already approached you with our plan of seeking out Force sensitive children and rebuilding all that I had once lost at the Jedi Academy.” You glance towards Kylo, but he literally turns his back away from Luke, as though he physically can’t stand to hear this. “If you would so like, I would like both you and Ani to be a part of this.”

               _No_ , Kylo says immediately from inside your mind, and Luke quickly turns his head to the side, but says nothing.

               _I know he’s against it._ You can’t help but be unnerved by the fact that although he was still looking towards Kylo, Luke’s voice was inside your head. _But this is a decision for you to make alone._

You pause for a moment as you considered that that wasn’t quite true. “What do you think, Ani?” you ask as you turn to him, waiting to hear what he had to say.

               “I-“ Ani hesitates before he shakes his head, as though he’s honestly not sure. “I don’t know, I mean, it could be interesting.” He glances towards Kylo, and you could only imagine the silent conversation that they were having as well. “But it could also be extremely dangerous.”

               “In light of certain events,” you reply lightly as you turn back to Luke, waiting to hear what he had to say on the matter. It was no secret to him that there would be people who would be after you and Ani to get revenge or leverage against Kylo, and you weren’t sure that that was a risk that you wanted to take. You had already done a series of foolish things that could have had potentially fatal consequences before, like wandering around yourself on Tatooine, and you weren’t quite sure you wanted to make that same mistake all over again, especially not if it could put Ani’s life at risk.

               “We can’t guarantee your safety,” Luke says as he shakes his head. “But the planets that we will visit are most decidedly neutral in the politics of the galaxy, and I don’t think your affiliation to Ren will mean much there. If anything, we know that you have a large background in the cultural and linguistic species of the galaxy, and that could prove useful to us, should the need arise.”

               It could, you knew it could, as Jedi communication could only take you so far. It wasn’t just the linguistics of the planet, it was the cultural details as well; the right way to address someone, the right mannerisms to use when speaking, the kind of information that could only come with either experience or rehearsed study. It was what you did, or rather, what you had done, and there was a chance that you could do it again. There was no reason you had to just sit on D’Qar and wait for Kylo to return. You could have a new life, one that had the chance to give yourself a new sense of purpose and provide new harmony in the galaxy. If Snoke did come back, you would need all the resources that you had available in order to stop him, resources that would have already been there if Kylo hadn’t –

               “This needs to be your decision,” Luke tells you, as if sensing your thoughts. “And it needs to be made independently of him. I don’t want to see you trying to atone for his mistakes.”

               “I’m not,” you assure him as you shake your head, as if trying to clear it. “I’m just trying to think this through.”

               “You should do it,” Kylo says quietly as he turns back towards you, his arms still crossed over his chest. “You should do it, you should go.” Luke glances from him to you, and you hesitate, trying to think it over. You could probably help them a great deal, but something just felt _off_ to you. You weren’t sure if it was Kylo’s trepidation through the Force bond, but this felt like something else, something different, almost as though the Force was calling out to you itself.

               “I want to help,” you say as you turn towards Luke. “But right now just doesn’t feel right to me, I’m sorry. I want to help you, and please reach out to me if you need anything at all, but right now I just feel like I should stay here.” You glance up to see the corner of Kylo’s lip quirk upwards in a happy smile, and even Ani seems pleased with your decision. You didn’t want to stay on D’Qar, but after everything that had happened lately, you didn’t think that touring the galaxy was really the best thing for you. You weren’t sure how much of your earlier conversation with Ladson factored into your decision, but deep down, you felt as though you made the right choice. Back on the Starkiller Base, you had always thought that you had remarkable intuition until you learned that it was really the Force guiding you all along, and even though you couldn’t imagine why the Force _wouldn’t_ want you to go with Luke, maybe it knew something terrible would transpire along the way, and it would be much safer for you, or Ani, if you just stayed put.

               “Understood,” Luke says as he dips his head forward. “And the invitation will always be there should you change your mind, for either of you.”

               “Thank you,” you say quickly as you bow your head forward, and you can’t help but notice Kylo still smiling fondly at you. He agreed with your decision, but you had made it completely independently of him, and on some level he knew that. On some level, that pleased him. Leia can see the look passing between you, and you can’t help but notice a nostalgic gleam in her eye, as though she was thinking of how her own relationship with Han had been. A part of you still almost couldn’t believe that Kylo had killed him, had taken his own father from his mother, but that was now so far in the past that it wasn’t worth dwelling over.

               Suddenly Luke turns and you notice him picking up a small potted plant that you hadn’t noticed set on the floor beside his feet, partially hidden by his long robes. As he stands, you almost worry for a moment that he’s about to hand it to you before he walks over and hands it to Ani. “Anakin, since you have chosen to stay here, I have training for you in my absence. This is a cutting from the Great Tree at the heart of the Jedi Temple on Ahch-To. It’s Force-sensitive, and its rate of growth is tied largely to the attentiveness of its caretaker. I want you to meditate on the growth of this tree, and become familiar with the challenges presented and how to overcome them."

               “Challenges?” Ani echoes, and you can tell by the look of surprise on his face that he hadn’t seen this coming either.

               “Yes,” Luke continues. “For a start, I’ve placed three stones in the soil of the pot. Take note of how the roots overcome them, whether by growing around them or through them and why this occurs. The tree will require periodic watering, and it will tell you what other care it requires. If you can sense the subtle whisperings of a plant through the Force, those of sentient beings will _not_ be able to be hidden from you.”

               You can sense something in his tone as you turn your head to the side. “Other beings?” you echo as you take a step towards them. “You mean like Snoke?”

               “Yes,” Luke confirms with a nod of his head as he turns back to Ani. In the back of your mind, you almost wished that you had gotten a magical tree to help protect you from the dark side of the Force, but if it would help calm Ani’s anxieties and help him become more in tune with the whisperings of the Force, then you couldn’t argue with it. “Rey and I will check on you occasionally,” Luke continues. “And I will be watching for your progress with the tree. I want you to update me with at least three lessons you have learned from its growth, and how you will apply it to your own relationship with the Force, no matter how great or small the lesson. Do you have any questions?”

               Ani shakes his head from side to side, and you quickly quirk an eyebrow as you look towards Kylo, but he says nothing. Considering how Kylo had once been Luke’s padawan and rebelled against him, you were guessing that he had strong feelings about the way Luke was now teaching your son. Regardless, he kept those thoughts concealed from you, valuing the privacy of his past, and you didn’t push him. Kylo had never opened up to you about his time as Ben Solo, and it wasn’t anything you wanted to see. Ben Solo was dead, only Kylo Ren stood in his place, and that was something that would never change, not that you really wished for it too. Ben Solo _had_ been weak, _had_ succumbed to the dark side, and you knew implicitly that was something that Kylo was never going to do again.

               “We’ll be there to see you off,” Leia tells him as she gets to her feet, and you can’t help but notice how small she suddenly looks in front of him, with more than a full foot of height standing between them. Kylo just dips his head forward in a nod, and Leia comes over to give you a quick embrace as Luke trades one more bit of silent conversation with Kylo before he casts a quick nod in your direction and heads off after his sister.

               Before he follows Luke and Leia out the door, Ani pauses to place the staff back in your hands, and you stare at him in confusion. “What are you doing, Ani?” you ask him. “This is your staff. I thought you were happy to have it back.”

               “Yeah,” Ani shrugs. “But Ladson gave it to you, and besides, I have my lightsaber and this tree now. I don’t need a staff anymore.” He shrugs his shoulders as you take the staff from him. “And remember, Phasma gave it to you long before I was born. The staff is yours; you should keep it.”

               “It’s ours,” you remind him as you ruffle his hair. It wasn’t the same as when he was a kid, but you still couldn’t help yourself. Ani was growing up, and as much as you didn’t want to stop it, you didn’t have a choice. The only thing you could do was to continue what you had been doing, by being patient with your future and not trying to plan too much of it out in advance. Some things would forever be out of your control, and this thought was only furthered as you glance back at Kylo as Ani shuts the door behind him, leaving you and Kylo finally in the room alone together.

               For a moment you don’t say anything as you look down and twist the staff over in your hands, and Kylo takes a few steps into the room towards you. “What’s wrong with the staff?” he asks gently. “You seemed upset when Ani took it.”

               “Just a little,” you admit quietly, and Kylo arches an eyebrow as he waits for you to respond. “I just, uh, well, I just got it, for uh, you.”

               “For me?” Kylo asks in confusion, and you just nod your head.

               “Yeah,” you say quickly. “Yeah, I just, I don’t know, I wanted to get you something, a gift, but I didn’t know what to give you that would really be perfect.”

               “You don’t have to get me anything,” Kylo tells you, but you just shake your head.

               “No, but I wanted to,” you insist. “I know that there’s nothing that you really need out there besides your armor and your lightsaber when you’re in battle, but when you’re alone and you’re lonely and you’re not allowed to talk to me, I just want you to know that you’re not alone, that I’m always thinking about you, that Ani’s always thinking about you, and we wish you were here with us more than anything, just like you were on Naboo when he was growing up. Remember how happy we were back then? You made us that happy, _you_ made the right call. I know you’ve always had doubts as to whether or not you should have taken us off D’Qar, but this is a reminder that you did the right thing, you can _feel_ it. Whenever you feel alone, think about Ani, and me, and how good things were for us and how happy we were back on Naboo.” You can’t help but let a small smile press the corners of your lips upwards. “Or think about how I used to play with this staff back on the Starkiller Base and think about us. You helped train me. You helped get me to this point. I don’t know where I’d be right now if it wasn’t for you.”

               “Probably some place safer,” Kylo offers, but he’s smiling regardless.

               “Maybe,” you reply with a slight shrug of your shoulders. “But I’m pretty safe here, and I’m going to stay here. I’m going to stay here and wait for you, Kylo, just like you asked. I’ll stay here, I won’t make any waves or make any ridiculous gestures that could put me and Ani’s futures here at risk.”

               “Thank you,” Kylo says quietly. “I know you don’t mean it, but it’s comforting to hear.”

               “I do mean it,” you insist, a genuine hint of surprise touching your voice. “I’m serious, Kylo, I do mean it. I have friends here, Ladson’s here, and I don’t know how hard it’s going to be with Rey and Luke gone, but it means that Ani and I just need to look out for each other more than ever. We’re family and I wish you were here to help with that, I really do, but it’s okay, because we’re going to make it okay. We can’t control everything, we can’t control how much you’re not here, we can’t control how safe you’ll be, but we can control how we feel, and we can go to sleep at night knowing just how much we love you, and how much we wish you were here with us, and that will never change. No matter how many fights or disagreements we have, no matter how hard it is for us to be apart, I know that I love you more than anything in this world, and that will never, ever change.”

               Kylo grabs your face in both hands as he kisses you, and for a moment you almost wished that you could go back to the Starkiller Base, wished that you could go back and live it all again, relive each and every moment up until that point, knowing that each and every moment of doubt led you to something better. You had been afraid after B’s plot against the First Order had been revealed, but Kylo had looked out for you. You had been upset when he had seemingly abandoned you on your home planet, but he had only done it to protect you, and through that, it had allowed you to go to the Resistance and find a way to pull him back into your life, freeing him from Snoke’s manipulations so that you could spend Ani’s childhood on Naboo. And now? Now you would have to struggle just a little longer, but if the sum of the whole really was greater than the sum of its parts, then you and Kylo would finally be together after this, and there would be no more fighting, no more war, and you could finally have your family back together, peaceful and safe, where you could wake up every morning next to Kylo and know once and for all that he was home.

               Over the past few weeks, you had struggled to figure out just what that word meant, where you truly belonged, but when you were in Kylo’s arms, you knew, implicitly, that it didn’t matter where you were in the galaxy, so long as you were with him, you were really and truly home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“Hold me...whatever lies beyond this morning is a little later on. Regardless of warnings, the future doesn’t scare me at all…nothing’s like before.”_  
>  -Simple and Clean, Utada Hikaru from the Kingdom Hearts soundtrack
> 
> Keep the questions coming!! You can click [here](https://goo.gl/forms/j3wBcEPerjFZVCSD2) to access the survey, and I love the questions I've gotten so far. Someone recently asked for a time line of the events of the story and so I'm working on that now, incorporating Star Wars canon that's relevant to the story into it too (that was a great idea, thanks so much!) and that'll be released at the end of the story....which we're so close to now!!!!! I can't believe this story is wrapping up, but I still have a few more tricks up my sleeve until this story comes to its conclusion. ;) Until Tuesday, cheers!! <3


	80. Chapter 80

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the person who left such a beautiful comment the other day but asked for it not to be posted publicly, I just wanted to thank you for sharing your story with me. You are so incredibly brave and I'm so touched that I could be part of your life, even in just this small way. Please stay strong and never stop fighting, no matter how hard it gets, there are people who are here for you, whether real or fictional, it doesn't make your feelings any less valid. There is no right or wrong way to cope because everyone's struggle is different, and I'm glad that I could at least play a small role in making your struggle seem just a little less effort-ful. <3 If there's anything I can do for you, or for anyone reading this, really, please, please let me know...otherwise I guess I'll just have to keep writing new adventures and stories, no problems there. ;)

               You had been through this situation countless times before, and yet your experience with these unfortunate circumstances never made dealing with them any easier. You didn’t know what to tell him that he didn’t already know. You didn’t have any other ways to tell him that you loved him, or that you missed him before he had even left, or that you would think about him literally every second that he was gone. You wanted to promise him that you would keep yourself safe, that you would keep both you and Ani safe until he returned, but you knew deep down that he knew that as well.

               Still, you knew it might provide at least a small comfort for him to hear those words leave your lips regardless, and so you told him these things over and over again that morning as he dressed, your eyes sweeping over his bare chest as you tried to memorize each cut and nick and bruise so you could compare them to the new contusions and scars he would inevitably bear when he returned to you.

               “Just promise me you’ll come back safe,” you plead, sitting on the bed with your knees drawn into your chest as you press your palms flat against the tops of your feet in a vain attempt to keep them from shaking.  

               “I thought you didn’t like promises,” Kylo muses, and you can’t help but stick your tongue out at him, trying your best to smile through the tears that were threatening to fall at any second. You had thought that you would remain composed this time, stronger, knowing how strong your love was for each other, but apparently your feelings towards him made you just as weak and sentimental as ever. Sometimes you were afraid to think of the lengths that you would go to for each other, how much you would be willing to risk, but you supposed that reckless sense of devotion to the people that you truly cared about was one attribute that you had both shared before the bond, and something that the Force had only strengthed after.

               “I want to hear it,” you insist, although, at this point, you were willingly to recognize how trivial the whole thing seemed. If Kylo didn’t return, a broken promise would be the least of your concerns if something happened to him. “I just need to hear that you’ll do whatever it takes to come back to me.”

               “I will,” Kylo says as he glances over at you, still settling himself into his familiar armor. “You know I will. There is nothing in the galaxy that can keep us apart, you _know_ that.”

               “Except for the Resistance, apparently,” you murmur, and Kylo tilts his head to the side in consideration.

               “At the very least, we should be able to communicate more,” Kylo assures you, trying his best to remain optimistic, solely for your sake. “And I can assure you that I will not worry you again.”

               “It’s okay,” you reply quickly, dismissively, eager to push his previous transgression out of your thoughts. In the back of your mind, you had always known that Kylo had only said what he said to try to scare you into staying on D’Qar, staying safe, but you couldn’t deny how much it had unnerved you nonetheless, and you were glad that he knew implicitly never to do anything like that ever again.

               He’s fully dressed now, and you can’t help but try to press a small smile to the corners of your lips to stop the tears from flowing as you push off the bed and get to your feet in front of him. He kisses you gently, sweeping your hair back away from your face as he holds your cheeks in both hands, kissing you softly yet firmly at the same time, trying to provide you with all of the reassurance that he could muster. He would come back, you knew that, deep down, Kylo would return to you, safe and sound, but that did little to erase the fact that he was really leaving, again, and you had no idea how long he would be gone for.

               “I know things are going to be difficult for you while I’m not here,” Kylo says softly. “But if there is anything that I can do from where I am, please let me know.”

               “I know,” you reply. “And let me do the same, okay? I know this isn’t easy for either of us, and we’re going to really have to work as a team in order to pull through this.”

               “We always do,” Kylo tells you as he reaches down to kiss you again, before he holds out his hand and lets the staff come floating into his open palm as he closes his fingers around its narrow center. You can’t help but beam up at him, as you had been silently waiting to see whether or not he would take it without you having to offer it to him again, and you were glad to see that he seemed to want it with him. You wanted to do more, wanted to provide him with some bigger, more grandiose statement of affection, but he was going into battle and there was very little that he could bring with him that wouldn’t be a cumbersome nuisance.

               “I do like this,” Kylo reassures you as he holds it up in one hand. “I am. I’m grateful to have some symbol of you and Ani while I’m gone.”

               “Just, if things get hard, reach out to us?” you ask him. “Don’t ever be afraid to call, don’t ever think, like, oh, they might be busy doing something else right now. Whatever we’re doing, it can stop, it can wait. We don’t know how much time or communication we’ll really get to have depending on where you are in the galaxy, and I don’t want to miss you for a second longer than I have to.”

               “I won’t do anything that could jeopardize any chance I have to see you,” Kylo assures you as he pulls you into his chest, wrapping his arms around you. “You won’t have anything to worry about. I’ll be back here as soon as I can.”

               “Until the war is over,” you reply as you snuggle into his chest, and you can’t help but feel Kylo involuntarily stiffen against your side. “It _will_ be over, Kylo, eventually, it has to be.”

               “You don’t know that,” Kylo admits. “I don’t know how long I’ll be fighting for, but there’s a chance that it will never end.”

               “It will end,” you confirm as you pull away from him so you can bring your eyes up to meet his gaze. “It _will_ end, Kylo, you just have to trust the Force that it will eventually come to an end. You’re working to make that happen, and eventually I’ll be able to gain the Resistance’s trust back and I’ll do whatever I can in order to help them too. I know Ematt doesn’t think that I would want to offer the Resistance anything after what they’ve put me through, and he’s right about that, but even he can’t be too blind to see that I’ll do anything it takes to bring you home, and if that means helping the Resistance, then so be it.” You shake your head. “I may not like them, but we have the same goals, and we’re on the same side. Besides, if Snoke really ever does come back, or some other evil in the galaxy rears its head, then we have to be ready for it, yes, but _this_ war has to end before that one can begin. It just, it just has to.” You push lightly against his chest with both hands. “So this war will end, and you’ll come home, probably sooner than you think. You’re leading the ground forces, remember? And you’re unstoppable, so the First Order doesn’t stand a chance.”

               Kylo smiles softly down at you as he strokes your cheek, quietly admiring your optimism. “I can feel your light again,” he says softly. “You’re so confident in me, so hopeful.”

               “Just like old times then,” you say as you reach up and kiss him a final time, sensing Ani on the other side of the doorway. You know he has to go, that this is your last minute with him and the seconds are counting down, but you don’t want him to go, and you’re suddenly overcome with a stronger emotion, that you _can’t_ let him go, that if you do, you don’t know how long it will be until you’re able to experience something as simple as the soft, warm glow of his presence beside you. You give in to that unwanted sense of uncertainty as you quickly grab his hand and press the backs of his gloved fingers against your forehead before you kiss them softly, holding his hand tightly in both of yours, unwilling to let him go yet again, unsure of what lengths you might need to go to in order to bring him home again.

               “I love you,” Kylo reminds you as he bends down to kiss you quickly, firmly, and he pulls away much too soon for your liking.

               “I love you,” you call after him, your voice breaking on the final word, and Kylo forces a small smile to his lips before he turns and heads out the door, trying not to make his departure any more unbearable by dragging it out. Outside, you can feel Ani reaching out to you with his mind, asking if you’re okay, asking if you want to accompany them to the hangar, but you can’t, you know you can’t. There will be others there, Poe and Luke and Leia and Ematt and you didn’t want to cry or cause a scene in front of them as well. You had already said all you could to Kylo, and there would be nothing that would change from this doorway to the hangar except the sheer number of tears that slid down your overheated cheeks from one moment to the next.

               You were almost surprised by how well you had seemingly held yourself together, saving your outburst for when Kylo wasn’t around to see you cry. You knew that he would want to be here, would want to comfort you, but you knew he would also feel guilty for having to leave you, and that wasn’t the last feeling you wanted to leave him with when he thought of you. You wanted him to feel comforted by the reassurance that you would stay here, stay safe, and bolstered by the fact that he _knew_ how much you loved him more than words could say.

               It was almost strange how back on the _Propitiate,_ and on Tatooine, it felt like your relationship was in tatters, at least in comparison to where it was now. Before you had told him you loved him resolutely simply because you wanted to stay by his side, but something had changed in that time, and even you didn’t know what it was. Whatever you had felt for him before had been replaced by a quiet, muted sense of adoration and assurance, connected by a deep bond of trust that flowed between you. When he was off in the galaxy, you couldn’t feel him as easily as you could when he was sitting right beside you, but that connection was still there, the bond still strong. You would never really be able to quantify just how much you meant to him, but you were finally able to understand how much he meant to you, and you were almost surprised by how much that changed your perspective as a result.

               Before, you had been reckless and insecure, always belligerent and restless, waiting for the next plan of action, the next moment of excitement, and although you had no idea how much of that was attributed to Snoke’s influence, you knew that Snoke didn’t do anything more than uncover things that you had already felt, deep down, but hadn’t expressed. Now though, you could be sure that things truly were different. You felt calmer now, more relaxed, and even though Kylo was going, you didn’t want to chase into the galaxy after him. You wanted to keep to your word, wanted to keep yourself safe, knowing that Kylo would worry about you less if you did. You had no idea where these sudden thoughts or feelings were coming from, but that didn’t trouble you as much as you almost expected it to. You wanted Kylo to know that you were capable of taking care of yourself, knowing he would worry less about you if he did, and the less he worried about you, the more he could focus on himself and the things he had to do, like making sure he stayed alive in battle so that he could come home to you.

               You inhale a quick sniff as the door opens suddenly, but you’re relieved to see that it’s only Ani, who quietly shuts the door behind him before he comes to join you in the bedroom. “Hey,” you manage as you brush aside your tears, trying to keep at least somewhat better control of your emotions for his sake. Ani wasn’t crying, and you were almost a little embarrassed with yourself for not handling this better. You had seen Kylo leave time and time again, and there was no reason to be taking this as hard as you did, especially considering how you _knew_ he would return.

               “It’s okay,” Ani says softly, as if he can read your thoughts. “Never apologize for how you’re feeling. Didn’t you tell me that once?”

               “I probably did,” you say, offering Ani a small smile as he sits beside you on the bed. “So how was seeing Kylo off? Any trouble?”

               “None,” Ani replies with a shake of his head. “Luke and Leia said goodbye to him, Ematt was there, but he didn’t say much, and then Dad got on board and that was all.”

               You nod slowly, replaying his words in your head a few more times. “That’s good,” you finally manage when you can’t think of anything better to say. “And how were things when he was here? Did you have a good talk with him?”

               “I did,” Ani says quickly as he nods his head up and down. “It’s hard without him here. I know I’m supposed to be an adult now and I need to be strong, but I just can’t help but feel scared when he’s not around. I know we’re safe on D’Qar but I still have nightmares about what happened with Snoke. If he ever returns, he’s going to target me, and I want both of you close by if that ever happens.”

               “Hey, hey, hey,” you say quickly as you put an arm around him. “Nothing is going to happen to you, okay? We won’t let it. I’m here, and the second we tell Luke about what’s happening, he’ll make sure that Kylo comes straight back to help protect you. Even Ematt can’t argue with something that serious.”

               “I’m just afraid,” Ani says as he shakes his head from side to side. “What if it happens without me noticing, like it did to you? It wasn’t like you were there one day and gone the next, it took time, and that’s what I’m afraid of. I don’t want to justify my thoughts by saying that I’m growing up and becoming more independent when it’s really Snoke trying to get inside of my head. Dad was able to protect me from it last time, shield me, and I’m still not sure I’m strong enough to shield myself.”

               “Is that what you were doing together? Meditating? Trying to make your mental shield stronger?” you ask him, and Ani nods his head up and down. “And that’s okay, Ani, that’s good. We can work on that together, too. I know Kylo is better at it than I am, but that’s only because he’s had more practice. We’re a team, and now that he’s gone, we’re going to have to rely on each other more than ever, just like we did when you were a kid.”

               “I hate that he has to go,” Ani says as he shakes his head, and you can’t help but give his arm a firm squeeze.

               “I do too,” you tell him quietly. “You know I do.”

               “You don’t seem that hurt though,” Ani notices as he studies your face. “Although, to be fair, neither did he. He seemed, I don’t know, pleased?”

               “Because we love each other,” you explain. “And I think we both finally understand what that means, and I think we’ve both come to terms with everything that’s happened. It’s not going to be easy for either of us, Ani, and we know it’s not going to be any easier for you, but I think we’ve come to an understanding about the way things have to be. Kylo needs to make reparations for the things he’s done, and I think a part of him wants to. As much as he wants to stay here with us, he knows that he’s done wrong and he’s willing to make amends. We should be proud of him for that, and we should support him, even if we’re hurt in the process.”

               “I just wish he was here so he could do both at the same time,” Ani offers, and you can’t help but force a small laugh.

               “So do I, believe me, so do I,” you agree. “But this is good in a way, it is. Now that we’re not on the run anymore, we have room to pursue other things that we want, other goals that we have. You’re free to do whatever you want, Ani, whether it’s going off with Luke and Rey or staying here with the Resistance; you can choose to do whatever you want.”

               “I don’t know what I want to do yet,” Ani says as he shakes his head, and you give him another reassuring squeeze to show your support.

               “And that’s okay,” you remind him. “You have plenty of time to figure that out. I know you didn’t really have many opportunities growing up to really branch out and do other things, staying on Naboo or hopping from base to base, but here you can meet people, try different things, find out what works for you, and you know Kylo and I will always be there to support you in whatever you decide.” You pause for a moment as you offer him a small grin. “And if he doesn’t approve, well, he’s not exactly here to stop you, now is he?”

               Ani forces a laugh as he gently bumps against your side, thinking this over for a moment before he speaks again. “I like flying,” he says at length. “I liked pod racing, because it was similar, but I really like flying. I really want to fly an X-Wing.”

               “And Poe can definitely help you with that,” you tell him, smiling happily as you ruffle his hair. “I know he and Ladson, and even Asher, would be more than willing to practice flying with you, provided Asher ever gets off suspension.”

               “You know he’s usually only in trouble because he’s covering for someone else, right?” Ani asks as he glances aside at you, and you can’t help but puzzle over this information before you dip your head forward in a small nod. This was something that had never actually occurred to you before, but now that you thought about it, it made sense why he seemed to be suspended so often, yet never had his clearance formally revoked.

               “And here I thought Ladson had just fallen in with the wrong crowd,” you tease gently. “But is it good for you? Living with them? I was in there earlier and I sensed some pretty strong emotions coming from your room.”

               “Despair?” Ani asks as he raises an eyebrow. “I was really, really upset when they took him away and didn’t tell us, didn’t let us say goodbye; I didn’t know how to deal with that. I didn’t know how to cope, and I let my emotions get the best of me.”

               “I’m here for you,” you say reassuringly as you hold him a little tighter to you. “Don’t ever forget that, Ani. I am always, always here for you, no matter what happens.”

               “I know,” Ani replies with a quick smile of his own. “And I mean, I want to be more independent, but I know that I need to rely on people too. I guess it’s just hard finding that balance.”

               “It is,” you agree. “But you know we know from experience that it’s better to reach out to people and ask for help than try to do things ourselves. We’d probably have encountered a lot less trouble if we did.”

               “Yeah,” Ani says with a light shrug. “But I think things worked out okay.”

               “Okay?” you repeat with a faint laugh, and Ani rolls his eyes to the side, as if even he didn’t really know what he meant by that.

               “You know what I mean,” he says at length. “We’re safe here, at least for now. We’re not in danger. I wish dad was here too, but in a way it’s the same as it’s always been in a way, right? I mean, granted he wasn’t gone for as long as he is now, but he was always off doing things for the First Order, sometimes for days at a time. It’s a bit longer now, but he’s still coming back.”

               “Yeah,” you say softly as you mull this over. In a way, Ani was right. Kylo had always been going off doing something or another, that was what he did, that was who he was, but you had always remained secure in the knowledge that he would return to you in only a few short days and you wouldn’t be without him for very long. Now, however, you had no idea when you would get to see him again, but at least you were somewhat contented by the promise of increased communication. Maybe if you could at least see him and let him know how much you cared about him more than once a week, maybe this wouldn’t have to be as bad as your mind kept making it out to be. You would miss him, yes, more than anything, but you couldn’t go on every day mourning the fact that he wasn’t here with you. Kylo didn’t want to see you go through that, and neither did anyone else.

               “At least we have our other friends here to keep us busy in the meantime,” you offer optimistically as you glance back towards Ani. “Rey and Finn and Poe and Ladson and-“ You stop short as you catch the look on Ani’s face. “Oh no, what’s happened now?”

               “They’re leaving today,” Ani says quietly, waiting to see your reaction before he continues.

               “You’re going to have to give me a little more to go on,” you prompt. “Who’s leaving, Ani?”

               “Luke and Rey,” Ani tells you. “They waited until Kylo left, just in case, but now that he’s gone and he’s not coming back for a while, they’re heading off.”

               “Fantastic,” you mutter under your breath. You had known that they’d be leaving sooner or later, but you had no idea it would be so immediate or so soon. There was still plenty more you wanted to do, more time you wanted to spend with Rey, but it seemed that they were intent on heading out, and there was very little you could do to stop them. You had been offered the choice to go with them, but you had turned it down, and while you were disappointed to see them leaving, a part of you still felt sure that you were making the right decision.

               “We should go see them off,” Ani offers, and you bow your head forward in quick agreement as you get to your feet. You had been in this small, stuffy room for what felt like too long, although you were in no mood to complain, considering Kylo had been by your side. Now, however, you wanted out of this room as quickly as possible, lest it remind you of what you were going to have to live without for the next few weeks, or however long it took until you were able to see him again.

               You walk side by side with Ani until you get to the Green Room, where you had a feeling Rey would be. In truth, you could probably feel her through the Force, but that wasn’t as much of a concern to you right then, especially knowing that you didn’t know how long it would be until you saw her again either. She and Luke would be gone, and then you and Ani would be the only Force users left on base, at least to your knowledge.

               As you enter the Green Room, Rey is sitting on the floor in the center of the stone circle, hovering just above the ground with her eyes shut in meditation. Even still, she seems to sense you enter immediately as her eyes open and she smiles fondly at the both of you as you approach. “Hey,” she says brightly, as if she had been anticipating you coming. “I’m glad you’re here.”

               “Couldn’t let you leave without saying goodbye,” Ani offers, and Rey smiles as she gets to her feet.

               “I really wish you both would have come with us,” Rey tells you. “But I understand that you want to stay here, at least for now. Just remember that if you ever feel as though you would like to join us, that invitation is still open, and you’re always welcome.”

               “We can still help,” you remind her as you gesture vaguely into the space between you. “And I mean that, if you have any questions or if there’s anything that either of us can do to help, just let us know. We may not be travelling with you full time, but if there’s ever a mission or anything that we can help with, a quick adventure, I think you might be able to talk us into helping out.”

               “I’ll keep that in mind,” Rey says with a quick laugh, and you turn as you hear the door open behind you to see someone else enter the room.

               “Hey there,” you say as you smile widely at Finn. “Have you come to say goodbye too?”

               “Goodbye?” Finn echoes with a small laugh as he shakes his head. “To you, maybe; I’m going with them.”

               “You-“ _Another friend gone._ “-of course you’re going with them,” you manage as you shake your head quickly from side to side. You didn’t know why this hadn’t occurred to you before, that wherever Rey went, Finn wasn’t far behind, and this was no exception. “I bet Poe’s going to be awfully lonely with you gone.”

               “I think you’ll be able to keep him busy for the both of us,” Finn offers, and you can’t help but blush at that. “Hey, no, I didn’t mean-“

               “No, I know,” you say quickly as you glance aside at Ani before looking back at him. “No, I’ll make sure to take good care of him. Or he’ll take good care of me. I forget how it works between us.”

               “I’ll watch over the both of them,” Ani offers, and Finn just laughs as he pulls Ani in for a quick hug.

               “I can’t believe you’re taller than me now,” Finn mutters as he pulls away, shaking his head in disbelief. “Just make sure to look out for yourself, all right?”

               “I will,” Ani assures him as Finn turns to hug you, throwing his arms around you in a big hug as he sways slightly from side to side.

               “Take care of yourself,” Finn says into your shoulder. “I mean that, seriously. If things are hard, if you’re struggling, reach out to us. We want to help.”

               “I know,” you reply quickly, trying to dispel the misty tears that you can feel welling up behind your eyes. “I will, okay, you can trust me.”

               “We do,” Finn assures you as he claps you on the back before he pulls away, and you can’t help but force a tight smile in his direction as you turn towards Rey, who was saying her goodbye to Ani, assuring him that everything would be okay.

               “You have your lightsaber,” Rey says as she gestures to you. “And I want you to keep training, okay? Keep meditating. You can use this room as often as you’d like, I know I’m going to miss it. There’s good energy in this room; you can benefit from that, but don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it, or even when you’re not sure if you do. We’ll always be there for you when you need it, and remember, Leia’s staying on base too, and she wants to help you as much as we do.”

               “I know,” Ani says, nodding his head firmly. “I know.” But even with that said, Rey still looks troubled.

               “I sense your fear,” she says quietly, and you can’t help but frown at this. You didn’t specifically sense any fear in Ani, but perhaps he was hiding it from you, trying to shield you from it, so that you wouldn’t be alarmed as to what he was truly feeling. You could understand why he would be reticent to open up to you, but at the same time, you were his mother, and you wanted to be there for him. Especially with Kylo gone, you were going to have to be a team now more than ever, and you knew it would take some time to get your relationship back on track, but you were prepared to do whatever it took to be there for him.

               “I know it will be a while until he returns,” Ani begins nervously. “If he ever returns, but it doesn’t help to know that I’m the first one he’s going to come after is he does.”

               “We don’t know that for sure, Ani,” you remind him, but he just casts a hesitant look back in your direction.

               “She’s right,” Rey agrees as she puts a hand on his upper arm reassuringly. “We don’t know if Snoke will ever return, but if he does, that’s why we’re doing all this, preparing and training other Force users so that if he ever _does_ return, we can fight him off, and hopefully find a way to stop him once and for all, so you have nothing to fear from him ever again.”

               Ani just lets his head dip forward in silent appreciation. “Thank you,” he says quietly, and Rey offers him another quick hug before she turns back to you, and for a moment both of you are silent, neither of you knowing quite what to say.

               “It’s been a long time since you first stepped on this base,” Rey finally says at length. “You’ve grown so much since then; you are much stronger now than you ever were.”

               “Strong in the dark side, maybe,” you confess. “But I’ll keep coming here every day and meditate, just like we used to. It might have been years since I first showed up here, but I don’t think I’ve gotten any better at achieving balance now than I was then.”

               “It’s a journey,” Rey reminds you. “It’s something we all struggle with at times, even me. You just need to remember that the light will always be there to guide you, always. Even in his darkest times, Ren still felt a pull towards the light. You just need to let it guide you, just as he did.”

               “I’m just hoping I won’t have to make any more decisions like that for a long while,” you confess with a small laugh. “I hope to the Force that this war ends quickly, that the fighting will stop and Kylo can come home. That’s all I want.”

               “That is my hope as well,” Rey says with a quick nod of her head before she steps forward and throws her arms around you. “I’m going to miss you, my friend.”

               “I’m going to miss you too,” you reply, squeezing her just a little bit harder than you mean to, trying not to let yourself cry. You had no idea when you had suddenly become so sentimental, but just when you finally felt like you were getting back to your old self again, everyone was suddenly leaving, and you weren’t quite sure how to deal with that. It had been just you and Kylo for so long, you were almost eager to get back into your old routine at the Resistance, although that seemed impossible now considering that Rey and Finn would both be leaving and you were no longer allowed in the hangar to spend time flying around D’Qar’s atmosphere with Poe.

               “Take care of yourself,” Rey reminds you as she pulls away, still holding you at arm’s length. “And if there is anything you need-“

               “I’ll ask,” you reassure her. “And if there’s anything you need, any way I can be of assistance-“

               “I’ll ask,” Rey confirms as she gives you another brief hug before following Finn out towards the doorway.

               “Take care of yourselves,” Finn says before heading through, and Rey turns back to you one more time, letting a gentle smile take over her features, just like she had the first time you saw her when you had first arrived on base.

               “We’ll see each other again,” she says, and you can hear the soft confidence in her voice ring out through the quiet room. “I believe that.”

               Unwilling to trust your voice, you just let your hand fly up in a quick silent wave as she leaves the room, and you purse your lips together tightly in a vain attempt to keep yourself together. At least Ani was still here, and Poe, and Ladson, and you knew that while it would be hard with Rey and Finn gone, you’d be able to pull through. You would see Rey again, you would see _both_ of them again, you had absolutely no doubt in your mind about that. You were connected through the Force, and by choice, by friendship, and you would see her again one day; you knew that, implicitly.           

               “I wanted to go see Luke before he goes,” Ani says as he turns to you. “Would you like to come with me, or-?”

               Ordinarily you would have gone with him, but you had enough of goodbyes for one morning, and you could sense that there were things that Ani wanted to talk to Luke about alone. “You go ahead,” you tell him with a quick nod of your head. “I’ll be there to see him off, but you go ahead.”

               “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Ani asks nervously, and you nod your head.

               “Yeah,” you say quickly, nodding your head forward a few times. “Yeah, I mean, I don’t like the fact that everyone’s leaving, but it’s okay, because we still have each other, right?”

               Ani nods his head and throws a tight smile your way for reassurance. “Especially now that Dad’s not here, we need to stick together,” Ani agrees. “Wherever you go, I go.”

               “Good to know,” you respond with a fond smile as you watch him head out the door. At first you considered staying in the Green Room and meditating yourself for a while, but you knew you would have plenty of time to do that later, and you didn’t exactly want to be alone right now. Instead, you made your way over to Poe’s room, hoping beyond hope that he was still inside to help distract you from losing Kylo, Rey, Finn, and Luke, all in the span of a few short hours.

               Fortunately, Poe is inside when you walk in, and you can’t help but let a small smile float to your lips as you see him. Even so, you can sense something’s wrong almost immediately. He’s sitting on the bottom bunk, hands drumming against his knees, as if he was just waiting for you to walk in the door.

               “Hey,” you say quickly as you tilt your head to the side, trying to figure out what was wrong. “What’s up? You look…tense.”

               “What?” Poe asks, blinking for a moment as he looks up at you before he shakes his head, as if to clear it. “No, um, no, I’m okay.” He pauses for a moment as he looks you over before he gets to his feet. “Are you okay? I figured you’d be pretty upset with Ren leaving.”

               “Yeah,” you say with a casual shrug of your shoulders, trying to disguise how much it hurt that he was heading off in the galaxy again without you knowing exactly where he was, or how you could come to his aid if you needed to. “I mean, losing Kylo is hard enough, but I just said goodbye to Rey and Finn. Kylo’s gone, they’re heading off with Luke, and suddenly it just feels like, I don’t know, like I was really excited to get back into some sort of a routine, especially now that I’m feeling more like my old self again, and suddenly I turn around and everyone I care about is just gone.” You force a tight smile in his direction. “So it looks like it’s going to be just you and me for a while, huh?”

               “Actually,” Poe says awkwardly as he fidgets with the collar of his jacket, and suddenly you can’t help but feel goosebumps rising to the surface of your skin as your heart sinks down in your chest.

               “What is it?” you ask quickly, but Poe only looks away in response. “Just spit it out, okay? Just tell me, what is going on?”

               “Actually,” Poe begins again as he slowly looks up to meet your eyes. “I’m, uh, I’m leaving too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, ladies and gents and people who identify as both and/or neither!! We are only TWO chapters away from our three-part epilogue. Reader's tale began on January 25, 2016 and it is starting to work its way towards its inevitable conclusion...although if it makes you feel any better, I've been hard at work writing the "part 4," rewriting key parts of this trilogy from Kylo's perspective, and I've already gotten five chapters mostly complete...weirdly enough, it's a lot of fun mucking around in Kylo's head, but you'll soon see for yourself, so at least there's something to look forward to when this story ends. ;) If you've got more questions to ask (and I know I want to answer them!) feel free to drop a few more off in my box by clicking here [here](https://goo.gl/forms/j3wBcEPerjFZVCSD2). Otherwise, I will see you all again on Thursday, cheers friends!! <3
> 
> PS: Forgot to mention, I wrote a special Matt the Radar Technician fic/prompt a while back that I never got around to posting, so I'm going to be posting it tomorrow, both on my [Tumblr](http://streetsolo.tumblr.com) and my [prompt collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6468130/chapters/14804356) right here on ao3, so keep an eye out for it!!


	81. Chapter 81

               “What do you mean, you’re leaving too?”

               You didn’t mean for your words to come out anywhere near as aggressive as they sounded, but a part of you couldn’t help it. You had just lost Kylo, and Luke, and Rey, and Finn, and now Poe was leaving too? You knew you still had Ani, and Ladson, and Asher, but now that they all lived together, you couldn’t help but feel more isolated than ever. Suddenly you got the image of Leia, who was more or less living secluded in the back of the base, alone, and you wanted more than anything not to live like that. After everything that had happened, being alone scared you more than you cared to admit, and you couldn’t deal with Poe leaving on top of everyone else that you had had to say goodbye to this morning.

               “I’m sorry,” Poe offers, but the fact that he prefaces it with an apology only makes it worse. “This has been in the works for a while, but I didn’t know how to tell you with everything else that was going on. I just got my reassignment today, and I’ll be headed out next week.”

               “Reassignment,” you whisper quietly as you turn away from him. The way he phrased it sounded no better than what Kylo was going through, and you were suddenly overcome by an overwhelming wave of paranoia that maybe this was being done on purpose, that maybe Ematt or someone else had it out for you and was slowly taking everyone away from you, one at a time, to see how far you would go until you broke. You knew this wasn’t true, but a part of you still couldn’t help but wonder. You had expected that Kylo would leave and braced yourself for that loss, and you had known that Rey and Luke were leaving eventually, but you had never imagined that Poe would leave. The base was here, his _home_ was here, and you couldn’t imagine him flying out those hangar doors for the last time and never returning. “And I suppose this is some sort of top secret Resistance business that I’m not supposed to know about?”

               “Officially, yes,” Poe concedes, allowing at least a small bit of humor to drift back into his voice. “But I think I can make an exception, just this once.”

               “No,” you reply as you shake your head from side to side. “No, we’ve been over this already. I don’t want you to risk anything for me, especially when it comes to the Resistance. You’ve already stuck your neck out for me more times than I can count, and I don’t want to see you getting in trouble just to try to make me feel better.”

               “You were right,” Poe offers, and you can’t help but look at him suspiciously. “About the Resistance? You were right. So long as we remain a primarily auxiliary military force, the New Republic will turn against us and demand that we disarm the second the First Order is eradicated. Ematt will never admit to it, but that’s part of the reason that this war is going to keep getting dragged on, because the second that the First Order is defeated for good, we’ll have to disband. Remember, a lot of us _left_ the Republic, and a lot of us don’t know what we’d do if the Resistance would have to disband entirely.”

               “But that means Kylo will never come home,” you say quietly, and Poe lets out a sigh as he drops his head.

               “I know that,” he says firmly, as though he’s been thinking about this a while. “I know that, I’m sorry, I know. Believe me, the General doesn’t want to see that either. She wants her son back, and she doesn’t want everything that she’s worked so hard to create just collapse into the ground, so she’s reached out to the few contacts in the New Republic Command that are still friendly with her and worked out a way to build a new future for the Resistance.”

               “A new future?” you ask skeptically, and Poe nods his head quickly, steadying his hand before he launches into an explanation.

               “If we’re only focused on eliminating what’s left of the First Order, we’re going to miss the rise of something new going on in the background, like that wreck of the _Obdurance_ on Genon. Remember, Snoke built up the First Order without our knowledge before, and it’s more than possible that he can do it again. That’s how this all started in the first place, with the First Order making shady dealings in back alley casinos to gain funds, quietly gathering strength and support behind closed doors, while the New Republic missed or ignored the warning signs because they were too focused on reconstituting the memory of the Old Republic. We’re not going to make the same mistake again, and that’s why all Resistance fleet operations are being moved to Naboo as the first part of a new alliance with the New Republic and Naboo’s Queen Irella. Ematt already has orders to prosecute the campaign at a realistic pace instead of dragging things out like he has been over the course of the past few months, so by the time the last First Order base surrenders, the fleet yards at Naboo should be finished and our new mission can begin.”

               “Naboo,” you echo hollowly, your voice almost catching in your throat. “You’re moving your entire fleet operations to Naboo? That means, well, that means Asher and Ladson will inevitably be headed there as well, isn’t that right?”

               “That’s right,” Poe confirms with a small nod of his head, and you let your mouth fall open involuntarily before you shut it again. Your body may have been on D’Qar, but your brain suddenly felt like it had been abandoned along the icy plains of Hoth, and suddenly nothing made sense to you anymore.

               “And Kylo’s never going to be able to come back for good until that base is finished?” you ask, and Poe nods his head forward again in confirmation.

               “That’s right,” he repeats. “The Resistance is going to be reorganized into a sentinel force, a bit like what I was doing back under Deso’s command, but with much broader leeway. Most of the time we’ll be supplying antipiracy patrol and interdiction in the Mid and Outer Rim, but our primary directive will be to detect and crush any rekindling of the dictatorships of history. The next threat may be something orchestrated by Snoke again, but the galaxy is a big place. Who knows? You saw that thing Luke showed everyone at the trial. Somewhere beyond the Outer Rim, someone may discover a dangerous artifact left over from one of the ancient empires, maybe the Rakatans or even the actual Sith Empire. Like the First Order, a few idealistic groups would rally around the idea it represented, and begin trying to gather strength and support while uniting under a new banner. The Republic might not notice, but we definitely would, and to do that, we _have_ to move to Naboo. D’Qar is too isolated, too far away from the trade routes we’d be patrolling, and every year we spend here builds suspicion in the Senate about what we’re _really_ doing out here in the Ileenium system, which is still basically the middle of nowhere. Moving our fleet out to Naboo is a step in the right direction to repairing ties with the New Republic, and as much as I hate to admit it, we’ll need the New Republic’s support if you want to see Ren back here in your lifetime.”

                “Right,” you echo quietly, but your brain seems to be resistant to processing any more information at the current moment.

               “The new few years are going to be busy,” Poe continues. “Especially since we’ll practically be building everything from scratch. After that stunt Deso pulled with the _Calrissian_ , the Naboo were understandably wary about allowing fleet operations near their major cities, so out of respect to them, we’re building on the far side of Naboo, closer to Gungan territory, not far from where you were staying. Do you remember that area at all?”

               “Yeah, a bit,” you say quietly, but your voice is empty. The only thing that you could picture in your mind was Ladson, Poe, and Asher all living it up on Naboo, while you and Ani stayed on D’Qar, surrounded by thick, grey walls on all sides, the only reprieve being Rey’s Green Room. Even there though, you had to admit, you weren’t sure if you could stay for very long, as the air itself was permeated by a thick wave of nostalgia. Poe’s looking at you like he’s waiting for you to say something, and you quickly shake your head as if trying to clear it. “Yeah, um, if there’s anything I can do, let me, uh, let me know, okay?”

               “Of course,” Poe replies. It seems like he’s going to say more, but suddenly you just can’t take it as you rush forward and throw your arms around him, burying your face into his shoulder.

               “I’m really going to miss you,” you tell him, talking into the stiff leather of his jacket as you let the emotion of the day start to overwhelm you. “I mean it; I am _really_ going to miss you.”

               “Hey, hey,” Poe says quietly as he smooths your hair back with one hand, but you only hold him tighter, seemingly squeezing the Force out of him, as if squeezing him as tight as you could would somehow mean that he didn’t have to leave.  

               You pull away quickly, wiping your face into your elbow to try to hide the tears that you felt brimming behind your eyes. “So, uh, when’s this happen?” you ask quickly. “When are you leaving? When are you and Ladson leaving?”

               “In a week,” Poe offers, and you just tilt your chin to your chest as you sniff and look away, trying to keep yourself composed. “I’ll be gone pretty much immediately, but Ladson and Asher will probably be running supplies back and forth for a while.”

               “That’s fine,” you say quickly. “I mean, no, I, uh, I hope everything goes well for you.”

               “It’s going to be lonely without you,” Poe offers, and you can’t help but force a small smile in his direction. You want to tell him that he’ll at least have friends there, while you’d be all alone back here, but you can’t bring yourself to say it, even if you could trust your voice enough to speak. Right now, though, you were pretty sure any words you spoke would only leave your lips as a dull whine, at least, until Poe says his next words. “Which is why I’d like you to come with me.”

               “What?” You blink at him, seemingly convinced that there was no way that you had heard him correctly.

               “There’d be work for you there,” Poe offers. “If you wanted to do it. Most of the nonhuman natives of Naboo speak Basic well enough to get by for trade, but I wouldn’t trust a protocol droid to understand the intricacies of cross-cultural military politics like you do, and there would also be many more joining the effort, from all of the galaxy’s species, so we could really use someone with your skillset on board. Someone will have to coordinate those efforts, and neither the Resistance nor the New Republic are about to adopt the Empire’s humans-only policy, even if it made things easier. There’d also be a lot of flying to be done, since that was part of the deal with Queen Irella. Naboo provides us with a permanent home on a Republic world, and we provide planetary defense and combat training for the Royal Security Forces. We both already know that you’re fantastic in a simulation, but Ani could use the practice.”

               You suddenly find yourself staring at Poe Dameron like you had never seen him before in your entire life. Maybe you hadn’t, but in that moment, he was giving you everything that you had ever wanted. He was giving you a chance to help them build, which reduced the time Kylo would have to be away. He was giving Ani a chance to train and an opportunity for a secure future, and he was giving you responsibilities again, and by default, not only showing how much he trusted you again, but was also providing you with a sense of purpose and meaning that you had thought you had left behind you in the life before you left the Starkiller Base. You could become an interpreter for the Resistance, this time by choice, and Poe was giving you that choice, letting you decide to go on your own terms instead of tricking you into something that you had no idea what you were getting into.

               Poe stares at you hesitantly for a moment, probably trying to figure out why you’re staring at him and not smiling or expressing any of the elation that he probably expected to see. This was what you wanted, and the best part was, you hadn’t even known you wanted it. When Kylo finally came home, he would _have_ a home, not on D’Qar’s stuffy base, but on _Naboo_ , and you and he and Ani could finally be a family again while you again provided a tangible good to the galaxy. This wasn’t war. You weren’t hurting anyone. You were helping bridge the gap in communication, helping two people _understand_ one another, through their words and thoughts and emotions, and you again couldn’t help but think that while it seemed trivial on a small scale, in the galaxy, there could be no greater aspiration.

               “Thank you,” you whisper, and you step forward in a rush, burying your face in Poe’s chest as he wraps both arms around you, pulling you into him.

               “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he says gently as he smooths your hair back, tucking your head underneath his chin. “You’ve earned this, you have. You brought down the _Propitiate_. You took out Snoke. You sat back and let us take care of Ren when we asked you to. We trust you. _I_ trust you.”

               “Thank you,” you repeat, and you suddenly feel Poe pull away as he holds you at arm’s length.

               “But since it’s the new base of the _fleet_ strike wing, it means _I’m_ going to be in charge,” Poe reminds you. “It’s going to be my base; I just want to make sure we’re both clear on that. You’re going to have to be okay with following orders from me and regarding me as your superior. I just want to make sure you know that ahead of time.”

               “Will I have to salute you?” you ask as you lift your hand up in a lazy salute, and Poe cracks a grin as he laughs in response.

               “If you’d like,” he replies, but suddenly your expression sobers as the seriousness of the situation hit you. It wasn’t just that you would have to answer to Poe, it meant that you would also have a lot more of your freedom back, now that you would be heading off D’Qar, and he was the highest authority that you had to answer to. Poe trusted you, which meant no more being escorted anywhere, no more being banned from the hangar, and you assumed he would pretty much give you the clearance to do more or less anything you wanted. Even despite what you had done, he still trusted you, and you weren’t sure how to repay that debt.

               “I can’t thank you enough for this,” you say quietly, trying to convey with your words just how much this gesture meant to you. Poe murmurs your name softly as he shakes his head, as if this was nothing you had to be thankful for, but he was wrong. You had been losing sight of where you wanted your life to go, losing focus, and he had just given you everything you could have asked for while hardly doing anything at all. You step forward quickly as you plant your hands on either side of his face as you kiss him, slowly, gently, moving your lips against his. Poe slides his hand around to the back of your hair as he deepens the kiss slightly, his lower lip brushing against yours before he pulls away slowly, gently bumping your nose with his as he does so.

               “Now’s not a good time,” Poe says teasingly as he pulls away. “Because I think there’s someone who would like to talk to you.”

               “No,” you exclaim as your jaw drops open, almost unable to believe what you knew Poe was about to tell you.

               “Ren’s waiting on the holo in the meeting room,” Poe tells you. “Same room you were in last time. He was talking to the General earlier, but I think he would like to see you too.”

               You’re tempted to kiss him again but you hold back, and instead you push Poe’s chest gently, unable to suppress the grin that was stretching from one ear to the other. “Careful,” you warn him. “Or I’m going to have to go back to saying that you really are perfect all over again.”

               “Consider that my apology,” Poe offers. “For anything I’ve ever done that-“

               “I’m not going to,” you tell him with a quick shake of your head. “We’ve _both_ done things that have hurt each other, but I think we’re even now, and I’d like to call a truce if that’s okay with you, _Captain_.”

               Poe just smirks at you in reply, gnawing on his lower lip as he shakes his head. “Just go, I don’t know if she’s still in there and I don’t want them cutting the holo short.”

               You let out an excited squeal and give Poe one more quick hug before you turn on your heel and race out of the room as you run as fast as you can towards the meeting room, your arms pumping at your sides, not caring who or what was in your way as you went as fast as you could, sprinting down hallways and literally jumping around corners until you finally made your way to the meeting room. As the door opens, you can hear Leia’s voice cut out abruptly as she turns around to look at you. You can see Kylo on the holo in front of her, and you take a moment to catch your breath, bending over dramatically as you put your hands on your knees and take in deep gulps of air.

               “Are you all right?” Leia asks after a moment, and you nod your head quickly, wiping the corner of your mouth with the cuff of your sleeve as you stand up straight again.

               “Sorry,” you say quickly. “I didn’t mean to scare you, I just, I just wanted to make sure I still got here in time to see Kylo.”

               Leia nods her head in understanding, the ghost of a smile appearing on her lips as she glances back towards Kylo. “We’ll continue this conversation later?”

               “Of course,” Kylo responds immediately, and Leia shoots you another quick smile as she sweeps out of the room, leaving you alone with Kylo. “ _Are_ you all right?”

               “I wish I could kiss you right now,” you tell him as you approach the holo, unable to conceal how much you were smiling.

               Kylo merely arches an eyebrow as he studies you for a few moments, as if trying to figure out why you were smiling so much. “You look so much happier now that I’m gone,” he teases gently, but for a moment you’re completely thrown off by his comment as your jaw drops open in surprise.

               “No,” you say quickly. “No, Kylo, I’m sorry, I-“ You gulp quickly as you brush your hair back out of your face with both hands, smoothing it down over the back of your head. “I just got some really, really good news that I know you’ll be happy to hear, that’s all, and I just wanted to share it with you.”

               “I know,” Kylo says gently as he smiles at you softly. “Tell me.”

               You hesitate for a moment before you smile at him widely, holding your hands together in a weak attempt to try to hold yourself together. “Poe told me something today. We had a conversation. We, uh, we, we talked.” For some reason, everything that Poe had told you jumps into your mind at once, and you have trouble trying to get the words out.

               “And your conversations with him mean that much to you?” Kylo asks dryly as he raises an eyebrow and you can help but groan as you roll your head back in response.

               “You know what I mean,” you counter, momentarily ignoring the fact that he really doesn’t. You know Kylo’s just teasing you, but you suddenly find yourself frustrated by the fact that he wasn’t there with you now to just _know_ this, to glean it from your thoughts without forcing you to tell him directly.

               “Weren’t you the one who said we’d have to learn to communicate better?” Kylo asks, and you can tell by his tone that he’s gently mocking you, and you can’t help but cross your arms over your chest as you huff in response.

               “I honestly didn’t think I’d be this bad at it,” you admit. “I thought that it’d be a little hard at first, but right now there is just so much information I want to tell you and I feel like I don’t know the right way to convey any of it.”

               “Start from the beginning,” Kylo encourages, and you can’t help but offer him a grateful smile as he gives you time to think back and get your thoughts in order. Even still, you don’t know how much time he has and that stresses you enough to put your previous state of excitement out of mind for a moment. “Don’t do that. You were so happy. Please.”

               Kylo’s voice is gentle, and you can’t help but feel your heart melt a little bit as you bite your lip and meet his dark eyes through the holo, suddenly feeling shy. You wanted to tell him what Poe had told you while still maintaining the maximum amount of surprise, trying to get Kylo to feel as excited and buoyant as you felt. That used to be so easy with him sitting right beside you, but now he was far away, and the effects of the Force bond unfortunately diminished with that distance.

               “I know you may not like hearing this, but I’m not staying on D’Qar after all,” you tell him, goading him into some sort of a reaction, but Kylo’s expression doesn’t change, as there’s still a look of good humor occupying his features.

               “Decided to help out my uncle after all?” Kylo asks, and you shake your head from side to side. “No? I suspect that you are going somewhere with the pilot, then.”

               “Perhaps,” you reply, grinning foolishly once more, but Kylo says nothing as he waits for you to confess the whole truth. “Okay, okay, fine. I don’t know how much of this you’re supposed to know, but they’re moving their fleet operations to a new planet, which means everyone’s leaving, Poe and Ladson and Asher, they’re all going. Finn and Rey left with Luke, so there is literally no one left here but Leia.”

               “And you want to go with him?” Kylo asks, and you nod your head forward eagerly.

               “They’re going to be protecting the trading routes in collaboration with the New Republic on an anti-piracy campaign,” you explain. “So they’re going to be looking for more pilots to help out with that, and I figured Ani could get a lot of training in there.”

               “And what will you do?” Kylo asks, and you can’t help but blush as your eyes dip down to meet the base of the holo.

               “Interpret, I guess,” you say with a light shrug of your shoulders. “Building the base is going to be a team effort that doesn’t just require cooperation from local species, it’s going to bring people in from all over, and protocol droids aren’t exactly great at adapting to the new argots that develop between cross-cultural communication of different species.”

               “You seem happy about that,” Kylo muses. “You were very skilled as an interpreter back on the Starkiller Base, as I recall.”

               You just shrug your shoulders uncomfortably, not really wanting to recall what life had been like for you back then, and not just in the way before you had met Kylo. Back then, you had been, or at least tried to be, a neutral entity that simply interpreted from one language to another while also maintaining cultural consistencies and keeping your mind in a blank, unbiased state so as not to draw attention to yourself. If there was anything you had learned, it was that you could no longer dismiss your own bias no matter how hard you tried to avoid it; there was no such thing as a neutral entity. “I’m not going to be an interpreter,” you tell him at length. “I’ll aid in the facilitation of communication between species, like _He said this_ or _he wants to tell you_ that, but I’m not going back to being an interpreter like I was before.”

               You had never really talked to Kylo about interpreting in general, your modes, your process, and you knew you would probably bore him with the details, and so you quickly move onto the topic at hand. “But that’s not what I’m happy about. I’m happy because of where we’re going.” You hold your breath for a moment, the suspense affecting you much more than it was Kylo.  “Naboo.”

               “I know,” Kylo replies, and you can’t help but let your arms drop loudly against your sides as you stare at him incredulously.

               “You _know_?” you repeat blankly as you gape at him. “You know? Poe _just_ told me, how do you know?”

               “My mother told me,” Kylo responds, and you can’t help but turn around as you stare at the closed doorway, almost expecting Leia to still be standing there.

               “Well, there goes my surprise,” you mutter as you turn around to face him, but Kylo just shakes his head.

               “I wanted to hear it from you,” he tells you firmly. “To her, Naboo is a planet. For us, Naboo is _home_.”

               “It’s not home if you’re not there,” you admit as you shake your head from side to side. “But I’m sure she explained to you, or you can probably already guess, that the war is going to keep going on until the Resistance can prove to the Republic that it has other uses, correct?”

               “I’m aware,” Kylo says solemnly as he dips his head forward, and you make a small jump towards the holo, wishing more than anything that you could just reach out and touch him, embrace him, kiss him, let him know that you would always be there for him.

               “But don’t you see?” you ask, getting as close to him through the holo that you possibly could. “I can do this, Kylo, I can help. When that base is finished and the Resistance officially commences its fleet operations on Naboo, the war can be over, which means the sooner this base is done, the sooner you can come home and I can help with that.”

               Kylo beams at you silently through the holo, and suddenly you can feel him closer to you than ever before, as if he’s literally standing in the same room as you. “You really are beautiful,” Kylo breathes suddenly, and for a moment you forget where you are, or where Kylo is, you forget everything as you reach up to kiss him, tilting your chin up and closing your eyes as you immediately move to the familiar spot where you know Kylo’s lips would be waiting for you. He’s not there, and although you momentarily curse light for not having a physical, tangible structure to interact with all on its own, you can feel a tingling in your lips, and you’re almost sure that you can feel Kylo kissing you back.

               Embarrassed, you quickly turn away from him and almost consider running out of the room to hide your humiliation at the fact that you just kissed the air, but you can’t bring yourself to leave him, not now, not yet, not when you don’t know when the next time you would get a chance to talk with him again. “I miss you so much,” you tell him as you turn around to face him again. “You’ll see, the second I get to Naboo I’m going to start building things from scratch, I’ll build their entire base myself in a week so that this war can end and you can come home.”

               “I know you will,” Kylo replies, and you’re happy that he doesn’t chide your lack of realism. He knew how much this meant to you, he could see it. You wouldn’t just passively sit by and wait for Kylo to return; you would work your hardest every day to make sure he returned home to you as soon as possible. You would play an active role in not only helping him, but the Resistance as well, and while you didn’t truly feel like you honestly owed them any favors, you considered that you could count it as reparations for what you had done while you served the First Order.

               “What about you?” you ask softly as you take another step back towards the holo. “Are they going to throw you right back into the middle of the fighting?”

               “There’s nothing else to do,” Kylo replies with a small smile. “The Resistance now has a list of every First Order stronghold that you and I both know about in the galaxy, and they’re not going to stop until every single one of them is thoroughly evaluated and either destroyed or taken over for use in their own operations.”

               “And how many bases are there?” you ask hopefully. “Only a few hundred, right?”

               “Thousands,” Kylo replies dryly, and you can’t help but let your shoulders slump. “That does not mean that every base will be a struggle to capture. Some are only small trading outposts that would need only a few men to capture. It’s the more fortified First Order strongholds that are a challenge, and even then, there are always some who will manage to escape, try to build up another base or start something new, and that’s what we need to put a stop to as soon as we can. In the absence of organized structure and without capable leaders, they are going to start banding together and forming their own groups, and that is something everyone wants to avoid.”

               “What about Phasma though?” you ask quietly. “Is she still alive?”

               “I don’t know,” Kylo murmurs as he looks away. “If she is, I hope she knows to stay away from me. I don’t want to have to be the one to end her life.”

               “But maybe she wants you to,” you offer. “I know she wouldn’t want to see the First Order go down this path, and you know that she wouldn’t want to see you turn against them either, but she’s made it clear she wants to go out in battle, and if you were the one who cut her down, it might also be like a mercy killing, giving her at least the notable death she deserves.”

               “No one deserves to die that way,” Kylo says as he shakes his head, and for the first time it occurs to you, really occurs to you, that Kylo had actually gotten a taste of what it felt like to die by his own lightsaber, and he could truly understand and appreciate the pain that each of his victims had gone through before they had met their end. You could only imagine the small ways in which this had changed him, but you didn’t exactly want to dwell on such somber thoughts right then, just in case Kylo could feel them.

               “Maybe she’s given up,” you offer, unwilling to state the alternative, knowing it would only serve to make Kylo feel worse. “Retreated to some back alley outpost planet to live out the rest of her days in peace.”

               “Does that sound like Phasma to you?” Kylo asks as he shakes his head, and even you had to admit that, no, it didn’t. Phasma would give anything, absolutely anything for the First Order, her loyalty, her allegiance, and her life was no exception.

               “Then maybe she’s dead already,” you state with finality, pushing yourself to say it anyway. “Which means that she’s already gone and you don’t have to worry about it.”

               Kylo just frowns at you, as though he also considered this far from a favorable option. “I don’t think she’s dead,” Kylo says at length. “I would be able to feel it if she was.” For a moment you’re almost a bit confused by this, before you let the answer come to you of its own accord.

               “She was your friend, wasn’t she?” you ask quietly, but Kylo only shakes his head.

               “I knew what she did for you on board the Starkiller Base,” Kylo explains. “She looked after you, and she took care of Ani, she took care of my _son_.” He shakes his head as though he can’t find the words to explain how much such a thing meant to him. “I should not have to repay that debt by taking her life.”

               “Think of it as a mercy killing then,” you offer, not knowing what other bit of reassurance you could provide him. “She pledged her life to the First Order, and it’s gone now. It sounds cruel, but she’s going to die for them one way or the other, and I’m sure she would rather have you do it than be struck down by some nameless Resistance soldier.”  

               “I know,” Kylo agrees softly. “But I just hope it will never come down to that. I hope that, wherever she is, that she’s hidden and that she stays hidden so it won’t come to that.”

               “I hate this,” you admit, idly kicking your foot out in front of you. “I want to try to help, I want to try to console you, but there’s nothing I can really say that changes anything. You’re right, she did do a lot for both of us, from the Starkiller Base onwards. After you choked me, she gave me medicine, she wanted to help me learn how to defend myself, she gave me my staff, _our_ staff, and then after everything with Ani…” You shake your head. “Not to mention helping us escape the _Propitiate_ , although I’m still not sure how I should feel about that.”

               “I don’t know,” Kylo admits with a shake of his head. “But either way, she never betrayed us in the same way the Resistance expects me to betray her.”

               You pause for a moment, realizing that this conversation was going around in circles, and it wasn’t going to make either of you feel any better. You steady your resolve as you look up at him, forcing yourself to seem as in control of the situation as you could be, especially considering the circumstances. “No matter what happens, I want you to know that I’ll be there for you,” you say as firmly as you can muster, forcing your gaze to remain unwavering. “No matter what happens, no matter what nightmares you have, I’m here for you, and I’m always going to be.”

               “I’m lucky to have you,” Kylo muses gently, but you just shake your head as you keep going.

               “Luck has nothing to do with it,” you insist, although you doubted you would hear any argument from him. “This was the will of the Force, Kylo, it always was. If I hadn’t stepped on the Starkiller Base, something else would have happened that would have brought us together eventually. I don’t know how I know that, but I just do. That’s how I know that no matter what happens, you _will_ come back to me. Because it’s not just coincidence that we met each other, or how we kept coming back into each other’s lives. It was always supposed to be this way, and one day you’ll finally come home to me for good. I believe that.”

               “You do,” Kylo say softly, and you can only hope that he can feel your confidence and your conviction through the Force. You think he can, you can feel it beaming out of your chest as if you were trying to channel it into him, and the corner of Kylo’s lip finally quirks upwards into a gentle smile. “As do I.”

               You can feel yourself blushing again as you glance down and away, suddenly feeling shy again. “How many times am I going to tell you I wish you were here before you get tired of hearing it?” you ask gently, but Kylo merely shakes his head.

               “I don’t believe I’ll ever get tired of hearing it,” he admits before he glances down and to the side, as if he was listening to someone say something to him from the other room. You can see his expression harden slightly, before he turns to look back up at you. “Unfortunately, I-“

               “-need to go,” you finish for him as you nod your head in understanding. “And that’s okay. You’re going to be busy, and I’m going to be busy too, but I love you, more than anything. The Force already made it clear that it’s _you_ , Kylo, it was always going to be you, and I’ll wait as long as I have to for you to come back, okay?”

               “I know,” Kylo replies. “But I will see you again. It could be months, it could be years, and I don’t want you to ever come to resent me in that time.” You want to argue that there was no way you could ever doubt him, not ever again, but you didn’t know if something would happen that would cause the familiar doubts to start rising up again, and so you keep silent. “Just do what you need to do to keep yourself happy while I’m gone, I won’t hold any of it against you.”

               “I know,” you reply, shuffling a little awkwardly as you glance down and away from him, rubbing your right bicep with the heel of your left palm. “And you too, okay? Whatever you need to do-“

               Kylo just shakes his head and smiles as he pulls the staff into view, spinning it around deftly between his long fingers. “I think I’ll be able to pass the time okay,” he tells you, and you can’t help but laugh as you meet his dark eyes, and right before you’re about to tell him that you love him again, the holo cuts out.

               You felt a momentary pang of regret and sadness spread through you before you quickly try to push it away. Kylo knew you loved him, and you knew that he loved you; those were not words that needed to be said, as much as you liked hearing them. No, if anything, you were simply greedy for more time with him, not that it was wrong to be, but you supposed that that was how you would end every conversation with him over the holo, with a bitter sense of remorse and regret. There would always be one more thing you wish you had told him later, one more _I miss you_ , one more statement of affection, or one more bit of reassurance that you could offer him. You would always wish you had one more moment, just one more second to look into his dark eyes through the light of the holo and wish more than anything that he was standing in the room with you, wishing that you could channel the Force in such a way to teleport him back across to the other side of the galaxy if you only wished hard enough. You knew it to be impossible, and yet through the Force, there were so many things that you felt that you could do, you could almost become dizzy thinking about the various possibilities and trials you could undertake in order to increase your power.

               But you had already gone to great lengths trying to do the impossible, and you weren’t eager to try to do things beyond your means anymore. No, instead you would remain patient and let Kylo make his reparations for everything he had done, and you would help the Resistance build their new base of fleet operations on Naboo so that he would have a home that he could come back to, not a room on a base, but an actual home, where he could live with you and Ani and finally begin to feel like a family again. After all this time, finally safe from war and finally excused from the political tribulations of the galaxy, you could actually take the time to _be_ a family, and you couldn’t help but be reminded again that that was what you wanted more than anything.

               These were the thoughts that accompanied you back to Poe’s room, where you opened the door to find him still sitting on his bed. There were so many things that you wanted to say, so many things that you wanted to explain, and yet for some reason, the words just wouldn’t come out. You knew how he felt and he knew you felt, and you didn’t know when exactly things had changed, but they had, and there was no longer any need to try to quantify anything with something as trivial or bane as _words._ After all, that was what you had done as an interpreter, right? You had been able to inhale vocalized lexis and been able to strip all of those petty syllables away in order to simply exchange the thought and meaning and intention and emotion behind all of those words, so two parties could reach an understanding, and that was what you had with Poe. An understanding _._

               “Hey,” Poe says brightly as you enter the room, sending a genuine smile in your direction, and you can’t help but return it.

               “Hey,” you reply, just as brightly, before you turn and close the door behind you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaaaaand I'm leaving that there for you all to interpret as you will. Next chapter begins after a short time-jump, and then begins our 3-part epilogue, which also takes place after another bit of a time-jump, but I don't think you'll mind too much. ;) Once again, survey questions are still [here](https://goo.gl/forms/j3wBcEPerjFZVCSD2) and I will see you all next Tuesday. Until then, cheers, friends!! <3
> 
> Also, if you missed it yesterday, here's the link to my short fic, Matt the Radar Technician Learns Sign Language. Click [here](http://streetsolo.tumblr.com/post/152348207882/matt-the-radar-technician-learns-sign-language) to read it on Tumblr or [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6468130/chapters/19202347) to read it on ao3. Enjoy!! ^_^


	82. Chapter 82

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prepare for the last chapter of the trilogy before we begin our journey into the three-part epilogue... *gulp*

               You’re so excited you can barely contain yourself. You rock in your seat like a small child, wiggling impatiently underneath the harness that was strapped securely over your chest. Compared to Ani sitting beside you, he seemed much more calm and restrained by comparison, but you simply can’t help yourself. Going back to Naboo was what you had always wanted, and you almost couldn’t believe that you really had the opportunity to go back and _live_ there, free to explore the planet now that you were no longer forced to live in secrecy, afraid of being discovered by the New Republic or the Resistance. Now your position was reversed; when you had first lived there, the New Republic and the Resistance had put a bounty on your head, and now it was the First Order who wanted you captured, dead or alive. Fortunately, though, the First Order didn’t know where you were, and you doubted they would look for you on Naboo. Even if they did, you felt more or less safe in the knowledge that you’d still be within the Resistance stronghold most of the time, and you doubted that the First Order still had the resources to breach their defenses.

               You were sitting just outside the cockpit of a commercial cargo shuttle, customarily used to transport the security detailing, only this time, you _were_ the security detailing. Although Asher had originally signed up on delivery runs to work off his suspension with the hopes of delivering supplies to wherever Kylo was, considering the imminent move, he was relegated, as were so many others, into transporting construction materials from the storage centers of D’Qar over to Naboo. He and Ladson were piloting your craft today, while Ani sat in the lone seat beside you and Poe sat in the seat directly across from you, leaving the spare seat beside him empty, considering it would be an awkward fit for BB-8’s spherical frame. Originally he was supposed to be piloting his X-Wing, but apparently someone had concerns about leaving you and Ani alone on a ship with just Ladson and Asher to stop you in case you got other ideas as to where the craft should be headed. You weren’t sure why they were any more convinced that Poe would be able to stop you if you decided to do something, but you didn’t question it. If anything, it almost worked out in your favor. Considering he’d have to come back for his X-Wing either way now, you convinced him to let you tag along when he did. It had been so long since you had last ridden in his X-Wing, and you were eager to experience it again.

               “I can’t remember a time when you’ve looked this happy,” Poe remarks as he looks you over, and you can’t help but shrug your shoulders.

               “The only thing that would make this perfect is if Kylo was here,” you reply. At first you’re prepared to eat your words, but fortunately Poe doesn’t take it personally.

               “The sooner we get this base built, the sooner he’ll come back,” he reminds you, and you nod your head eagerly as you turn to Ani.

               “You excited too?” you ask him, your voice full of motherly affection, but Ani just shakes his head.

               “You seem excited enough for the both of us,” he tells you, and you can’t help but slap his arm lightly as you push him away from you gently. “You haven’t been able to stop talking about this all week.”

               You tilt your head to the side, considering that maybe, just maybe, Ani had a point. You had talked nonstop at dinner about what your life had been like with Kylo on Naboo and how much you wanted to go back to anyone that would listen. You visited Leia and told her about it. When Rey and Finn called to check in, you told them about it. When you went to bed at night, you were still talking about it, until Poe gently threatened that he would no longer take you along if you didn’t shut up about it. That would silence you for the night until you both could get some sleep, but the next morning, you were right back at it again.

               “I can’t help myself,” you remind him, and in all honesty, it was hardly a lie. You _couldn’t_ help yourself, not really. For the past long while, your future looked bleak, just sitting on D’Qar waiting for Kylo to return to you, and once he did, then what would happen? You would just spend your days in that stuffy little room waiting for time to catch up with you and shuffle you off this mortal plane forever? That was hardly a way you wanted to live your life, and you were happy that you were finally getting to do something productive with yourself again. For once, the future seemed bright and full of optimistic possibilities, and that was something that you hadn’t been able to say for many, many years. Now that your safety and security of your family was no longer your primary focus, you could begin to pursue other interests that you cared about, or renew old ones that had long since fallen away.

               “It’s not a bad thing,” Poe reminds you, and you turn to him gratefully. He looks like he’s about to say more, but there’s a call on his comm channel and he quickly picks it up, pressing it closer to his ear so that you could only hear his half of the conversation. “What’s that?” he asks the person in his ear, and his eyebrows knot together for a moment as he listens to what’s being said before they shoot up in surprised amusement. “No, she’s with me.”

               “What did you do this time?” Ani whispers to you, but you just shake your head as Poe continues to speak.

               “No really, I-“ Poe glances quickly at you, giving you a stern look, but you just spread your hands by your sides, ignorant as to what you had done this time. “No, she’s been….no, she’s…no, no, that’s right, no. She’s been on D’Qar this past week, and she’s barely left my side. I have several officers to vouch for that, and her son can as well.”

               “What did you _do_?” Ani repeats, but you just shake your head again as you turn back to him.

               “This time I honestly don’t know,” you reply in a hushed whisper. “I don’t think I’ve done anything, but at this point, I just don’t know anymore.”

               “No, we’ve been preparing to head to Naboo,” Poe confirms. “I can personally confirm that she’s not involved in any way.”

               “He can _personally confirm_ ,” Ani notes, but you just smack his arm gently as he laughs and pulls away.

               “I’m not involved,” you repeat excitedly as you glance back towards Poe, who’s still preoccupied with his own conversation.

               “I see,” he says at length, although his eyes seem fixed on you now. “We should be descending into Naboo’s atmosphere shortly. I’ll expect a full debriefing this afternoon.”

               “Sounds like you’re in trouble,” Ani whispers back, and this time you can’t help but hit him a little harder than you mean to, judging how quickly Ani recoils, gingerly rubbing his arm.

               “Sorry,” you whisper quickly, but Ani just shakes his head.

               _It’s fine,_ he replies inside your mind. _But seriously? What did you do that it couldn’t wait until after we landed?_

 _I’m not sure,_ you reply. _I want to say that I haven’t done anything, but it seems some people sure_ think _I did something._

 _Well, Poe knows you didn’t,_ Ani points out. _And we’re heading to_ his _base, remember? Whatever happens, you should be safe there until Poe can convince them that you didn’t do whatever it is they think you did._

 _That’s reassuring_ , you reply lamely, but Ani only offers you a brief shrug of his shoulders until Poe lowers his hand away from his ear and turns back to face you directly.

               “So, care to say what that was all about?” you ask, a small bit of trepidation palpable in your tone.

               “Just a bit of good news, that’s all,” Poe replies with a shrug, and you can’t help but narrow your eyes at him.

               “If you think you’re being funny, that really isn’t my idea of a joke,” you tell him, but Poe remains undeterred.

               “Deso’s dead,” he replies simply, and your eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

               “That, that is good news,” you manage once you think you’ve gotten your surprise under control.

               “But they think she did it?” Ani asks, a bit of concern ebbing into his voice, and you can’t help but admit that he has a point. If the Republic thought that you were implicated in Deso’s death in any way, things could definitely become more difficult for you. Fortunately, Poe just shakes his head.

               “She has incentive,” Poe reminds you both. “But unless she somehow teleported off D’Qar and onto Corellia and back without anyone seeing her, I think she’s in the clear.”

               “But they still took the time to _ask_ ,” you point out, but Poe just shakes his head.

               “Just double checking as a matter of formality,” he says quickly. “Remember, Deso has a _lot_ of enemies, both from within the Resistance, the New Republic, and the First Order. Yours is just one more name to scratch off the list, and believe me when I tell you that you’re nowhere near the top.”

               “So who did it?” you ask, before you shake your head quickly. “No, stupid question. Who do you _think_ did it? Which faction?”

               “I’m not sure,” Poe replies as he shakes his head. “It’s hard to find anyone in the galaxy that hasn’t been personally slighted by Deso in one way or another.”

               “Any clues?” Ani asks, and you just point to him as you turn back to Poe, insinuating that this was a question that you wanted answered as well.

               “A _few_ ,” Poe admits hesitantly, and his eyes glance back towards you, trying to figure out if he should tell you or not. You’re about to tell him that he doesn’t have to say anything when he decides to proceed anyway. “He was stabbed to death with a piece of the _General Calrissian,_ the ship that crashed on Naboo when you were trying to make your escape.”

               “I could see why they’d think you had something to do with it,” Ani says as he looks over at you, but you can’t help but shrug. You could see now why your name would be implicated, but there were plenty of people who had reason to seek revenge on Deso for that, _especially_ the citizens of Naboo.

               “That’s not all,” Poe admits hesitantly, and you both turn to look at him, detecting something in his tone. “There was something, um, strange, about the way he was found.”

               “Strange?” Ani repeats, and Poe nods his head.

               “There was bruising,” he says, specifically to you. “Around his neck, as if he had been choked.”

               “So they think someone used the Force to choke him?” you ask, tilting your head to the side in confusion.

               “Not necessarily,” Poe admits slowly. “But if someone did use the Force, that only leaves a handful of possibilities that we know about, and none of them are good.”

               “They don’t think Father had something to do with it-?” Ani asks, but Poe just shakes his head.

               “No, he couldn’t,” Poe explains. “He’s nowhere near Corellia right now, and he’s under constant surveillance. It wouldn’t be possible for him to even order something like this, not without us knowing about it.” He turns back to you. “We think the person responsible for this might have left a calling card, but we’re not quite sure what it means.”

               “What do you mean?” you ask blankly. “Someone choked him then stabbed him with a piece of the _Calrissian_ , I’d say that’s calling card enough that someone is pretty angry about what he did back on Naboo.”

               “That’s not the only thing,” Poe explains. “There’s something else, though, something _weird_.”

               “Weird?” you echo hollowly.

               “What could be weirder than that?” Ani chimes in.

               “There was something left on his chest,” Poe continues. “A small bag filled with old standard-issue, military-grade ice packs and medicine for some reason.”

               “Medicine?” you ask blankly. “What kind of medicine?”

               “I forget the name,” Poe says as he shakes his head, as if he was struggling to recall it. “And they just told me too, but basically it’s an anti-inflammatory. It’s meant to reduce swelling and help the bruising go down, as if someone gave him the medicine to help counteract the effects of the choking before they stabbed him, maybe? Honestly, we’re not sure what it means. The bottle was full, and you can find it almost anywhere in the galaxy so that doesn’t really give us any leads, but-“ Poe stops talking as he gets a good look at your face. “-what?”

               _She pushes the bag towards you, and you unzip the lid to find several ice packs and a small bottle of pills tucked away inside a smaller pouch along the inside. “Those should help with the pain,” she tells you. “Take them before bed. It will help you sleep.”_

“Nothing,” you reply immediately, but Poe merely arches an eyebrow as he crosses his arms over his chest, as if he doesn’t quite believe you. You just scoff incredulously, trying to look as innocent as you possibly could. “You said it yourself, you’ve barely been more than two feet away from me at any given time over the past week. How could I possibly have _anything_ to do with this?”

               “Do you know something?” Poe asks seriously, and he makes it clear from his tone that he was only going to ask this once.

               _Do you know something, Mom?_ Ani asks, and right then, you make a decision. You knew exactly who it was, who had done this, and you knew that message had been left for you, specifically. She was still alive, still fortunately far away from Kylo, and although you didn’t know if she had taken revenge for you or for Kylo or even just for the citizens of Naboo, she had left that message because she wanted you to know, leaving a sign that not even Ani knew about. Not one other person in the whole of the galaxy knew about the medicine that she had given to you back on the Starkiller Base except for you and Kylo, and maybe this was her way of sending a subtle message that she was still alive, still safe, still looking out for you both in some way. You honestly weren’t sure if there was anything specific she was trying to say, but you knew it meant she was on Corellia, or at least nearby, and she had done you a solid by taking Deso out of the picture. Maybe Deso was still targeting you, or Ani, or Kylo, and her sources in the First Order were able to discern that information and eliminate him before he could act on it. If so, you had to thank her yet again, and there was only one way you could do that.

               “Nothing,” you tell Poe, spreading your hands in an effort to look as sincere as possible. “Seriously, how could I possibly know anything about this? No, I was just thinking, with the medicine, it just seems like someone left him the medicine to try to help him. Maybe the person who choked him and the person who stabbed him were two different people?”

               “Maybe,” Poe offers. He still looks more or less suspicious, but you hold your gaze and manage to keep it as sincere as possible, and eventually, Poe looks away, seemingly satisfied. “Whatever happened, he’s gone now, and I can’t think of many that will miss him.”

               “There’ll be some,” you say with an idle shrug, and Poe and Ani both turn to look at you curiously. “Not me, I just mean, there has to be some people in the galaxy that care about him, you know? Like, did he have a family? You know there’s just a few people that would think Kylo Ren was unloveable, but he has me and Ani, so Deso probably had at least _someone_ that’s going to be sad that he’s gone.”

               Ani nods his head in agreement, but Poe is looking at you in wonder now, as if seeing you for the first time, and you can’t help but blush as you look away. To be fair, you couldn’t understand why you were defending Deso either, but maybe your new optimism for the future had carried over something else as well, a new sense of hope that not everyone in the galaxy was completely terrible. Maybe, despite what Deso had done to hurt you and those you cared about, he really thought it was for the best interests of the New Republic. Maybe he thought he was truly doing the right thing by condemning you and Kylo, thinking that it would help protect him and those he cared for. It wouldn’t matter now, it couldn’t, and there was no point in holding out hostilities against a dead man that could trouble you no longer.

               You had no idea if this was a perspective that you had held before and you were slowly coming back to now, or if you were reaching a new pinnacle of maturity and understanding, one of acceptance, but fortunately you don’t have time to dwell on it further as Ladson pokes his head out of the cockpit. “We’re just about to Naboo,” he tells you. “How’s everything going back here?”

               Poe opens his mouth to speak, but you beat him to it. “Deso’s dead and they already checked in to make sure that I didn’t do it.”

               Ladson raises his eyebrows and nods his head appreciatively as he takes this in. “Good riddance,” he says at length before he ducks back into the cockpit, and Poe can’t help but narrow his eyes as he turns back to you.

               “That was privileged information,” he tells you, and you can’t help but let your eyes slip closed as you let your chin drop to your chest as you sigh loudly in aggravation. You hadn’t even yet made it to Naboo and apparently you were yet again betraying Poe’s trust and his confidence in you. “But, admittedly, I didn’t tell you that up front. Just, next time, please, use more discretion when I tell you things?”

               You want to say that that’s a reason why he shouldn’t tell you anything, but Poe seemed to want to be open with you, and a part of you wanted things to stay that way. “I’ll ask,” you tell him. “If I’m not sure if something you tell me is confidential intel or not, I’ll ask.”

               “Good,” Poe replies, and you can’t help but beam at him as you make your way closer and closer to Naboo. You could almost taste the fresh air again, and although you were slightly disappointed that you would no longer be able to smell the fresh, salty smell of the lake, you hoped that you would still be able to feel the wet air against your face; at least, to your knowledge, your nerves were working just fine. You can feel the ship descending through the atmosphere and you can’t help but wriggle excitedly in your seat again until the ship finally steadies out and makes its landing. “You ready to see what your new home looks like?”

               “ _Yes_ ,” you practically explode as you burst out of your seat, racing down the still-opening boarding ramp as you rush out into the bright blue of Naboo’s summer sky. You blink a few times to get used to the once familiar sunshine, raising a hand to your eyes in an attempt to shield yourself from the blinding natural light, so different from the dull synthetic lightning of D’Qar’s base. For a moment you can vividly remember waking up on Naboo and seeing Kylo by your bedside, and you’re almost surprised by how much it hurts, considering how that had transpired oh so long ago. Fortunately, this painful nostalgia only lasts a moment, and your vision finally settles into place so that you can take in the view of your surroundings.

               You’re surrounded by a giant glass dome on all sides, almost completely translucent except for the trick of the sun playing against the outer edges of the curves, causing a glimmer that revealed just the faintest hint of a shadow. The dome was huge, so long you couldn’t see the end of it, and as your neck stretched up overhead, you can see Ani, Poe, Ladson and Asher heading towards you. “It’s basically like a giant bubble,” you call to him, and Poe nods his head in confirmation.

               “It’s supposed to be,” he replies. “It’s not glass. If you take a shot at it, it won’t break. If anything, it’ll absorb the force of impact and spread it throughout the arch, so it can take hit after hit without being destroyed.”

               “That is actually seriously cool,” you murmur as you look around. There are several buildings spread out across the green lawn, none more than two or three stories tall, but there is a great deal of space between them and it looks as though the construction is still in its early stages. “So this is where we’re going to be living now, huh?”

               “For now,” Poe explains. “Right now, as you can see, this place is still being built. We have a long way to go until it’s finished, and longer still until we can have a full scale fleet operating out of here.”

               “What are the construction plans?” Ladson asks as he turns towards Poe, and it strikes you that this is probably the first time that he is seeing it too. “Is there always going to be this much grass and empty space? Or are you planning on filling it in with buildings? Or an airstrip?”

               “That depends,” Poe admits with a quick shake of his head. “Back on D’Qar, we used to have just an airstrip in its early stages before we built the hangar around it. It was a massive project, but it got done. Here, though, the situation’s a bit different, and there’s advantages and disadvantages to both. We want to make sure that the hangar’s protected, but the shield around the base should help with that. Even still, we don’t know how much we really want to advertise to casual onlookers exactly how much firepower we’ll have here, and that includes the New Republic.”

               “Maybe a bit of both?” Asher offers. “Keep the fighters inside and the commercial shuttles on the outside? Especially the supply corps; they don’t need to dock. Keep the Wings more protected, and the rest, well, no one really cares about a few commercial shuttles coming and going all that much anyway.”

               “That’ll reduce the number of armored hangars that need to be built,” you point out eagerly, knowing the sooner this base was finished, the sooner Kylo would come home to you. “And besides, you can always build later, couldn’t you? Start working now, and see how things go once the base is up and running. If you feel the need to build up more, then you can do it then.” You can’t help but glance around at the greenery all around you, and in the back of your mind, you know implicitly that Rey would love it here. “But I think we should keep it open, if anyone’s asking me. Like, D’Qar was stuffy. Here, it’s, I don’t know, nice. We’re supposed to be approaching peacetime, right? It should feel like that here too.”

               “Agreed,” Poe mutters under his breath. “I’m going to try to keep things diplomatic here, but in the end someone’s going to have to make a decision one way or another.”

               “So this is really your base?” you ask as you turn to him, unable to conceal the slight bit of surprise in your voice. You knew he had told you that he was going to be in charge, but the reality that this was _his_ base hadn’t really hit home for you quite yet.

               “He’s the boss,” Ladson tells you with a slight grin before Poe can answer. “Which I take it you take as code for being able to do whatever you want.”

               “No,” you say quickly as you turn to Poe. “No, I won’t cause any trouble for you. I’ll be on my best behavior, I promise.”

               “Let’s hope,” Poe replies dryly, and you can’t help but roll your eyes as Ladson laughs. “Ladson will show you two to where you’ll be staying, and I’ll come around to visit you later. I have a, um, _special_ job for you that I think you’ll want to help me with.”

               “Yes, sir,” you reply with a lazy salute, and Poe just shakes his head as he heads off.

               “Captain,” Asher says, giving him a much more formal salute before Poe walks off, before he turns back to you. “Just be glad that he’s not having you sleeping in the barracks with the rest of us.”

               “Is it that bad?” Ani asks in confusion, but Ladson just shakes his head as he slaps Asher on the back as the four of you walk through the grassy fields that looked like they hadn’t been cared for in quite some time.

               “No, no,” Ladson says quickly. “But let’s just say our dwellings on D’Qar were a lot nicer. Everyone’s going to get their own settlement _eventually_ , but right now it’s sort of packed with all the construction. I don’t even think there’s any living quarters that are even finished being built yet, if you want me to be honest with you.”

               “Great,” you mutter petulantly as you kick at the air in front of you. “I wanted to speed this along so that Kylo could come back to live with us within months, but at the rate things are going, it looks like this is going to take _years_.”

               “Well, we’re bringing in outside help,” Ladson offers as he turns to you. “Why do you think Poe wanted you here to begin with?”

               “To interpret between the different species that are helping out,” you offer, but Ladson just shakes his head, as though you haven’t thought this through enough.

               “And why do you think they’re helping out?” Ladson asks. “Turning Naboo into the new southern trading hub for the New Republic means that there’s going to be a lot of trade agreements and dealings with other planets, and why would Poe trust a protocol droid when he already has someone on base that’s more than equipped to not only interpret those dealings, but to also notice the subtle variations in language and cues that could mean that someone would be looking to betray us later?”

               “You mean-?” you ask excitedly, and Ladson just nods his head forward.

               “Guess you’re his _P-I,_ ” Ladson tells you, and you can’t help but let out an excited cry as you hop up on his back, throwing your arms around his neck in a backwards hug. To his credit, Ladson catches your legs underneath your thighs as he holds you upright, spinning you around slightly so you can take in the bright Naboo sky overhead.

               “P-I?” Asher repeats blankly, and even Ani looks confused as Ladson sets you back down on your feet, keeping a hand on your shoulder to make sure you’re standing upright.

               “Personal interpreter,” you explain quickly. “Basically considered the best of interpreting jobs, because they’re the most stable and, sort of, easy? You don’t ever have to worry about who you’re interpreting for, because you just interpret for that one person, and granted the situations change, but considering you always interpret for that one person, you can get to develop a good relationship with them which makes the job much more fun; it’s definitely the top tier of interpreting jobs.” You can’t help but sober up a bit as you stand up straighter again. “If you were, you know, an interpreter, which _I_ am not. I’m _helping_ , but I don’t want that label. If I sense something’s wrong, I want to be able to say it out loud and not have to hide behind the guise of neutrality and allow us to get screwed over. Not again. Not anymore.”

               “Which is precisely why Poe wants you there,” Ladson points out. “You don’t just have good communication skills, but you’ve always been good at reading people and their body language, which is amplified through the Force. If things do go south, you’ll be able to sense it, and you’ll be able to stop whatever’s wrong before anything bad happens. You can be his interpreter-slash-bodyguard.”

               You roll your eyes dramatically, but you couldn’t help but admit that Ladson had somewhat of a point. Poe had been making it clear to you for the past week how much he trusted you, slipping you information that you considered confidential here and there to let you know what was going on. You considered that it had more to do with the fact that he was trying to show you he trusted you more than anything else, but maybe it was a test to see how much he really _could_ trust you, a practice trial run for when he was actually entering confidential negotiation agreements and couldn’t risk anyone else finding out about them until it was time to. If that was true, you had to admit that you sort of _were_ one of the best people for the job. There was no one who could pick your brain or steal your thoughts besides Ani and Kylo, and while Kylo wasn’t here, you trusted Ani implicitly. It wasn’t just proving your own confidentiality; it was proving his, too, and that would be important for his future here with the Resistance as well.

               Eventually you reach a building that was set off a little ways from the others, about two stories tall and a little bit wider than the rest. It looked as though it was built a bit more sturdily than the others, as though they had actually taken the time to plan this one out so it was built with care. “And this is where you’ll be staying,” Ladson says as he turns to give you a look. “In the _Captain’s_ quarters.”

               “The Captain’s-?” you repeat blankly, before it finally sinks in what that meant. Poe had never asked you directly if you wanted to live with him, and yet you had been sleeping beside him all this time, and you almost chided yourself for expecting otherwise. You had thought of this as a place where you were going to stay with Kylo, but of course most of the living quarters hadn’t even been built yet, and space was limited. Right now you would still be staying with Poe, but later? Later was a different story, and you were hoping for an opportunity to be able to design and build your new house yourself. You had no idea if it was possible, but you were hoping.

               Asher holds the door open for you and you step inside, almost unable to believe what you were seeing. It was mostly white inside, not white enough to be completely sterile, more of a rich cream, that decorated everything. The doors seemed to open into a large living room type area, with couches and beige pillows pushed against either side of the room in order to easily accommodate a large audience if necessary, with a large holo projector located in the center of the room. Beyond that, there were several doorways leading off to a hallway off to the right, and a long, sweeping staircase off to the left that lead to a deck that overlooked the main living room and the rest of the upper floors.

               “This is cool,” Ani says under his breath, and you can’t help but dip your head forward in silent agreement. It was nice, too nice, a far cry from the bunk in that small room that you used to share with him.

               “Um, you should know,” Ladson begins nervously, and you can’t help but stare at him, eyes wide, silently begging him to shut his mouth. No sentence that you ever wanted to hear started with those four words, but Ladson seemed set on telling you anyway. “You know how our apartment on D’Qar was nicer than Poe’s room? It was because, well, one of the reasons why is because they were short on space when he first moved into the Resistance. They were still building, still setting up the place, and living quarters weren’t really a top priority, and he also didn’t want the other members of his squadron to think that he was better than them by getting a nicer living arrangement than they had.”

               “Okay?” you ask slowly, shaking your head from side to side, not sure what this had to do with you.

               “Before Ren took off with you, he was thinking about upgrading rooms,” Ladson explains. “But after, you know, what happened, he decided to just stay put. He wanted to have a bigger space so both you and Ani could come live with him so Ani could get his own room instead of crashing on his top bunk. Obviously you know how that turned out, but-“

               “But what does that have to do with right now?” you ask hesitantly, not sure where Ladson was headed with all this.

               Ladson squares his feet and turns around slightly to point down the hall. “There’s a reason why this place is so big. That’s where Leia is going to be staying, when the place is finally secured and ready, that is. Luke’s room is just beyond that, and Rey and Finn each have rooms down there too, so they have a place where they can both feel welcome after they’re done travelling.”

               “That’s nice of him,” you say with a slight roll of your shoulders. “But again, what does that have to do with me and Ani?”

               “Well, until they finish building an actual house for both of you to live in once Ren gets here, you’re going to get to stay here,” Ladson tells you, and you can’t help but gape at him as he continues speaking. “Yeah, no, really, you and Ani each have your own bedrooms upstairs. There’s a large kitchen in the back, a whole training area in the basement; apparently this place is nicer than even Leia’s quarters on D’Qar. I’ve never been inside, but I heard it’s pretty damn nice.”

               “For real?” Ani demands, and he looks back to you quickly before he quickly sprints up the stairs, with you following at his heels. “How do we know which bedroom is ours?” Ani calls over the railing once he gets to the top, and you quickly turn to follow suit. You hadn’t really realized just how high up the balcony seemed from the ground, but now that you were here, you felt like you were literally towering above the minuscule forms of Ladson and Asher.

               “I don’t-“ Ladson calls up, but he’s quickly cut off by a cry from Ani as he turns and runs off down the hall, stopping once he got to the other end. There are three doors, one on the left, one on the right, and one dead center in the middle at the end of the hallway. On the one on the left, you can see Aurebesh gold lettering inscribed into the door, clearly spelling out the word _Anakin_ in a neat little arc _._ On the other side of the room, on the right, is _Dameron,_ spelled out in a similar fashion, and you look to the door in the dead center to see your own name carved in the same gold lettering.

               “This, this is my room,” you murmur, hardly able to believe it, as you turn the door handle and step inside. You had never really imagined what you ever wanted your room to look like, but if you could have a room to call your own, it would look exactly like this. There was a large bed in the middle of the room, with two large windows on other side that reached down to the floor. As you got closer, you could see that only one was a window; the other was a door that slid open to a large stone balcony that wrapped around to the other side of the window. You tuck your hair behind your ears as you stare straight out ahead of the lush green that seemed to stretch on and on in front of your vision before you turn around and head past the translucent curtains back inside.

               There were two small nightstands on either side of the bed that looked to be made of some sort of dark wood. There was a dresser with a vanity that looked to be of the same material pushed along one side of the room, and, upon closer inspection, you realized that there was a data projector on top of it, and a small holoprojecter on the other side of the room. Another quick survey of the room revealed a walk-in closet with a sliding door that was neatly propped ajar, revealing a series of military style Resistance uniforms in a style that you had never quite seen before. They were just a shade lighter than navy, with white and grey dressing on the sleeves, and for a moment you weren’t sure if your new role here was anything like being back with the First Order again before you quickly pushed the thought out of your mind.

               “You got a cool uniform too?” Ani asks, and you jump, remember distinctly closing your door behind you. But he didn’t come out of the door from the hallway. Instead, Ani had popped through the door that you had assumed to be a bathroom, revealing it to actually be a connection between the two rooms.

               “Wait, that leads to your room?” you ask quickly, hanging the outfit back up in the closet before you quickly take a peek around Ani’s shoulder into his room, which didn’t look all that different from yours.

               “Yeah,” Ani says with a small laugh. “I guess that’s smart, just in case anything happens, we can quickly get to each other if there’s ever an emergency without having to go out into the hall.”

               “That door stays unlocked,” you say pointedly as you turn away from him, quickly exploring the other doors in your apartment so you knew where they all led. One seemed to be another type of closet with a series of small shelves that seemed better suited for a pantry than anything else, although you supposed it could be used to store smaller items, which you could see coming in handy. You found the bathroom, which was much bigger than you had expected it to be, complete with a nice brown-and-gold tile pattern that started around the sink’s countertop and dribbled out onto the floor. There was only a single bowl-shaped sink with a long counter big enough for two basins that sat directly across from the toilet, and in one corner of the room was a shower. In the other, was-

               “Wait, you get a _bath_?” Ani asks, hopping up onto the edge of it to look inside at the jets that surrounded the edges of the deep tub. “I just have a shower. My bathroom isn’t anywhere near as nice as this.”

               “Are you really going to complain?” you ask Ani as you quirk up an eyebrow, but he just looks down and shakes his head.

               “At least I got a balcony,” he offers, and you can’t help but sneer as you push him gently.

               “So did I,” you tease, and Ani just makes a disconcerted noise from behind you as you snicker and head out of the bathroom, heading to the last door that you hadn’t opened yet on the other side of the room. Your hand turns the knob, but for some reason, the door is locked on the other side and won’t open, and it takes you a moment of jostling the door before you finally stop and realize why. Your hand suddenly jerks away from the door as if you were touching something you weren’t supposed to, but it’s already too late; you’ve already been caught.

               “What’s behind there?” Ani asks, and you just shake your head back and forth like you had no idea, and Ani studies your face for a moment before he reaches for the doorknob. He narrows his eyes at you and crosses his arms over his chest, immediately putting two and two together. “That’s Poe’s room, isn’t it?”

               “It’s locked,” you reply simply, but Ani just rolls his eyes.

               “I saw his name on the door outside,” he points out, but you just shake your head.

               “It means nothing,” you tell him. “Remember, my room is linked to yours too. It’s for _protection_ , both yours and mine. There’s absolutely nothing… _inappropriate_ about it.”

               “Your words,” Ani points out as he heads out into the hallway, and you can’t help but stutter lamely as you head out after him, following him out down the hall and back down the stairs into the living area. Asher and Ladson have since disappeared, and you follow Ani to a small hallway seemingly hidden and tucked away underneath the staircase that leads to a large kitchen, with a large counter bar set up in the middle of it. Asher is raiding the fridge, which seems to be stocked full of food, while Ladson just sits at the bar with his chin resting in his hands.

               “Is everything here ridiculously nice?” you ask, and Ladson sticks his tongue out at you.

               “Careful,” he warns teasingly. “Or you’re going to start to make us jealous.”

               “Then stay here,” you offer with an errant shrug of your shoulders. You knew that you weren’t really in a position to offer him anything, as it wasn’t your decision to make, but you couldn’t really help yourself either. Ladson and Asher were your friends, and if Poe could make space for his, then you should be able to make space for yours.

               “Can’t,” Asher replies through a mouthful of food, offering a quick shake of his head for emphasis to help clarify his muffled words. “Gotta get back soon.”

               “Back?” you echo as you turn from him to Ladson. “I thought you were staying here too, and we only just got here.”

               “We’re going to be going back and forth a lot on supply runs and the like,” Ladson offers, pressing a tight smile in your direction. “So try to keep out of trouble while we’re away, okay?”

               “No argument from me,” you murmur under your breath as you hold up your hands in mock surrender, but you put your hands down immediately, your fingers already reaching for your lightsaber, as you hear the front door open. “Who’s there?”

               “Just me,” Poe calls back, and within a moment he enters the kitchen the same way you came in, through the little passageway underneath the staircase. “How’s it going? Like your rooms?”

               “They’re okay,” you say with a quick nod, trying to ignore the look that Ani was sending your way.

               “What?” Poe asks immediately, looking between you. “What’s wrong?”

               “It’s nothing,” you say quickly. “Ani’s just a bit, uh-“

               “Why do you need a private door to my mom’s room?” Ani asks, and suddenly all eyes in the room are on you instead of Poe.

               “I wasn’t aware there was one,” Poe replies without missing a beat. “But uh, if there is, I’ll make sure-“

               “It’s fine,” Ani says quickly as he turns to you, not making any attempt to hide his shit-eating grin. “It should be there, for, you know, security reasons, right?”

               “Sure,” you reply, trying to ignore the obvious sounds of Asher snickering in the background. You knew that Ani was only mocking you for their benefit, and you weren’t exactly eager to stick around and watch it get any worse. You knew that he didn’t mean anything by it, but considering what great lengths Poe had gone through to get you here, to get you your own rooms, you didn’t want to seem ungrateful, even in jest. “There was something you wanted me to do, right?”

               “Yeah, if you don’t mind me stealing you for a bit,” Poe replies, and you just shake your head as you turn back to Ani.

               “Be good,” you remind him, before you quickly turn back to Poe and follow him out of the room and out of the house. You’re about to ask him what he had planned for you before find yourself looking up at a giant white beast with a creamy fur coat that you had never seen before. It had a snout and a long face that was at least somewhat likes a horse, but it had two long ears that extended out horizontally to the side in either direction that almost reminded you of a goat. This was larger than any goat that you had ever seen, and from behind it you could see it wave its long, swishy tail in the air, the end of which was about parallel to your face.

               “Uh,” you murmur as you stare up at it, arching your neck all the way back as it walked closer. “What is this thing?”

               “This is a creature called a Fathier, she's named Sulu,” Poe tells you, and the massive creature has to drop one its front legs just to allow Poe to pet him. “Come on, she’s friendly.”

               “I’ll pass,” you say nervously, realizing that the creature’s head was about parallel to your torso when it knelt.

               “Well, you better get used to her, cause she’s our ride,” Poe says as he stands up straight again. “Fortunately for you, you can’t smell, because she stinks something awful.”

               “I’ll keep that in mind,” you reply bitterly, making no attempt to disguise your distaste for Poe’s statement. It may have been common knowledge that you couldn’t smell now, and it was true that so long had passed that you should have been used to it by now, but it wasn’t something that you _wanted_ to get used to, either.

               Poe shoots you a quick look of apology but you just wave it away as you follow him up onto the back of the creature, letting Poe take a seat beside you as he wraps his arms around you, keeping you steady while the creature gets to its feet. You can’t help the small nervous cries that erupt unbidden from your throat as it gets up on one leg and then the other, slowly standing up to its full height as you hold on for dear life. When she finally stands tall, you can’t help but look down, immediately regretting it as soon as you did.

               “Afraid of heights?” Poe asks, but you just shake your ahead.

               “Afraid of falling,” you reply as you hold on just a little tighter, burrowing back into Poe as far as you can go. “How far up are we? Two meters up?”

               “More than that,” Poe teases, and you can’t help but groan. “Well, what did you expect? Her legs are taller than you are.”

               “You don’t have to remind me,” you snap nervously as the creature begins to move. Its ears are sticking straight out on either side of its head, and from this angle, they almost look like handlebars; fortunately, you’re too far back to really reach out and grab hold of them for dear life. “But you _do_ have to remind me why we’re on this thing in the first place. I don’t think I asked.”

               “And I’m a bit surprised you didn’t,” Poe replies, and you can’t help but roll your eyes. Poe seems to sense this implicitly as he pokes your side. “Hey, that’s a good thing. It shows you’re trusting me again.”

               “I do trust you,” you tell him, before you pause for a moment. “You know Ani was only saying what he did to give you a hard time, right? He really is appreciative that he gets his own room; he really likes it here.”

               “I know,” Poe replies simply. “We’ve talked.”

               “Talked?” you echo blankly. “When was this?”

               “Last week, when you were off with Ladson and Asher,” Poe explains. “Ani came to me to talk about getting some practice experience flying the shuttles in and out of Naboo while we transport materials and we started talking about _other_ things.”

               “You know what? I don’t want to know,” you say as you shake your head. “I know this is probably weird for him, but-“

               “No, he gets it,” Poe says simply, and you decide to leave it at that. This wasn’t something that you really wanted to talk about, not out loud, anyway, and so you just drop the whole line of questioning.

               “So, mind telling me where we’re going?” you ask as you head out through an opening past the rim of the bubble.

               “Well, we’re taking Sulu here out for a little walk,” Poe says as he pats the hide of the beast reassuringly, and it gives out a sound that’s somewhere between a bleat and a yowl.

               “Please don’t do that again,” you murmur under your breath.

               “Where we’re going, it’s a bit far to walk, but not far enough to really warrant a speeder,” Poe informs you, and you can’t help but quirk up an eyebrow as you consider this.

               “So it’s not far?” you ask, thinking this over. “What’s out there?”

               “You see all this?” Poe asks, releasing his arm from around you so that he could gesture in your general vicinity. “If you think the bubble is big now, we’re going to be expanding it. All of this is going to be part of the new base eventually.”

               “Eventually,” you mutter underneath your breath, mentally noting that every inch of grass under Sulu’s hoofed feet was another step that took you further and further away from when you would get to see Kylo again.

               “It’s not that far,” Poe says reassuringly, and in the distance you think you can finally begin to see something taking shape. Before your eyes can even figure out what it is, you can feel your body almost pulling away from it, as if indicating that this was a place that you did not want to go.

               “No,” you whisper under your breath, and suddenly you can feel every hair on your body stand at attention. Poe hugs you a little tighter to him, and for a moment you almost consider trying to reach out to the creature with your mind and getting it to turn around and head in the other direction.

               “Hey, it’s okay,” he whispers softly, his lips just against your ear, and you allow yourself to relax into him as you try to brace yourself for what you were about to see again. You weren’t sure if it was coming here that bothered you, or coming here at all, but you suddenly wished that you were back on D’Qar if it meant having to see Ani’s childhood home again.

               “Why did you bring me here?” you ask softly, your voice so quiet it was in danger of almost getting swept away by the wind.

               “We’re going to destroy it,” Poe tells you. “It’s got to be torn down to make room for the newer buildings, and I figured that you might want to be the one to do it, or at least see it one more time before it’s gone forever.”

               “The thing’s probably rigged to explode,” you mutter, but behind you, you can feel Poe shaking his head.

               “Nope,” Poe answers simply. “No, the place has been all cleaned out. All the furniture is gone, the weapons in the basement disposed of, every inch of that place has been cleaned out.”

               “Oh,” is all you can say, and you’re honestly not sure if that makes things better or worse as Sulu comes into a slow stop in front of the house. It _feels_ empty, the sky seems just a little bit darker, and you can’t help but notice how small it suddenly looks from the outside looking in. You had spent a lot of time looking out, but you suddenly considered what it must have been like for Ladson and Sadie to stand there, expecting to see you on the other side of the door, unsure of how you were going to react but hoping you would be pleased to see them nonetheless.

               You slowly slide off Sulu’s side, and Poe watches you carefully, as if he’s unsure of how you’re going to react to this. You just stand there for a moment, letting the gentle breeze of Naboo tease the ends of your hair as you stare at the front door, as if waiting for Kylo to open it and come walking out to greet you. But no, there’s no one, you can sense that it’s empty, and for a moment you just stand there and wait, although you’re not quite sure what you’re waiting for.

               “The house has to come down,” Poe repeats, as if you hadn’t heard him the first time. “I thought you might like to be the one to do it.” You just stare at the house, not turning around. “I can stay, if you want me to be here for you. Or I can leave if you feel like this is something you need to do yourself.”

               “Thanks,” you say, making sure you respond just a little too quickly, and Poe doesn’t say anything more as you hear him tap against Sulu’s side and head back the way he had come. For some reason, you hunker down on the grass, squatting low in your legs as you stare up at the house, as if you’re waiting for it to come alive now that you were alone with just the structure and your memories of a time when you were happier, or at least, happier than you were now. As you stand up straight again and approach the door, you try to think back to the first time you had walked through this doorway, until it occurs to you that you had never walked through it at all. The first time you went through that doorway, Kylo Ren had been carrying you, probably bridal style, over the threshold, before he brought you upstairs and laid you down gently on the bed. That had been the first time you had been here, and now the last time you would enter through these doors, Kylo was not here. Kylo was not anywhere _close_ to here and you couldn’t help but think about how this had been the very thing you had tried to protect yourself against when Sadie and Ladson had first showed up on your doorstep. But you had failed to protect them, you had failed to protect him, and for a moment you felt completely overcome by a useless, defeated energy that you physically had to shake off, as if you were trying in vain to wipe dust from your bones.

               You open the door with a rusty creak, bracing yourself as you look inside the dark space of what used to be the entranceway. Fortunately, it’s still somewhat bright from Naboo’s sunny rays streaming through the window, and you take a few tentative steps inside, not sure whether to close the door behind you or not. Eventually you decide that it’s better, safer, if you did, as you had no idea who might be lurking around the perimeter and now that you were really and truly alone, you didn’t want to be snuck up on. You head past the living room on your right and into the kitchen, where your run your fingertips along the counter where you used to have breakfast in the morning with Phasma while Kylo and Ani were out Force training. The stools are gone, and the light coating of dust along its surface tells you that it truly has been abandoned for a long while, but the room still speaks to you nonetheless.

               “ _You?” you ask incredulously. “You lived here on Naboo?”_

_“Born here,” Phasma says as she glances around the kitchen. “I was born in this very house.” Your jaw literally drops open, and Phasma chuckles at your expression. “Oh come now, where did you think I was from?”_

“Thanks for killing Deso,” you whisper to the empty room, your eyes sweeping the place over. “He hurt us, but he killed your people. I don’t think anyone else is going to thank you for it, but it should be said. Thank you, Phasma.” The room says nothing back, but you can still hear her voice echoing around inside your head.

_“I’ve devoted my life to the First Order, not to any one person. The First Order will always require my services, and I will serve them in whatever way I can for however long I’m alive.”_

_“But how do you get out of bed in the morning?” you ask her. “If you’re living just expecting everything you’re doing to lead to an early death?”_

_Phasma shakes her head. “I don’t see it that way at all,” she says. “But if that’s the way you want to look at it, then I suppose you could say that I’m making the most of each day to help benefit the First Order in any way I can.”_

You think about Kylo now, think about how Phasma probably saw him as betraying the First Order, although you supposed that she understood, had to understand, what little choice he had in the matter. She had seen the holo of the trial, knew implicitly that she did, and knew that if Kylo ever wanted to have any kind of relationship with you or his son ever again, that he had to play along and do whatever the Resistance asked of him. You had no idea if taking out Deso was her way of evening the playing field, or getting revenge, and you supposed that you may never know the answer to that question, but if you ever did cross paths with her again, you knew that you would simply turn and walk the other way. Maybe the Resistance wouldn’t want to end the war unless she could really and truly be confirmed dead, but either way, you weren’t going to be the one to land the fatal blow. You couldn’t.

               With these thoughts in mind, you head upstairs, slowly trailing your fingertips along the wall like you used to until you take a step into your old bedroom, pushing the door open with the toe of your boot. You almost wondered who had been in here before, who had gone through and removed the bed that you used to sleep on. You wondered if Sadie and Ladson had explored the house at all, wondered if Poe had gone through it to see where and how you had lived while you were away. But that wasn’t what you wanted to think about as you took a few steps into the room, pausing and stopping at the spot where the bed used to be, its impression still left behind on the floor beneath where it had sat for so long.

               _This isn’t what I wanted._

That had been the first thought that had ran through your mind as you awoke to find Kylo by your bedside, and you found those words as true then as they were now. This _wasn’t_ what you wanted. You didn’t want Kylo to be so far away from you, but that was the way things had to be. Even thinking back, you knew what you had meant at the time, but you couldn’t help but twist the words inside your own head to a more palpable meaning. You had wanted to be there with Kylo, of course you did, but the circumstances, the way he went about it, was all wrong. You wanted to be with him, but you wanted to be with him by choice, and not taken away from the Resistance base by force. But Kylo had given you that option, and you had spurned it, and you were smart enough to know that if you had defeated Kylo that night, had stopped Phasma from taking Ani away, you would have regretted it. Kylo would have been sent off to die, Phasma would have been captured, and there was no way you would have been able to get over the shame of it; his blood would have been on your hands, and you knew right then that time would not have been able to ever erase that ache.

               You glance away from the bed to the spot on the wall where the couch used to be, and in your mind you can almost vividly remember creeping quietly across the floor to kneel down by his side, holding his hand to help push him through the worst of his nightmares. You almost couldn’t believe how long ago that had been; a part of you felt like you had never left this room, and a part of you wasn’t sure how much you really wanted to be back here. Now that your positions had changed and _you_ were the one having the nightmares, being here again and remembering how you used to comfort him in the way you now needed him to comfort you made you feel unbalanced in a way that you couldn’t quite describe.

               You glance towards the balcony before leaving the room, remembering how the first day you were here, you had broken down and cried out on that balcony, wishing you were anywhere but here. That had been the first time you were out there, but what was the last? You remembered Kylo pushing into you as your hands gripped the railing, afraid that someone might see, afraid of how little you seemed to care if someone did. Had that been the last time? You couldn’t be sure, but the memory tugs a smirk to the corner of your lips nonetheless as you head out of the room and down the hall towards Ani’s room, pushing you into considerable better spirits, at least temporarily.

               No sooner do you head through the threshold that another memory stirs inside of you, and you can almost see yourself sitting down on the end of Ani’s bed as you tuck him in that night, trying to get out of him as subtly as possible what he had been up to with Kylo while they had been training together.

_“Did he mention the light side, or the dark side, maybe?”_

_“The dark side,” Ani says at length, but he’s shifting uncomfortably, and you can tell you’re getting closer to something._

_“Yes, what about it?” you ask quietly. “What did he tell you about the dark side, Ani?”_

_“It’s like_ stones _,” Ani says, emphasizing the last word. “The dark side is like a stone, like if you throw it in water and it sinks, and then you can’t get back up.”_

_“What about the light side?” you ask cautiously. “Did he tell you anything about that?”_

               _“Balance,” Ani says decisively. “You got to keep a balance. No one can be all good, all the time.” He looks up at you. “Except you.”_

You can’t help but laugh lightly and shake your head as you remember how highly Kylo used to think of you. It was no wonder what happened on the _Propitiate_ hit him so hard; he had set up an unrealistic ideal for you as you had once done with Poe. That was in the past now, and those fantastical notions of you had all but been eliminated from his mind, you were sure, but then again, he had also done things he was less than proud of. If anything, you were both on equal footing now, and you were almost glad that you didn’t have to try to rationalize what he had done in his youth as you did before. Now that you truly saw how easy it was to give into Snoke’s manipulations and lose yourself and your thoughts in the process, what had happened to him before you had met him was a topic that you never had to revisit.

               Regardless, the memory seems to continue of its own accord.

               _“Me?” you ask, raising your eyebrows. “You know I’m not_ good _, especially not all the time.”_

               _“He thinks you are,” Ani says, and you’re about to argue when Ani continues. “He says I should try to be more like you. You’re brave, and strong, and uncomp, uncomp, uncomp-“_

_“Uncompromising?”_

               You let your eyes slip shut as you smile and take in the rich sound of Kylo’s voice in your ears, pleased that you could still hear his voice in your head as clearly as you had that day.

               “You shouldn’t be like me, Ani,” you say quietly as you head back out the door and into the hallway. “You should be like your dad. And I think you are, in the best way possible.”

               You consider entering Phasma’s room, but you had never once been in there all the time that you lived there, and even though you doubted that anything would even be in it, it still felt like a violation of her privacy and so you stayed clear of it, instead heading down the stairs, through the kitchen, and down the steps leading down to the basement. Poe was right; the place was completely cleaned out and void of everything, and you felt alone in the large, isolated space, the air pressing tight against your ears, and suddenly this felt like a place that you no longer wanted to be.

               You quickly turn on your heel and head up the stairs, walking straight past what used to be the living room without bothering to even glance inside. You knew it would be empty, and you didn’t want to remember what had happened in there. You didn’t want to remember how you had betrayed your friends, how you had fallen prey to Hux’s manipulations, and suddenly, while you were walking past the kitchen counter, you didn’t think about Phasma, you thought about Hux, about _Snoke_ , how he had manipulated you and pulled you into his games, tricking you into becoming someone that you would no longer recognize.

               _“Ren’s decisions are blinded by you. He doesn’t think objectively where you’re concerned. If you want to keep your family together, keep them safe, then you need to protect them with everything that you have.”_

               _“Return the favor. Tell me what you think of me.”_

_“I think you’re powerful. I think you’re just as powerful as Ren, but more in control of yourself. I think you and your son could be a valued addition to the First Order, should you wish to join us. That needs to be your choice. Once you swear your fidelity to the First Order, it is only rescinded by your death.”_

You get out of the house as fast as possible and collapse on the ground outside, as though you’re about to be sick. You hadn’t realized it for what it was then, but it wasn’t just Hux trying to pull you and your son into the First Order; it was Snoke, trying to trick you into joining _him_ , and you had fallen for his ruse. Everyone did, you knew you shouldn’t guilt yourself over that, but a part of you couldn’t help it. The signs had all been there, and you had missed every single one of them. You almost wished, deep down, that Kylo had been able to recognize him for what he was, to get you and Ani out before it was too late, but you couldn’t blame him. You almost wanted to, but you couldn’t, you just couldn’t bring yourself to think that any of this was his fault. You and Kylo had _both_ paid for what had happened with your lives, and as Snoke had said himself, fidelity to the First Order was only rescinded by your death. As such, you considered your affiliation with them officially broken, and you were almost secretly glad that Kylo was working to disband them for good. You knew he had other thoughts considering his involvement with them had been much more extensive than yours had been, but the First Order had caused you all more harm than good, and you were anxious for the galaxy to be free of them once and for all.

               You had to put the past behind you, once and for all, and with that you finally stood up and faced the house that represented both so much love and so much hatred, all at the same time. You had spoken of Naboo so fondly to Kylo, remembering the happier times of Ani’s childhood, but now you saw it for what it really was. This? This was just a house, a plain structure with a roof and four walls. That happiness had come from Kylo, from Ani, from that bond with your family, and this house held no more meaning for you. It was going to be torn down to make way for the Resistance, and if you wanted Kylo back sooner rather than later, it was going to have to come down sooner rather than later. At least by destroying it yourself, you would save time from having a demolition crew come in and work on this instead of something else. You could play a small part right now in helping Kylo come home sooner, and in truth, that was really all that you wanted now, as it seemed to always have been.

               You knew that Poe expected you to be destructive, to take your rage out on the walls until they collapsed around you, but that was not the type of anger that you had. Your anger wasn’t rage, it was deep-rooted, bubbling out of your core, quietly simmering within you, and you knew implicitly that no matter how much you screamed or yelled or fought or cried, it wasn’t going to help. This anger within you wasn’t destructive, wasn’t ugly, it was something raw, something powerful, and you had tapped into that channel once before, and once you did, you knew implicitly that you would never be released from its hold until you learned how to tame it. For once, you needed to be in control, and you were beginning to realize just how to do that.

               Without thinking, your body moves in slow deliberate motions as you go about making a fire, your thoughts quiet and your mind serenely empty, and when you’re done, you simply sit back on the grass outside and stare up at the structure as you watch the flames slowly start to take hold, bursting through the forlorn living room windows as it proceeded to slowly eat the structure whole from the inside out, much like your anger and desire for power had done to you. But now you were starting to see yourself for who you truly were, and it wasn’t just as Kylo Ren’s paramour. It wasn’t as an interpreter, or a member of the First Order or a citizen of the New Republic or a part of the Resistance. No, you were undefinable, and for once, you could accept that. Maybe tomorrow you wouldn’t, but right now, as you watched the flames grow higher and send a smoke signal billowing into the sky that would probably send more than a few concerned glances your way, you felt at peace.

               Sometimes, anger isn’t always ugly. Sometimes, it’s quiet, passive, simmering beneath the surface as it drives all of your movements, all of your aspirations, all of your logic and direction. But that anger can only keep you going for so long; it can fill you, but it could not make you whole, not in the way that your family and friends could, and if you really wanted to embrace your future with them, you had to let go of your past, and as you listened to the sound of the flames crackle and idly wondered if it was a blessing or a curse that you couldn’t smell the acrid stench of smoke any longer, you did just that.

               You took all of the pain, the hatred, the anguish, the cries that you made, the curses you had uttered, the tears that you had shed, and let them all burn away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and that's the end. 
> 
> Kind of.
> 
> Part 1 of the 3-part epilogue comes on Thursday, and then I have the Q&A, the timeline, dedications, and a special post-credits scene that will make you all yell, but the good kind of yell. 
> 
> Survey link [here](https://goo.gl/forms/j3wBcEPerjFZVCSD2) for any last minute questions or comments or anything you want me to an answer to or for.....and I think I have a lot to answer for. xD
> 
> PS: For fans eagerly awaiting the graphic novel/comic based on this trilogy, I reached out to them again and apparently they're having techy problems with their tablet and other work responsibilities that have gotten in the way, but they're looking to push out a character design for "one of the four" before the trilogy is up, although I have no idea if that means one of the four Tortutaru or one of the four interpreters...they're keeping me as much in suspense as everyone else, but I will keep you all posted.
> 
> Okay, deep breath....until Thursday, cheers!! <3


	83. Chapter 83

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue Part 1/3 begins after an undisclosed time jump and then.......
> 
> NSFW content ahead

               You can’t help but snicker as you shake your head, wiping the grease from the fresh meat you were eating away from your mouth with the back of your hand. “Kar suna’tuk ma helinda tarnuuk kala.”

               “Mar sontu,” Taika replies promptly, although you can barely hear him above the roar of everyone else at the long table stretched out in front of you. Your hearing still had not improved, but it was still good enough to hear them chewing, and to be honest, you were almost mesmerized by how their tiny silver jaws seemed to reflect the blue fur off each other’s faces as they chewed and gnashed at the hearty meal spread before them.

               “Shika vit taala,” Kraiim points out from your right, and you just jerk your thumb over to him, silently agreeing without needing to say anything at all.

               “Mar sontu eest ter snik,” Taika snaps, and you can’t help but grin as you rip off another sliver of meat, holding it gingerly between your teeth as you talk, raising your eyebrows just slightly to show your amusement.

               “Merka’ahalan noos treia’hevo,” you say curtly. “Merskrewsha si khalaeed.”

               Both of them erupt with laughter as they bang on the table, their hooved feet stomping on the tiled floor of the dining room hall beneath you. Kraiim gets to his feet as he hits the table twice, hard, sending the vibrations through everyone’s plate to get their attention. “Vookeki cri shir-ahem,” he declares as he points to you. “Shir-ahem tekke _anhio_.”

               There’s a great murmuring of cheers through stuffed mouths and a great stampeding of hoofs that would probably cause you to lose more of your hearing than you already had if you hadn’t gotten used to this by now. “Mersh kha’looha,” you yell over the noise as you get to your feet. “Mersha kha’leesa noukahan.” There’s a brief pause as everyone waits in baited breath for your next words. “ _Nahoose dahee mei_.”

               There’s a great eruption of cheers and you can’t help but grin as you see the table of sixteen laid out in front of you, and a happy smirk pulls at the corners of your lips. Their fidelity to you was unquestioned, and a part of you almost couldn’t believe that over a decade ago, you had been standing on this planet as an apparent prisoner of Kylo Ren. There were many words people would choose to describe you now, but _prisoner_ would be far from among them.

               Suddenly, something calls your attention off to the doorway on your left, and you quickly glance off to the side to see Ani standing in its entrance. The others haven’t noticed him yet, and you quickly rush to his side, trying to pull the goofy smile off of your face. You knew that Ani and some of the others had, well, _concerns_ about your new friends, but you figured at least some of their trepidation was at least due in part to the fact that they couldn’t understand them. They didn’t speak the language, didn’t understand their cultures or customs, and thus couldn’t understand why you were so esteemed by such a bellicose group. Poe had seen the battle, Poe had been there; they respected the strongest fighter, and with your Force abilities and glowing amber blades, no one could question that you were as strong as they came. “Hey,” you say quickly, your voice coming out as a hushed whisper. “Hey, I thought you were still out flying with Poe. If I had known you came back early, I would have stopped in for dinner with you guys instead.”

               “No, it’s fine,” Ani says with a quick shake of his head, glancing nervously behind you at the deafening crash of glass breaking behind you that didn’t seem to faze you anymore. “I just got in. Someone needed to see you.”

               “Who?” You straighten up, suddenly all-business. You didn’t think the diplomats from Corellia were arriving until sometime next week, although you wouldn’t put it past the new First Senator to send in someone early and try to catch Poe off his mark, as they had done a few times before. Fortunately, you were always prepared, but you knew that they would be holding their breath for the one time you weren’t so that they could run back to the New Republic and give them a reason to shut down the Resistance for good. Fortunately, Poe ran a tight ship, and you knew implicitly that he was not going to let that happen.

               A shadow steps into the doorway behind Ani, and you can feel his familiar wave of energy wash over you before you can even get a good look at the figure. You can’t help but give a loud, nervous start as you jump into his arms, wrapping them tightly around his neck as you bury your face in the familiar fabric of Kylo’s collar. His hands immediately catch you under your thighs, and he holds you up with one hand as he wraps his arm around you with the other, stroking your long hair down the length of your back. “You’re back,” you whisper into his shoulder, and although you expect tears, they don’t come. Instead, all you can find is relief. “Today?”

               “Today,” Kylo confirms, and you can’t help but sigh as you snuggle into him. Today had become the new mantra between you for as long as you could remember. His previous visits to Naboo had been short, only a night or two at most, always coming and leaving your chambers by armed guard. He had only seen the home you shared with Ani once or twice since it had been built, similar in construction to Poe’s but just a bit smaller, as you didn’t really need the extra rooms. Instead, it was just a bit more open, but still had a fully furnished basement with resilient walls that could withstand repeated hits from a lightsaber, just in case. Ani had moved in almost right after the construction had been completed, learning what it was to be independent in his own right, but you couldn’t stay there, not until Kylo had come home for good. You wanted each happy memory you spent there to be with him, and so you had spent the rest of your nights in your room in Poe’s quarters, or on the couch in Ladson’s house, on the infrequent occassions when Poe was away and didn’t bring you along with him. Those occasions were so few and far between they only happened a handful of times per year, and while each time he offered for you to come with him, there was no way you were stepping foot on D’Qar again. For some reason, you feared that if you ever stepped foot on that planet again, you might be imprisoned there for good and they would never let you leave. You had once again proven yourselves to the upper echelons of the Resistance and you didn’t know who specifically would want to lock you up, or why, and although your irrational fear had no solid basis in logic, you’d rather play it safe than sorry. Naboo was where you felt safe, and Naboo was where you wanted to stay, even if that meant you were staying by yourself.

               Even still, sleeping alone had become something of a curse for you. Even though many years had passed since your encounter with Snoke, the nightmares didn’t fade, not even after you opened up about them and talked them through with everyone that wanted to listen. Even Rey and Luke could offer sympathy but no real answers, and so on the nights when you stayed with Ladson, he and Asher camped out with you in his living room, staying up and keeping you entertained until you drifted off, then waking up and shaking you free of the nightmares that seemed intent on controlling you if the situation called for it. You found it easier when Poe was in the next room, or occasionally, beside you, but that wasn’t something you wanted to focus on now that Kylo was finally with you again, now that Kylo Ren was finally home to stay.

               _“Keylo-ha, keylo-ha, keylo-ha.”_

               You can hear the chanting from behind you, quickly reminding you that you weren’t alone, and you can feel Kylo’s energy through the Force, such a small thing that comforted you more than words could describe, especially now that you were secure in the knowledge that you would never have to part from him ever again. “I’m sorry, in their language, _Kylo_ sounds like _king_ ,” you say quickly to Kylo as you hop down and turn around to face them. “Ma chrusirnak mahira _Kylo_. Ma chrusirnak mihkeela _Dameron_.”

               “ _Dameron_ hahsu’macoon,” one of them shouts from the back, although with your hearing, it was hard to figure out which one, considering each of their three eyes were swiveled your way. “Meh chrusirnak mahira _nei-tu_.” They burst into cheers and shout louder than before, and you can’t help but blush as you turn back to Kylo.

               “What are they saying?” he whispers in a low voice, and you can’t help but smirk as you glance down at the familiar helmet he has since removed. He’s holding it under one arm, and you silently ignore his question as you run your fingers over the familiar metal grooves. It looks as though it had been polished clean, and you idly wonder how dirty it must have gotten in the last of the battles against the First Order, which you could imagine were probably the bloodiest of all. That information had not been purposely withheld from you, per say, but Poe and Kylo seemed to think that it was better that you _didn’t_ know just how dire some of the battles were, and so you decided to just let it go. You knew that Kylo had been in grave danger, but you also knew that there was nothing he would do to stop himself from coming home to you, and so you trusted him, implicitly.

               “Mom’s started a bit of an insurgency since the last time you were here,” Ani pipes up, and you can’t help but let your eyes go wide. You didn’t want to start any rumors that you were planning on taking over this base for yourself, and you knew just how your position might have looked to anyone that didn’t know what was going on. Now that Kylo was here, the _last_ thing you wanted to do was start causing trouble for your family… _again_.

               “No,” you say firmly. “No, no, Ani, that is _not_ what happened. Come on, didn’t you hear me just now? I just told them, specifically, that _I_ am _not_ their leader, and they should take their orders from Poe, not me.”

               “But they’ll only listen to you,” Ani reminds you, and you can’t help but roll your eyes. This wasn’t a conversation that you wanted to have again, and so you quickly turn back to Kylo.

               “Come on,” you say brightly as you latch onto his arm. “I said when you’re finally coming here to stay, we’re giving you a tour of the base, and that’s what’s going to happen. Right now.” You take his arm in both of yours and lead him out into the hallway, past two sets of guards on either side, before you finally reach the crisp afternoon air of Naboo. Summer was coming to an end, but that suited you just fine. The temperature of Naboo was always moderate, but you loved the crisp air of autumn, the pleasant chill in the air as day merged into night. Secretly, you also loved the way Poe’s jacket fit around your shoulders during brisk patrols around the base, but again, that was not something to dwell on with Kylo now home to stay for good.

               You’re about to walk forward when Kylo catches hold of your arm and turns you around to take a good look at you, his eyes searching you up and down. “What?” you ask breathlessly as Kylo’s eyes sweep over your body. “What is it?”

               “They’ve added another stripe to your uniform,” Kylo remarks as he reaches forward and pinches his scarf from around your neck. “Almost didn’t notice it under this.”

               You just let out a mock huff of indignation as you neaten his scarf around your shoulders. “She never takes it off,” Ani tells him as he glances between him and you. “She and Poe got into an argument about it when she first started wearing it. He was saying it could be misconstrued as a symbol of supporting the First Order, but Mom, uh, not surprisingly, won that one.”

               “Of course I did,” you reply as you step forward, until you notice you’re being followed. You try to quell a quick flash of irritation that rises up inside of you, more for Kylo’s sake than your own. “Uh, we don’t need any guards. Thank you, though, you’re dismissed.”

               The two guards hesitate for a moment, as if they’re unsure what to do. “Sorry, General,” one of them offers. “Skipper’s orders.”

               You roll your eyes and are about to tell them that _Admiral Dameron_ should know better than to issue orders that would lead to conflict between you, when you notice Taika and Kraiim approaching from behind them, their long spears held upright in each clawed fist. “We guard, you go,” Kraiim growls, and suddenly the guards disappear double-quick, probably to report back to Poe on this latest development.

               “Huh, their Basic’s getting better,” you notice happily as you turn back around to continue your walk.

               “How are things?” Kylo asks, almost a bit begrudgingly. “Between you and the _Admiral_?”

               “Well, for one he’s glad you’re not calling him the _pilot_ anymore,” you muse happily as you wrap your arms around his as you continue to walk. “We, uh, we’ve run into some differences of opinion on how to do things, I mean, you know that, but uh, things are good here. Things get done.”

               “Remember when we first got here and you insisted on doing everything he said to the letter?” Ani asks in amusement, and you can’t help but groan as you shake your head. “That died pretty quick.”

               “You can’t mix professional and personal business,” you say simply as you shake your head. “It just doesn’t work.” You tap Kylo’s arm affectionately. “Remember on the Starkiller Base when I was caught fooling around with you? B was planning on keeping me locked in my room for _weeks_.”

               “Yeah, but this is different,” Ani pipes up before you can say anything more. “Remember that trade negotiation with the representatives from Sollosub?”

               “We’ve been over this, I told _everyone_ I’m not an interpreter anymore,” you say firmly. “Not my fault if no one is going to listen to me.”

               “Did you already tell me about what happened?” Kylo asks, and you hesitate for a moment, not quite sure if you did. You had plenty of reason not to, but-

               “They were willing to make some kind of trading deal for exported ordnance or something,” Ani explains as he shakes his head. “But Mom completely ruined the whole thing.”

               “I ruined _nothing_ ,” you snap back. “Their, their _offer_ was an _insult_ , and I treated it as such.”

               “Their offer?” Kylo echoes, glancing back and forth between you.

               “Basically they only would go through with the deal if Poe would, well-” Ani’s voice suddenly falls silent, and you shoot him a dirty look, as you know he’s probably telling Kylo what happened silently instead of out loud so that you weren’t in a position to rebuke his statement. He seems to sense this as he quickly starts speaking again. “Mom didn’t really interpret that part so much as just telling them to get out, and Poe was pretty pissed, considering she didn’t tell him what they wanted until _after_.”

               Kylo looks at you, but you purposely turn your head away and say nothing as you cross your arms over your chest. “That’s the way they conclude deals on Sollosub,” he offers, but you just shake your head from side to side.

               “But _this_ is not Sollosub,” you insist. “This is Naboo, and _here_ , asking the Commanding Officer of the Resistance Interdiction Fleet to, to _debase_ himself, is considered an insult and _that_ is what I told them.”

               “You know Poe never would have done it,” Ani tells you, the boredom in his voice evident by the fact that you knew he had told you as much about a thousand or so times before. “He’s told you himself that he never would have done it, but like you just said, he’s the Skipper. It wasn’t your decision to make. You were just supposed to provide a translation-“

               “-interpretation,” you quickly correct him.

               “You were just supposed to interpret, that’s it,” Ani finishes, and you roll your eyes.

               “You’re spending too much time around him,” you decide as you shake your head. “I know he’s taking the time out to train you personally, just like he taught me, but now that Kylo’s here, he can go back to teaching you, just like when you were small, right?”

               “You think they’re going to give him free control over a ship?” Ani asks with a skeptical laugh, and Kylo raises his eyebrows in silent agreement.

               “Whatever,” you huff as you shake your head. “Look, Poe and I have had some disagreements over the way things should be handled here, but there’s still a lot of, um, good feelings there.” You shake your head quickly to try to dispel your sudden slip of the tongue. “There’s no bad blood between us, that’s all I’m saying. If anything, it’s good. He comes to me when he’s not sure if he’s making the right move on something, and we talk it out. We don’t always agree, but that line of communication is there, and it’s open.”

               “Then what was with that back there?” Kylo asks as he jerks his head back towards the way you just came.

               “Oh, that,” you say with an idle shrug of your shoulders. “Um, basically one of our ships crashed on their planet and held a few of our soldiers hostage. They’re a war-centered tribe and although Poe brought me in to, um, _interpret_ the negotiations for their safe release, they ended up becoming a bit…aggressive.”

               “They challenged Mom to a duel, Mom won,” Ani explains. “Oh, and they saw her lightsaber. They think she’s their god now. They wouldn’t let her or the others go unless their top fighting squad could come back with her and protect her, so Poe didn’t really have much choice but to agree.”

               Kylo can’t help but let out a snort through his nostrils as he shakes his head, and you can’t help but huff as you teasingly push him away from you. “Hey, it’s not so bad,” you tell him. “They _listen_ to me, they follow orders. It’s like the little army I always wish I had. And they’re not hurting anyone, either. They’re here for the defense of this base if we ever need it, and they were able to help finish construction on the rest of the facilities super quick. They’re fantastic workers once you can actually get them up and moving.”

               “I can see that,” Kylo muses as he glances around him. “This part of the base wasn’t even halfway finished the last time I was here.”

               “Yeah,” you say with a quick nod of agreement. “Everyone really pitched in to build this base up as fast as possible. I think everyone just wanted to put this war behind us, once and for all, so we can all go on and make new lives for ourselves.”

               “Well, it sounds like you’ve really made a life for yourself here,” Kylo notes, and you can’t help but shrug errantly.

               “I mean, there’s work here,” you offer half-heartedly as you gesture around you. “And I _am_ needed. Remember, the Gungans are the native species of Naboo, so they’re in our business a lot. They’ve learned to speak Basic since their original language has been long forgotten, but some of the older Gungans occasionally lapse into something called _Gunganese_ , a hybrid form of Old Gungan, Old Corellian, and modern Basic, which is a _pain_ to figure out if you don’t know what you’re talking about. And the Elders are all but extinct, of course, but we’ve left their giant statues in the Gungan sacred region alone. Poe felt it might be bad karma to touch it, and I, of course, agreed.”

               “Smart move,” Kylo agrees under his breath, and you can’t help but beam up at him.

               “Other species have moved in here too now, with the new trading routes so accessible,” you continue. “I mean, a lot of people from Alderaan had come to Naboo, they’re all still here, but more humans are moving in here too. Otherwise, there’s also the Amarans, which are basically fox-like humanoids, you’d know one if you saw them. They’re capable of limited Basic, but they primarily speak their own language that’s used internally in their own trading cartels. It’s coded, so you can’t exactly understand _what_ they’re saying, but I know enough to pick up on if something’s wrong, which is always helpful.”

               “Except for that one time,” Ani says quietly from behind you, and you can’t help but groan in frustration.

               “Yes, but that was _one time_ ,” you remind him as Kylo chuckles quietly from beside you. “And, of course, there’s a lot more Neimoidians running around now. Turns out the ones that weren’t affiliated with the whole scandal with the Trade Federation were allowed to take up residence on Naboo as regional and sector commerce controllers due to their natural inclinations towards realism and pragmatism cultivated by the harsh years of the hive nursery.” Kylo raises an eyebrow, no doubt confused by how carefully rehearsed that sounded, but you just shake your head, encouraging him not to ask; you had no desire to explain that whole fiasco with him too, especially when you weren’t sure that Ani knew about it either. Poe had wanted to keep the whole thing under wraps, and you were pretty sure there were only about four or five people on the base who knew what had transpired. “Most of them speak Basic too, but they’re quick to acquire other languages and even quicker to use them for their own benefit, if you catch my drift.”

               Kylo just nods his head as he continues to look around him, taking in the various buildings you pass and internally guessing what each one was used for. “What about the infrastructure here?” he asks. “I’ve asked, but it seems no one is keen on imparting me with that information.”

               “With good reason,” you reply with a shrug. “But seeing as you can get it from me anyway, there’s no point in not telling you.” You stop walking and look around you, pointing to things in turn. “Over there? Fighter base. That side? Initial ground defenses.” You jerk your thumb behind you. “Command and control structures.” You point to the far corner of the base, towards where you were headed. “Personnel quarters, medical, recreation, and mess for most of the human staff, but most of the species prefer to live on the other end of the compound, just because that’s where the newest buildings are; we’re expanding outwards, making more room for them as we need to.”

               “Those are the hardened fighter and combat corvette bays,” Ani points out as he points to a group of buildings that you had missed, and you nod your head enthusiastically.

               “Right,” you agree as you look around for something else to point out to him. “Um, over there are the, uh, miscellaneous supporting systems.”

               “You mean the utilities?” Kylo asks as he raises an eyebrow, and you can’t help but huff.

               “Well, when you put it _that_ way,” you murmur under your breath. “And then of course, where you came in, you’ve also got all the fleet structures, like the merchant docks and warehousing, the shipping and receiving areas, the starship parade grounds for landing squadrons of larger ships, the industrial quarter where Asher hangs out a lot, since fleets need a lot of maintenance and spare parts, there’s the orbital station and shipyards, there’s the surface-to-space defenses, like the ion cannons, silo batteries, shield generators, hidden artillery, and…” You turn quickly to Ani. “Is that it?”

               “I think you’ve got it covered,” Ani replies with a firm nod of his head.

               “There you are,” you hear, and for a moment you flinch, almost not bringing yourself to turn around. You knew this day had been coming for a long while, but you and Poe had never discussed quite how things would change between you once Kylo came back for good. You supposed that it was something that he either didn’t want to discuss or didn’t think needed to be discussed, but you couldn’t help but force a smile to your lips as you turn around to face him. “I hear you’re causing problems for me again.” There’s good humor in his voice when he says it, but with Kylo right there, you can’t really find it all that funny.

               “We’ve been over this,” you tell him simply, trying not to sound like a child. “While I _appreciate_ the fact that you have your guards looking out for me, it’s unnecessary. I have my own guards now; you know this.”

               Poe just flicks his eyes to the side, insinuating that you’ve had this conversation before, and you weren’t going to have it again. “They’re not just for your protection this time,” he reminds you. “Ren’s on base, and although there’s been a considerable effort made to ensure that everyone feels _comfortable_ with him here, he’s still going to need to be guarded at all times.”  

               “Yes, boss,” you reply, giving him a lazy salute, but Poe just shakes his head as he ignores you and turns back to Kylo.

               “Ren, as I’m sure you know, you’re not allowed to be patrolling the perimeter without explicit clearance from either myself or Colonel Ematt, regardless of what she may tell you.”

               “I’m aware,” Kylo says, but by his tone, it’s very clear that he has no intention of actually complying with what Poe has said either. You quickly glance between them, sensing that this could very quickly dissolve into an argument, and decide to take the higher ground.

               “I’m sorry,” you say quickly as you turn back to Poe. “I know he’s not supposed to be out and around, but I wanted to show him around the base before he’s going to be locked in a room around the clock. Besides, it’s getting dark and there’s not a lot of people around to see him right now, it’s as good a time as any.”

               “I’m not going to keep him locked up,” Poe says as he shakes his head, turning back to Kylo. “Not if I don’t feel that I have anything to be concerned about.”

               “You won’t,” Kylo says firmly. “I believe Ematt has made it quite clear in his reports that I have cooperated with him fully, and I’ve received a full endorsement from my uncle that I am no longer a threat. You know why I’m here, and I have no intention of being difficult when I know that will only serve to complicate things between me and my family further.”      

               Poe looks like he’s about to say something that you’re not sure what you want him to say, and so you quickly turn back to Ani. “Ani, do you think you can get Kylo home?” you ask, and Ani nods his head forward quickly as you turn back to Taika and Kraiim. “Okraeneck, hashka?” They look a bit reluctant to leave your side, but do as they’re instructed, heading after Ani. Kylo casts one lingering look back at you, but you force a tight smile in his direction as you turn back to Poe, waiting a moment before speaking as you let them get a good headstart. “You know he’s not going to cause anyone any trouble, you know that, right?”    

               “I know,” Poe replies simply. “That doesn’t mean I can’t give him a hard time about it.”

               You huff in mock indignation as you slap his arm gently, biting your lower lip to try to suppress the smirk that was pulling at the corners of your lips. “Jealousy doesn’t become you.”

               “Not jealous,” Poe confirms as he shakes his head from side to side. “You know I’m not. We’ve both known this day was coming for quite a while.”

               “Yeah, but we had fun, right?” you ask. “Remember that moon back on Endalgor?”

               Poe just laughs as his eyes drop down to the dirt beneath his feet, seemingly recalling the memory. “Yeah, that was fun, but that’s also not going to change.”

               “Not going to change?” you echo as your eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “How-?”

               “Because,” Poe says simply with a light shrug of his shoulders. “You needed me to be there for you, and I was, I was happy to be, and I mean that, I really do, but you have Ren for that now, and I know he can understand you and what you’re going through much better than I ever will. But that doesn’t mean I don’t need you. We may not always agree on how to get things done, but I can still say that any mission you’ve been involved with has come out more or less successful. We still have to meet with Naboo’s Council in a few days, and I’m going to need you there for that.”

               “You do realize that most times the missions are only successful _because_ I don’t listen to what you say?” you tease him gently, and Poe just laughs as he shakes his head.

               “You have your own way of doing things,” Poe admits. “And I’ve learned to work with that. You’re good at reading the situation, and most of all, you’re good at reading _people_ , and that’s what I need.”

               “I’m having a hard time reading you right now, though,” you admit. “I know I’ve spent the last few nights with Ladson and Asher since you were off with Ani, but if I had known-“

               “No,” Poe says, shaking his head. “Hey, don’t do that. In two weeks from now, we’re going to be off to Mustafar for a week, remember?”

               You pause for a moment as you try to think back. In truth, with Kylo returning, you had honestly forgotten all about that. “Kylo probably isn’t going to be invited to that party, is he?” you ask, and Poe just laughs as he shakes his head.

               “No, no, it’s a diplomatic mission,” Poe reminds you. “Bringing him along would probably be a bad idea, which means your new friends have to stay behind too.”

               “Oh come on,” you say as you roll your eyes. “Do you even remember that day? I saved your _life_.”

               “You almost got killed too,” Poe reminds you, but you just roll your eyes.

               “Then that only makes it more impressive,” you decide at length. “I almost died saving your life, and look, we’re both still here, and I have a tiny little army at my beck and call.” Poe just shakes his head from side to side, and you can’t help but huff as you cross your arms over your chest. “Come on, even you have to admit they’re not so bad.”

               “They keep you safe,” Poe decides. “That’s why I’m allowing them on base, that’s why they’re here, that’s why they’re still around.”

               “Is Ematt still giving you a hard time about that?” you ask, but Poe just shakes his head again, as though that wasn’t a question he wanted to answer. “Hey, if I’m really a General, I deserve to have my own little battalion, right?”

               “You know that title is more ceremonial than anything,” Poe says flatly, but now it’s your turn to shake your head.

               “Look at these stripes,” you insist, showing off your uniform. “I’ve been in combat, I’ve given _years_ of service to the Resistance, unless do you not remember my first mission? It started with Starkiller, ended with Base?”

               “You can’t keep using that line forever,” Poe reminds you, but his voice is light and teasing. “You are an asset here though, not just to me, but to the Resistance, and that’s why you have that rank. I know things were rough when you first got here, but I needed other people to respect you, to listen to you, and we all agreed that this was the best way to do it.”

               “Well, no one can really argue with anything Leia says,” you agree with a shrug of your shoulders. “Although you know more than a few people put two and two together about us.”

               “Doesn’t matter,” Poe replies with a shake of his head. “You’ve more than risen to the rank on more than one occasion. You’re _wanted_ here, and I don’t want you to forget that.”

               “I won’t,” you assure him with a firm smile. “I know that things are going to be different now that Kylo’s back, and a part of me expected that, but hopefully things won’t change too much.” You hesitate, unsure if you really want to say your next words, before you decide to go for it anyway. “You know, I don’t expect you and Kylo to be _friends_ , but it would mean a lot to me if you would at least try to get along. You know he isn’t going to cause any trouble for anyone. He just wants to be here with me and Ani, that’s it.”

               “I know that,” Poe agrees as he nods his head forward. “But not everyone here does. That was another part of the reason that I wanted to build up your reputation here on base, so that when he did come back, there were no questions asked as to who held your strongest loyalties.”

               “And no matter what they may think, it’s always going to be to my family,” you reply happily as you punch Poe in the shoulder. “Which, in a weird way, includes you as well. And Ladson and Asher and-”

               “Including your furry blue friends?” Poe asks, and you can’t help but laugh.

               “Yeah, especially them,” you agree. “I mean, to be honest, at first I was worried when they insisted on coming back here with us, but they help out, they keep to themselves, they keep the in-fighting to a minimum, and they’ll do whatever I tell them.” Poe narrows his eyes, and you shake your head. “I mean, whatever _you_ tell them, of course.” You shake your head again. “Like I’ve told them, _you’re_ the commander, and we take orders from you. I don’t want to give orders, you know that. I like helping out, I like helping you, but I’m pretty sure the minute you decided to step down from command, I would just take Kylo and we would just retreat to lake country and lie low for the rest of our lives.”

               Poe gnaws on his lower lip as he grins at you, shaking his head from side to side. “No, you wouldn’t. You would get _so_ bored.”

               “Okay, maybe,” you agree with a slight grin. “But I do like it here. I mean, again, a large part of that mainly goes in thanks to you, but I like it. I like keeping busy, keeping active, it helps me keep my mind focused-”

               “But you still have the nightmares,” Poe says with a frown, and you can’t help but let your own expression somber as a result.

               “Yeah,” you repeat quietly. “Yeah, I do, but I’m hoping now that Kylo’s back and here to stay that I won’t have them anymore. I mean, no way to know for sure, but I can hope, right?”

               “I think you’ll be okay,” Poe says as he steps forward to wrap his arms around you, and you can’t help but return his hug, missing the leather jacket he had since swapped out for his military uniform. You’re about to pull away, when Poe holds you firmly for another moment. “Don’t forget about us,” he tells you quietly. “I know it’s been a while and you need time to reconnect, but you’ve got friends here. I don’t want to watch you lock yourself away now that he’s here.”

               You can’t help but let out a small laugh as you pull away. That was honestly a legitimate concern, and you take it seriously, looking him dead in the eye as you put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m not, I don’t plan on it, and if things start to look that way, you have my permission to tell me you’re concerned.” You shake your head. “No, I think Kylo knows that I like to keep myself active. We’ve already talked about it, and he said that as long as I’m happy, he’ll support me in whatever way I choose.” You can’t help but grin as you punch Poe lightly in the shoulder again. “So, Mustafar, here we come.”

               “Let’s just hope it goes better than the last time,” Poe says as he starts to walk with you back towards the personnel quarters.

               “But where’s the fun in that?” you ask, but Poe just shakes his head. “Oh come on, secretly you love it when I bail you out of danger.”

               “I think I’ve had enough danger for a while,” Poe tells you. “But it does seem to have a way of finding us, doesn’t it?”

               “It does,” you agree, before you look sheepishly over at Poe. “To be honest, though, I’m kind of hoping things do die down, at least somewhat. Granted, Kylo will have more time to spend with Ani while we’re gone, but I do want to spend time with him too.” You can’t help but force the words out, knowing you were making this confession to Poe of all people, but he seems to understand.

               “I know what you mean,” he says with a nod. “He’s been gone for a while, but you two are still bonded. I don’t think it’ll take you all that long before things fall into place again.”

               “I hope not,” you say as you shake your head. “It’s going to be a lot for him to adjust to though, not including all the things he hasn’t told me about yet.”

               “Hasn’t told you?” Poe echoes as he raises an eyebrow, but you can tell a part of him knows that he shouldn’t even ask.  

               “Well, just, after being in battle for so long,” you confess. “You know, with all the fighting? It’s taken a toll on him, it would take a toll on anyone.” You pause for a moment, trying to figure out what you were trying to say. “There’s just some things you can’t say with _words_ , you know? Like, you said you saw it before, how we communicate with a look? Like it goes deeper than that, like I can feel what he’s feeling just by being near him. It sounds easy to describe, but to really feel it? It’s on a whole different level.”

               “I can see that,” Poe says, and it’s clear that your conversation has come to an end as you stop in front of your quarters. You quickly wrap your arms around Poe, giving him one last quick hug before you say good night.

               “Promise me things won’t get weird?” you ask before you finally pull away, and Poe just laughs as he shakes his head.

               “Things won’t get weird,” he assures you. “I won’t let them.”

               “Good,” you reply, giving him a quick wave before you turn and head inside. You can sense Poe watching you the whole way up the path to your door, watching you disappear indoors, and for a moment you can almost feel a bittersweet pang in your chest. You had begun to have a real, functioning relationship with Poe, not in terms of your personal affairs, but by how well you seemed to work together out in the field when things became a mess, as they so often did, considering the uncertain state of the galaxy at the moment, still hovering in cautious abeyance after the announcement of the eradication of the First Order from the galaxy.

               But all of that floats away as you see Kylo standing in your living room, waiting for you, his dark armor in firm contrast against the light sandstone walls. You stare at him for a moment, almost in disbelief that he was real, that he was really standing there, that he had finally come home for good and he would never leave your side again. Now it would be you who would be leaving, on occasion, but only for brief periods at a time, and you knew that you would do whatever you needed to in order to keep yourself safe so that you could return to him unharmed, just as he had done for you.

               “So much has changed,” Kylo murmurs quietly, and you can’t help but dip your head forward in silent agreement.

               “It has,” you agree. “But I still love you. I don’t think that there was a minute that passed by that I wasn’t thinking of you in some way.”

               “I’m proud of you,” Kylo says quietly, and you can’t help but quirk an eyebrow up as you wait for him to explain. “You’re so much stronger now than you were on D’Qar. You’re much happier now, I can tell. You’re much lighter, being around him.”

               “It’s not him,” you tell him simply as you shrug your shoulders. “I’ve just found, I don’t know what to call it, a sense of purpose? I’m wanted here. I have people to look after, I have things that I have to do, I can’t just sit around and wallow in self-pity and focus on how much I missed you when there were things that needed to be done.” You shake your head from side to side as you think about how much you had done in the time that he had been away. “I feel like there’s still so much to see, so much to explain-“

               “As do I,” Kylo tells you curtly, and there’s something in his voice that you don’t like. “I need to confess something.”

               “Confess?” you repeat, the hair on the back of your neck immediately standing at attention. “What could you possibly have to confess? We’ve spoken almost every day for the past few weeks. What could you have possibly done in that time?”

               “There’s a reason I was able to keep in almost constant contact with you in that time,” Kylo says quietly. “For the past two months, I’ve been on D’Qar.”

               “On.” Your mouth snaps shut suddenly, as though you couldn’t believe what he was telling you. You can’t will yourself to speak, and reach out to him with your mind instead. _D’Qar? Seriously? You’ve been on D’Qar this_ whole time _?_

“Just for the past two months,” Kylo repeats solemnly. “I was in meditation with Luke. They wanted to make sure that there wasn’t a danger in releasing me back here, that I had no intention of succumbing back to the dark side of the Force and ruining all that the Resistance has set to accomplice now that the First Order is gone for good.”

               “But I could have come to see you,” you insist. “It wouldn’t have been more than a day’s journey; I could have come to see you.” You shake your head, unable to quell the sense of hurt and betrayal that has since risen in your chest. “And Poe didn’t even _tell_ me.”

               “No one knew,” Kylo says firmly, his voice commanding your full attention. “No one knew but Luke and a few of the others. A few considered keeping me detained on D’Qar, permanently, and thus I set to prove myself to them, and the only person who could assist me with that was Luke.”

               “You should have told me,” you insist as you cross your arms over your chest instinctively. “You should have told me what was going on. I would have-“

               “You would have,” Kylo repeats, as if this was the problem. “You would have threatened or cajoled them into letting me stay with you, and it would have done nothing to assuage their fears. I needed to show them that I could be trusted, independently of you.”

               “Independently,” you echo bitterly as you look away from him. “And here I thought we were a team. My mistake.”

               “We are,” Kylo says firmly as he takes a step towards you, but you just take a step away. “Ani understands that this is the way things had to be. If I hadn’t played their game and proved myself, they would have been constantly demanding my time, constantly questioning me, and we would never have been left alone.”

               You glance down and away from him, trying to think. “So you’re telling me that because you spent two months with Luke, that you’re free and in the clear now? That you’ve officially done your time and they’re letting you go?”

               “Released to the custody of Admiral Dameron,” Kylo replies dryly. “And I have been notified that I am in the charge of whoever he assigns me to.”

               “Meaning me,” you reply after a moment. “So you have to do whatever I say. Do whatever I tell you to.”

               “I’m at your disposal,” Kylo says simply, spreading his hands, and that’s when you can’t take it anymore. You were still hurt that he had been so close without telling you, but you didn’t want to think about that. What you wanted to think about was how you and Kylo were now together again, at long last, when you didn’t have to worry about him being struck down in battle in some far corner of the galaxy.

               “First order?” you say as you take a few steady steps towards him, not stopping until you’re directly in front of him. “Kiss me.”

               Kylo wastes no time in putting his large hands on either side of your face, but doesn’t kiss you immediately. Instead, he draws it out slowly, moving with agonizing slowness as he moves his face towards yours until your lips are barely touching. You feel yourself being pulled towards him with the same familiar magnetism that had first pulled you towards him back on the Starkiller Base, and you can tell that Kylo is quietly enjoying your torment, as every nerve in your body screamed to just grab him and kiss him. Instead, Kylo seems intent to tease you further as he gently brushes his lips against your own, slowly taking your lower lip between both of his as he pulls it out slowly, gently biting into the edge of your lip as you wriggled beneath him in frustration.

               “Should we continue this upstairs?” he asks, and it’s all you can do just to bite your lip and nod your head as Kylo picks you up with his hands under both of your thighs as you wrap your legs around his waist, pushing your body flush against his as he carries you upstairs. You don’t break your kiss with him the whole way up, your hands fisting in his dark locks as you savor each and every bit of contact that you had with him. How long had it been since he had been here last? Four months ago? Five? Time seemed to blur together into one long stretch without him, and you were in no way eager to remember what things were like without the constant reassurance of his presence beside you.

               “I love you,” you pant against his lips, making sure he knew, making sure he remembered, and you can feel Kylo’s lips part in the semblance of a cocky smile as he pushes open the bedroom door with his foot. He quickly closes it with the Force, and you waste no time in pulling off his clothes as quickly as you can, while he does the same to you, his warm hands skimming over your shoulders and down your hair, which had long since grown back to its original length.

               He pushes you back against the bed and you fall back, pulling him down with you, eagerly anticipating the feeling of his warm body against yours. Unfortunately, Kylo seems to have other things in mind as he kisses you swiftly before pulling himself off the bed slightly, extending his arms so that he can hover over you without touching you. “No teasing,” you pout as you stretch your arm up to run a hand through his long hair. “Please, I really need you right now.”

               “I know,” Kylo whispers as he bends down to kiss you quickly before he pulls away again. “But I’ve had a long time to think about just what I wanted to do with you when I got back, and I think I’ve made up my mind.”

               You can’t help but whimper as you thrust your hips up, and the corner of Kylo’s lips pull back into a happy grin as he bends down and runs his lips against your shoulder, his fingertips trailing down your sides. You roll your head back and put your arms over your head, the backs of your hands lying flat against the pillows to give him easier access to your torso. Kylo goes extremely slowly, trailing kisses down from your shoulder, down along your neck, down to your breast, which he cups in one hand as he sucks gently at the nipple there, eyes darting upwards towards your face so that he could see your reaction, not that you have much of one to give him. You want him, badly, and you know he knows this, know he can feel your need rushing through the Force bond, but Kylo continues to move agonizingly slowly as he makes his way past your breast, kissing down your torso.

               “You’ve got a new scar here,” Kylo murmurs as he runs the tip of his nose against a strip of tender pink flesh, a few inches down and to the left of your bellybutton, right where the hem of your pants had connected with your shirt. “Where did you get it?”

               You don’t answer right away, and Kylo juts out his tongue and runs it along the edge, silently prompting you to respond as your hips jerk upwards in an involuntary lurch.

               “Um, Ethera,” you pant after a moment. “Three months back. Aggressive negotiations.”

               Kylo just lets out a small hum of approval as he moves lower, pushing himself off the bed slightly so he can kiss the apex of your thigh as he holds one of your legs between each of his large hands. You know what he’s getting closer to, know where he’s going to direct his focus next, and you can’t help but pulse up and down on the bed slightly in eager anticipation to feel Kylo’s warm lips against your clit again after so long. Kylo, though, surprises you by trailing down your leg, massaging it with his lips and gentle kisses, as he slowly massages the skin beneath his fingertips in slow, rhythmic circles.         

               “Kylo-“ you whimper, although your voice comes out too stern, almost as though you were warning him.

               “Hush.” Kylo hovers one hand slightly towards you, and you can feel by the sudden weight in your hands against the bed that he’s not allowing you to move. Even still, you can feel his lips against your cold skin, and you can’t deny that it still feels agonizingly good as he takes full control. Even still, you can feel yourself getting more and more desperate with each passing second, and you need to say something, anything, to keep yourself going before you suddenly came right there on the spot, far too earlier for either of your liking.

               “I’ve noticed you’re missing some scars from before,” you murmur as Kylo gently nips at the area just behind your knee. The skin there is sensitive, far too sensitive, but Kylo keeps your leg steady in his hands. “Spend a few nice nights in bacta?”

               “More than a few,” Kylo murmurs under his breath, as if it wasn’t worth remembering, and you can’t help but laugh softly as you roll your head to the side, embracing the soft fabric of the blankets underneath your cheek.

               “But that’s over now,” you remind him happily. “From now on you’ll be spending every night with me for the rest of-“ You pause suddenly, remembering that you had already planned to go to Mustafar sooner than you thought.

               Kylo quickly reads the situation as he continues to plant soft kisses down your calf. “It’s fine,” he assures you, but suddenly that’s not enough for you.

               “If you want me to stay, I can,” you tell him quietly. “I can understand why you wouldn’t want me to go, especially-“

               “You should go,” Kylo tells you. “You want to go; I can sense it.”

               “But my guards can keep watch over him,” you insist, deliberately failing to name who _him_ was. “I can stay here with you.”

               “It’ll give me some time alone with Ani,” Kylo assures you. “I think you would get bored if you were just locked in here with me night and day.”

               “I don’t know,” you reply with a slight shrug of your shoulders. “I can think of a few things that we could do to keep us busy.”

               “Such as?” Kylo asks. You know he’s teasing, but at the same time, both of you feel it, that instant, charged connection, and you break free of his hold on you completely as you sit up. At the exact same time you do, Kylo pulls your legs down, scooching your butt off the end of the bed, and there’s a moment of confusion and the struggling of limbs as you wrap your legs around the back of his head as Kylo moves his mouth to your clit, frantically sucking and lapping at your entrance, while you push yourself against him in little timed thrusts, one hand playing with his hair as the other holds onto his shoulder for support.

               One of Kylo’s hands moves underneath your ass, almost a little uncomfortably, as he pulls you back towards him, and you can’t help but moan as he pushes you closer to his hungry lips, forcing you to maintain a constant rhythm as he makes quiet hums of appreciation. Suddenly you feel a nervous shiver run down your spine, and you recognize the feeling almost instantly, hoping that Kylo can sense it as well. “I think I’m going to cum,” you murmur, and Kylo makes a sound that you can’t quite interpret as he pushes you back onto the bed, pulling away from you as he turns you around and thrusts into you eagerly. You brace against the end of the bed as you hear him grunt as he enters you, his fingertips clenching into your sides as he stills for a moment, relishing the feeling of being inside you once again.

               “Kylo,” you manage, but you have your face buried in the blankets and you quickly prop yourself up on both arms as he begins to move inside of you at an incredibly fast pace. One of his hands moves around to tease your clit with his fingers as he pumps into you, and you know what he’s doing, but you don’t know why. He always took you from behind when he wanted you to cum fast and hard, but that wasn’t what you wanted right now. Right now you wanted slow, wanted to take the time to remember each other again, to get used to each other’s bodies after so many months away, but Kylo seemed to have other things in mind as he pushes you over the edge.

               You want to tell him to stop, but you’re already tumbling as your forehead snaps forward into the blankets again and you can feel your body go cold as you spasm beneath him, trying to stop yourself, trying to keep yourself going. You can’t tell if Kylo came or not, your head is suddenly spinning, and all at once you can feel Kylo turn you around as he climbs on top of you, kissing you as he slowly pulls you up the side of the bed with him. He’s hovering over you now, you can feel his lips press against yours in hungry kisses between your frantic gasps of breath, but you’re not quite sure what’s going on or why he had made you come so fast.

               You murmur something intelligible against his lips, but Kylo seems to understand as he continues to press his lips against yours, his hand stroking the side of your face as he angled your chin the way he wanted to kiss you with his thumb. “I’m not done with you yet,” he whispers, his lips directly above yours, and you can feel new waves of desire shoot through you as you wrap your legs around his waist again, urging your body closer to his as you wrap your arms him, running your hands down his back to feel as much of him as you possibly can. Kylo’s lips move just to the side so that he can kiss your jawline, running his lips up the side of your neck, and you can’t help but murmur in soft appreciation as you feel him jut his tongue into the familiar hollow between your jawline and your ear, immediately zoning in on your sweet spot before he bites your earlobe roughly enough to draw blood. Your eyes scrunch closed as you try to differentiate his previous gentleness from this sudden roughness as his hand suddenly fists in your hair, pulling it back to expose more of your neck as he begins to suck frantically at the base of your neck and along your collarbone, making vicious noises of lust as he sucked and bit at your fragile skin. You try to move your hands, try to wiggle out of his grasp, but Kylo is holding you down with the Force again, and you can feel yourself growing weaker again as you start to build against him.

               But two can play at that game, and you quickly summon all of your focus to you as fast as you can as you flip him over onto his back, pinning his hands down on either side of his head with your own. “I was waiting to see if you’d do that,” Kylo murmurs, and you can’t help but grin as you kiss down his neck, down his torso, teasing him slightly as you skim your short fingernails up and down the lengths of his sides before you finally get to his length and take him in your mouth, enjoying the pleasant sound of Kylo’s gasp as he reaches down to run his hand through your hair, sweeping it back and out of your face as you move your lips up and down along his shaft. You slowly move off of him, agonizing slowly, using what Force you could still muster in your state to keep him steady on the bed, pinned down at his shoulders, as you take his balls in your mouth, moving your hand up and down along his shaft.

               You can hear your name pass through Kylo’s lips as he begins to struggle now, and through the Force bond you can feel him getting more and more desperate for you as the seconds passed. For a moment, you think about teasing him, about punishing him for D’Qar, but you can’t bring yourself to do it. What happened before didn’t matter; you had already made that agreement. Between his infrequent visits and your holo conversations, you had promised that when he finally returned for good, you would put the past completely behind you and start anew, and you wouldn’t hold one another accountable for _anything_ that was said or done before that moment. Kylo was here now, he was never leaving you again, and in the end, that was all that mattered.

               Your vision blacks for a moment, and suddenly you find yourself on Kylo’s lap as he slowly lowers you down over his length, and you can’t help but let your eyelids flutter shut as you feel him push into you again, making you whole. You pant his name as you slowly collapse onto him, running both hands through his hair, brushing it away from his face as you meet his lips again, softly and gently. Kylo lets out a small murmur of appreciation as he cups your cheek in one hand, running the other over your back as he holds you closer to him and for a moment you’re just there, together, relishing the feeling of being physically united once more.

               But as good as it feels, you can’t help but want more as you slowly begin to thrust yourself against him, and Kylo seems to steady himself with one hand as he begins to pump into you as well. You lean back away from him slightly to allow him to go as far inside of you as he possibly can go as you rock back and forth, willing yourself to go as fast as you possibly can. Kylo himself grunts as he tries to match your speed, but you’re too far away, and you suddenly feel yourself being propelled forward by the Force as he pulls you back closer to him, and you wrap both your arms around his neck as you kiss him again, your breasts flush against his chest, as he begins to move you up and down along his length. You can feel the knot in your core tighten, and as you continue to kiss him, a familiar dizziness takes hold and you know that he’s about to push you over the edge for the second time that night.

               Kylo seems to sense you’re close as he abandons your lips to kiss your neck, and as soon as his tongue hits that sweet spot by your jawline, you can’t help but let it push you over the edge as you shudder around him, squeezing your legs tighter together as you can feel him lose himself inside of you as well. Kylo lets out a grunt into your shoulder as he cums, holding you so tightly to him it’s almost painful before he finally stills, resting his forehead against your shoulder. You can feel a drip of sweat from his hairline leak down and drip down along your collarbone, and Kylo plants a quick kiss against your own overheated skin before he finally pulls out of you and pulls you down onto the bed beside him so you’re both lying there on top of the covers, facing each other, limbs tangled up together as he brushes your hair back behind your ear.

               “You’re cute.”

               “Hm?”

               “You’re cute,” you repeat as you trace your fingertip along the curve of Kylo’s jaw. “The holo blurs out all your best features.”

               “I’m here now,” Kylo says reassuringly as he takes your hand and holds it to his lips, kissing it softly. His eyes never break contact with your own, and you can almost literally feel yourself melt beneath his gaze. “And I will never leave your side again.”

               “I know,” you murmur, letting a small bit of sadness overtake you as you cuddle a little closer to him. “Now I’m the one who’s going to be running off.”

               “For a week,” Kylo says dismissively, as if it’s hardly any time at all. “You like what you do for the Resistance. You think it’s important. I don’t want to hold you back from that.”

               “Do you think it’s important?” you ask him, but Kylo just shrugs, and you can tell that this is a conversation he doesn’t want to have. Even still, you want to get this out of the way sooner rather than later. “If you want me to stop, I don’t care, Kylo, I’ll stop. I have connections on other planets now, much better than we had before. If we need to go and-“

               “No,” Kylo says immediately with a quick shake of his head. “No, I don’t want that. Ani is happier here, and I don’t want to have to make him choose between us and them.” He forces a smile to his lips, but there’s a sadness to it as well. “Besides, your friends are here, aren’t they? You’ve made a life for yourself here, and I don’t want to take that away from you.”

               You can immediately feel what’s wrong, and you can’t help but let your eyes glance away before you meet his gaze again. “I really wish we would have made a life here _together_ ,” you tell him, placing one of your hands against his chest. “I really do. Here it feels like you’re joining my life, and that’s never what I wanted. I wanted the two of us to build things from the ground up.”

               “And we can,” Kylo tells you as he leans forward and kisses your forehead, but for some reason, it just doesn’t feel like enough to you.

               “I don’t know,” you reply with a lame shrug of your shoulders as you cuddle further into him. “I can’t really see you just coming to dinner in the mess hall with everyone else. Sitting down and having a normal conversation with everyone, after all that’s happened? I can’t even picture what that would look like.”

               “Neither can I,” Kylo admits, and you can’t help but snort as you try and fail to picture how awkward that would be.

               “I think I asked Poe if he would at least try being friends with you,” you remark suddenly as you recall your conversation with him earlier, and Kylo simply raises an eyebrow. “Well, you know, after everything. And I’m going to be spending a lot of time with him, so I just thought, I don’t know, maybe it would be easier-“

               Kylo just shakes his head, and you don’t push it. It was almost hard for you to remember that Kylo had once tortured Poe, probably had on multiple occasions, and just because they could work together and form an alliance as far as you were concerned, didn’t mean that they would ever be able to speak casually about anything. For all intents and purposes, Kylo may have been fighting on his side, but it had been far from his choice, and you can imagine that Kylo still had some sour feelings about working for the Resistance that he had once worked so hard to destroy. Granted, you were working with them as well, but for some reason you almost didn’t see it that way. You saw it as helping Poe, as working with other civilians to help set up a galactic trading network that could serve to benefit all parties involved, although old affiliations and alliances seemingly kept getting in the middle of that.

               But that was politics, and the questions you had about the future stability of the galaxy were not questions that anyone could answer, and so you let it go. “I’ll be civil,” Kylo assures you after a moment, and you can’t help but grin at him.

               “Ani’s been spending a lot of time with him lately,” you admit quietly. “They go out flying early in the morning most days we’re here, before I’m even up. Ani really likes it.”

               “Good,” Kylo replies simply, his expression giving nothing away. “He has my blood in him. He was born to be a good pilot.”

               You just shake your head as you look at Kylo again, really look at him. There was so much you wanted to say, so much you wanted to tell him about what had happened in the years he had been gone, all the adventures you had been on, not just with Poe, but that time you had went to visit Sadie with Ladson and Ani and ended up getting caught up in a coincidentally timed First Order attack at your old academia, the times you went out to help Luke, Rey and Finn in one conflict or another, or the times you and Ani went to explore other planets, just because you could, because you wanted him to experience that freedom to explore that he had been denied as a child.

               “We’ll have time,” Kylo says softly as he kisses your forehead gently, and you can’t help but smile softly as you snuggle into his chest. You felt calmer now, more at peace with yourself than you had been in a long while. Now you no longer had to worry about if Kylo would return to you, he was here, and he would always be right here waiting for you when you needed him to be, and you always needed him to be. You had started to take for granted just how easy it had been before, for you to simply turn to him and say whatever was on your mind, or to have him simply pick up on what you wanted to say without even having to move your lips to form the words. So often, you had found yourself wishing that he had been by your side so when a moment of nostalgia surfaced you could turn to him and say _Remember when…_ instead of having to retain the memory for a holo conversation that would happen either the next day or a few weeks from that point.

               But none of that mattered now, and you resolved to do the best that you could in order to put the past behind you, to put all of it behind you, and focus on starting your new life with Kylo, again. It felt as though you had done that once before here on Naboo, and now you were prepared to do it again. Only this time, there was no more fear, there was no more uncertainty, and there was no more hiding. Kylo was here, he was here to stay, and you finally didn’t have to worry about being hunted anymore. As long as Kylo didn’t give anyone a reason to worry, and you knew implicitly that he wouldn’t, you could spend the rest of your lives here together with Ani, your little trio finally complete.

               “Hey,” Kylo nudges you gently, and you blink sleepily, not sure if you had actually fallen asleep on him or if you had been just resting your eyes. Nevertheless, your brain feels slightly foggy, and Kylo can’t help but smile as he watches you yawn sleepily and snuggle up to him cutely. “It’s time.”

               “Time?” you ask as you press your face into his chest. He’s warm, and you’re still pleasantly sedated by the safety of knowing that Kylo was finally here and home to stay for good and he would never have to leave your side again.

               “The arrangements have already been made,” Kylo reminds you, dropping his voice down to a whisper, and your eyes suddenly fly wide open. You hadn’t even dared to speak of your plan over the holo for fear that someone might eavesdrop. You had only discussed it with Kylo, twice, and both of you agreed that it was a private matter, so private that even Ani didn’t know about it.

               “You mean we need to go tonight?” you ask Kylo quietly, the darkness of the room outside suddenly making itself known to you, and Kylo just nods his head stiffly.

               “If we want to remain discreet, we only have tonight,” Kylo tells you, and you nod your head forward quickly as you sit bolt upright and plant a quick kiss against his lips.

               _“Let’s go.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically you can think of the time jump as a second Clone Wars, this time with Kylo Ren helping to turn the tide of the war against the First Order while the New Resistance, headed by Poe Dameron and Reader, work to assuage political conflicts and help bring planets back into the New Republic Senate, although Reader doesn't care so much for politics so much as the dangerous missions they keep getting caught up in, and she even came out of it with her own little loyal army that she had always wanted, sort of my own personal throwback to Chapter 30 of _Flare_. 
> 
> We may get a glimpse of how that happened in part 4, which is going great, by the way. I've got 11 chapters written out now, mostly from Kylo's perspective although I also have one from Rey's and one from Poe's and I've got plans to add Finn and Ladson and Ani and Leia and everyone else to that list, but there's _a ton_ that I've yet to write from Kylo's perspective, but we'll get there, all things in good time! As for now, this story isn't yet over. What secret do Kylo and Reader have planned, aka, what trouble are they getting into this time? I can definitely assure you, though, that next chapter is the one that you've been waiting this entire trilogy for......you'll see. ;) 
> 
> And for fans of the graphic novel, I'm getting told that they may release a sneak peak of at least one important scene from Flare _or_ a character sketch in time for the next chapter, so I'll post a link when they post it......but I am just as excited as everyone else to see what it is!!!!! 
> 
> Survey link is still [here](https://goo.gl/forms/j3wBcEPerjFZVCSD2) and I'll see you all back here on Tuesday...until then, cheers!!


	84. Chapter 84

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue Part 2/3 
> 
> NSFW content ahead

               You slip out onto the balcony, dropping deftly to the ground beside you without waiting to turn around to see if Kylo is following after you. You know he is, and you can hear his own quiet impact on the firm ground as he lands just behind you, so close you can feel his shoulder graze the back of your arm as he stands up.

               “Taika,” you whisper into the air, your eyes trying to adjust to the darkness around you. “Kraiim? Tu nas’chek?” Your house had been built on the very edge of the base for a reason, and while Poe had first seemed against it, you had argued that you wanted the view of the river and the green plains of Naboo in your backyard, if not just for you, then for Kylo, to give him a sense of freedom if he was really forbidden from leaving your quarters. Poe had, expectedly, relented, and it provided the perfect opportunity for you to sneak out and away from the base when everyone had their backs turned.

               You had figured tonight would be the safest night to pull this off, considering that anyone who knew you and Kylo figured you would probably be too wrapped up in each other to even consider escaping, but you weren’t _escaping_ , not really, not, at least, in the traditional sense of the word. No, Kylo had arranged a secret rendezvous that you could only truly proceed with now that he was here to stay, and you couldn’t deny that you felt ready to burst at the seams with a nervous, quaking energy.

               “Mi kri’layeh ha,” you hear Taika respond, and you let out a sigh of relief as you quickly signal Kylo to follow along behind you as you make your way down to the side of the river, where there is a small speeder boat waiting for you, hidden under the cover of darkness.

               “Ready?” Kraiim asks, practicing his Basic, and you can’t help but beam at him.

               “Yes, we are, thank you,” you tell him happily as you jump deftly into the speeder, and Kylo quickly steps on board, his legs so long he just takes one exaggerated step into the boat instead of hopping in like you did. “Show-off,” you murmur teasingly under your breath, and the corner of Kylo’s lips quirk upwards into the semblance of a smile. You expected him to be at least slightly unnerved by your new friends, but he seemed more or less at ease around them. Maybe it was because he saw how loyal they were to you, but in either case, you felt the need to offer him an explanation. “I know you told me not to tell anyone about this, but at least this way, if we get caught, I can say you were under guarded watch the whole time.”

               “Fair,” Kylo relents. “You know we need at least two witnesses, at any rate. I believe they will suffice.”

               “Tarbek chani _suffice_ ,” Kraiim snorts, and you can’t help but shake your head as you think quickly.

               “Tarback chen _help_ ,” you explain quickly, trying to offer him a more appeasing choice of words. “You _help_. He thanks you for your _help_.”

               Kraiim seems to nod in understanding, although you can’t be sure how much he had _actually_ understood as he starts the speeder and begins to move as quietly as possible down the river, trying to call as little attention to yourselves as possible. “Where was this place again?” you ask as you turn back to Kylo. “You said it was just off the edge of Gungan territory, correct?”

               “Varykino,” Kylo reminds you, and you taste the word on your tongue as you nod your head slowly, trying to press it into your memory. “It’s the name of the Naberrie lake retreat. They were a very prominent family on Naboo; my grandmother was of the House Naberrie, and she married my grandfather at the very spot we’re headed. It was rebuilt after the Galactic Civil War, although I have never been there myself.”

               “Oh, no, that’s good,” you say stiffly as you nod your head forward. “No, we’re just going to get married in the same place that your grandparents did. That can’t be a bad sign in any way, considering just how well their marriage seemed to work out for them.”  

               “Times were different,” Kylo says firmly, and if you’re not mistaken, he’s a little insulted. “My grandfather left her to _fight_ the war, and I’ve just returned. I have no intention of leaving you now.”

               “Anakin has since explained,” you tell him quickly. “He went over to the dark side in order to try to save her life when he thought that she was in danger, when he started having _nightmares_ about it. I don’t want his past mistakes to be linked to our fate as well.”

               “I think we both know that I have already ventured too far to the dark side to ever go down that path again,” Kylo reminds you, but you just shake your head.

               “It’s not you I’m worried about,” you tell him quietly. “I’m still going off to fight, I’m still having nightmares, and I still worry about you. I’ve spoken to Anakin, and he agrees that we’re a lot alike. I just don’t want to make the same mistakes he made.”

               “I won’t let you,” Kylo says comfortingly as he puts a hand on your shoulder. “And I doubt that he will either. You already know what it feels like to watch yourself lose control; you won’t let it happen to you again.”

               “I hope not,” you agree, but the truth was that you could no longer remember when your thoughts had begun to shift, if you had ever began to clear identify that in the first place, and you were more than just a little concerned that it could easily happen again without your knowledge. But with Kylo by your side, you knew that he would not let you fall again. Regardless, this was not a conversation you wanted to continue, and so you shifted uncomfortably as Naboo’s light breeze blew the hair away from your face. “The territory is a good ways out. Tell me more about the Order. Why them, specifically?”

               “Besides the convenience of their being located on Naboo?” Kylo asks, and you can’t help but tilt your head to the side in consideration. “I may have spared the life of someone in the Order a good ways back, and he owes me a debt.”

               “Oh, I’m glad you can see there’s a situation where it doesn’t pay off to murder anyone,” you tease gently, but Kylo just shakes his head good-naturedly as he continues.

               “The Brotherhood of Constamence stands for exactly what their name implies,” Kylo continues. “ _Stamen_ is an ancient Naboo name for the threads of fate, which they believe holds all life in their balance. Everything that happens is held together by these threads, and each person’s life is controlled by a single thread. Sometimes these threads become twisted together, and two individual lives can come together and merge onto one aligned path.”

               “Like ours?” you ask with a smirk, and you can’t help but feel a small bubble of happiness rise in your chest to see Kylo return it.

               “Like ours,” he repeats simply.

               “Are they the same Order that married your grandparents?” you ask, but Kylo just shakes his head.

               “No, that was the Brotherhood of Cognizance,” he explains. “Their Order is long since extinct. Once Darth Sidious discovered that they were responsible for officiating their marriage, he had them eliminated to ensure that the secret of their union was never revealed, and to help secure his control over my grandfather.” You glance down and away, not sure how to respond to that, but Kylo quickly continues nonetheless.

               “The rituals of the Order invoke the equality between fire and water, a symbol of their belief that a life well-lived is one of balance,” Kylo continues. “Fire and water are particularly central to their belief in moderation, as life requires both to continue. Too little heat or water is death by freezing and thirst, too much is death by consumption and drowning. To support life, both must exist in moderation.”

               “There sounds like there might be something to that,” you admit quietly, but Kylo seems to shrug it off, as if it didn’t make much of a difference to him. You, regardless, couldn’t help but consider how you used to constantly fluctuate from extremes, and while you seemed to have more or less found a comfortable balance _lately_ , even you had to admit that it was a lifelong struggle and there would be times when you would inevitably watch yourself slip. You were just glad that you had your friends and family there beside you, to steer you back along the right path, should ever such a thing occur. 

               “Their practices _are_ a bit unusual for Naboo,” he goes on. “Especially given the Nabooean inclination for aesthetic arts and contemplation. Instead, they favor _active_ religion, practicing their belief in a decentralized manner, walking the streets of Naboo, giving water to the thirsty and fire to the hearthless. They’re easily recognized by their red cloaks, red being a symbol for conscious life, upon which they’ve emblazoned a golden sunburst as a symbol of someone trusted to fairly meditate a dispute to the outcome of equal detriment or benefit. Unlike the Old Jedi Council, they do not practice enforcement, only guidance, and thus they are respected universally on Naboo. The closest thing they have to a centralized capital is the Temple of Fate in the center of a nearby lake, where hopeful initiates can come once every three years for three weeks in hopes of being selected by a brother or sister of the Order for training by apprenticeship.”

               “It sounds like you know something about them,” you murmur under your breath as you glance up at him, but Kylo looks away, and you know implicitly that Kylo seemed to have more experience with this group than he had initially seemed to want to let on.

               “Fate is a bit of a central concept for them,” he goes on. “They believe that nothing happens without import, and that every follower of the faith must be present in the moment, lest they overlook the significance of the day, their minds clouded if they remained too focused on the future. As such, their central deity is the Goddess of Dawn, the symbol of clarity, purpose, and the balance of light and dark. They believe that no man’s fate can ever truly be known, but their peak time of meditation is just before dawn, since they believe that the glimmers of the threads of one’s fate are best illuminated by the sun’s first glow.”

               “You definitely know something about them,” you say as you turn to confront him. “Do you want to tell me why?” Kylo stays silent, and you can’t help but cross your arms over your chest. You didn’t want this to be an interrogation, but at the same time, you wanted answers. You studied his face for a moment, trying to figure out what felt off to you, before you finally deduce exactly what it is that’s bothering you. “You never saved anyone’s life, did you?”

               Kylo blinks for a moment, as though he hadn’t expected this, before he turns to face you completely. “Are you saying that I’m lying to you?”

               “No,” you say adamantly as you give your head a firm shake to the side. “ _You_ didn’t save anyone. Ben Solo did.”

               Kylo hesitates for a moment before an uneasy smile surfaces to the corner of his lips. “Correct,” he says at length, running one hand gently through your hair to show his appreciation for the fact that you knew, implicitly, that Ben Solo had been dead for many, many years, and there was nothing of him that still stood in Kylo Ren’s place. “I was here with Luke when I was much, much younger, but that’s a story for another time.”

               “But do they know who you are now?” you press. “Do they know about what you’ve done? Are they still willing-?”

               “They are,” Kylo says curtly, as though he doesn’t want to be questioned. You pout at his tone, and Kylo quickly puts one hand on your shoulder as he tilts your chin upwards with his other hand, gently compelling you to look up at him. “Don’t dwell on it too much. This isn’t about them. This is about _us_.”

               You laugh for a moment, feeling a blush spread over your cheeks as you glance up at him. “You know, I think that might have been the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”

               Kylo doesn’t respond as he lowers his lips to yours, and you allow yourself to relax into his warm embrace, taking him in. The night air of Naboo was cool, but crisp, and Kylo quickly pulls you into him as he wraps his arms around you, holding you tightly to him. “I’m so glad you’re back,” you murmur into the folds of his armor. You wondered what he would wear now that he was no longer fighting, or if he would continue to wear what he always did out of habit. You briefly considered the fact that they may give him some form of standard Resistance uniform to wear, and you knew without thinking that Kylo would burn it immediately, either that, or tear it to shreds with his lightsaber.

               You feel the boat suddenly come to a stop, and you look up from Kylo’s robes to see yourself greeted by two rows of burning candles, tightly spaced together, lining a small inclined path that led up from the shore. The path seems to gently curve around to the entrance of a round stone gazebo overlooking the water, and you follow the reflection of a soft yellow glow off its pristine surface up to the top of the gazebo, where you see its roof alight, crimson flames dancing within a large stone bowl. There is a man standing in the center of the gazebo, a large bound book in his hand, and over his shoulders is draped a long red cloak that collapses in waves at the ground around his sandaled feet.

               “That’s Pontifex Entalo Hieron,” Kylo whispers to you as he offers you his hand and helps you step out of the boat, and you can’t help but suddenly feel shy and awkward about this whole arrangement. A part of you honestly wanted to go through with this, to truly give this reunion more significance than you had any other, but at the same time, you didn’t need any acknowledgement or reassurance to know that your bond was real and legitimate. Your relationship with Kylo Ren had been tested time and time again, and you had somehow endured each and every trial that you had to suffer through. Now, though, you supposed it was time to make things as official as you possibly could.

               You hesitantly make your way towards the Pontifex, with Taika and Kraiim following silently behind you. The man’s face looks stern, and you can’t tell if he wants to be doing this or if he simply feels coerced to repay the debt to Kylo that he had apparently owed him from his earlier years. You were beginning to think that this was perhaps a mistake, that you didn’t need to go through with this after all, but Kylo only tightens his grip on your hand as he senses your wayward thoughts. _He_ wanted to go through with this, for one reason or another, and if Kylo could endure the embarrassment of such a ceremony, then surely you could as well.

               “Welcome,” the Pontifex says as you approach, and Kylo just nods his head forward in greeting. “Are you ready to proceed?”

               “We are,” Kylo says firmly, giving your hand another firm squeeze, and you can’t help but stare past the Pontifex towards the darkness of Naboo’s night all around you, trying to detract from how awkward you felt.

               “Are these your witnesses?” the Pontifex asks slowly as he glances behind you at the two furry blue creatures, and you can’t help but snort as you finally bring yourself to glance at him.

               “Guards,” you tell him flatly. “But they will do.”

               The Pontifex looks like he is about to say something in protest, when someone else speaks up from behind you. “And don’t forget about us.”

               You drop Kylo’s hand and spin around abruptly to see Ani strolling towards you, with his own red and pale gray BB-unit rolling along beside him. “Is that his droid?” Kylo mutters under his breath, and you can’t help but roll your eyes.

               _Just be glad it’s that one,_ you tell him. _The last one he had was a blue and green unit that malfunctioned so badly it kept trying to ram itself through every wall in the house._

“How did you even find us?” you ask Ani as you spread your hands at your sides in disbelief.

               “I followed you out,” Ani responds simply. “It wasn’t that hard to track you down. I could sense that you were both up to something, so I wanted to have a look for myself.”

               “We could have been-” You just shut your mouth as you close your eyes and shake your head from side to side. “It doesn’t matter.” You allow yourself to relax for a moment as you glance at Kylo. _He is our son. He should be here for this._

               You can tell that Kylo would have preferred that this was something just between you, trying to subtly prove that just because you had had his child didn’t have any effect on just how much he wanted to be with you, but you had never seen it that way, never entertained those doubts, not even once, and you subtly tried to encourage him through the Force that his fears were unfounded as you take his hand again and turn back to the Pontifex. “Looks like the family is all here,” you tell him. “I think we’re ready.”

               The Pontifex gestures for Ani and his droid to stand just outside the edge of the circle, and from somewhere behind you, you can suddenly sense a few figures making their way towards you from out of the still darkness of Naboo’s silent night. You glance over your shoulder to see eight robed brothers and sisters enter the circle in an alternating formation, walking around the circle three times in what seemed to be a well-rehearsed pattern as they scatter some kind of powder on the floor. You glance down quickly to notice that there is some sort of circular pattern sketched into the floor, but you can’t quite make out what it’s supposed to be with only the dim light of the candles to aid your vision. When they are done, the eight of them file out before returning with bowls that sound as though they are filled with liquid. The sisters are all carrying red bowls with a liquid that is faintly glowing amber, and the brothers are carrying golden bowls with what looked to be just plain water. They walk in a slow circle around you again, crouched low, carefully pouring out the contents of their bowls so that the liquid collects in the pattern without splashing before filing back out.

               _Does this seem weird to you?_ you ask Ani silently. Considering this had been Kylo’s idea, you didn’t want to insult him by asking, but you couldn’t deny that you were seemingly unnerved by these foreign customs and what they meant. _Please tell me that it’s not just me._

 _It’s not just you_ , is Ani’s immediate response, but he doesn’t offer much more than that as the Pontifex begins speaking.

               “Water and fire, the two elements most sacred to sentient life, both present the balance of equal harmony,” he begins. “With these, may the Goddess of Dawn light your path.”

               As he speaks, you can’t help but notice that the glowing amber liquid is collecting into the lines of the circular pattern, illuminating it slowly, but it only illuminates about half the pattern and it’s almost impossible to tell what purpose the water serves in the dim light. One brother and one sister re-enter, bearing a torch lit from a bowl of red flame they had lit hanging over the entrance, and the brother hands his torch to Kylo as the sister hands her torch to you before they leave again. You hold the flame in both hands, holding it slightly out in front of you, wondering what in the galaxy they expected you to do with the torch aside from juggling it.

               Regardless, the Pontifex opens the book and begins reading. “In the beginning, there was darkness, and from darkness came forth the glow of the dawn, bringing life and light to all. After every dawn, the certainty of the day gives way to dusk and the secrets of the night. In this place, we invoke the light of the Goddess Aeré to illuminate the night, to banish its secrets as the fates of the two gathered in this place forever intertwine. As Set and Veré before them, may their love be forever celebrated, burning eternal.” The Pontifex looks up momentarily to motion to the floor around him. “You will be united in the light of the Goddess, wrought by flame to dispel the darkness. Touch your flames to the water and light the circle in symmetry, representing the balance required of a holy union.”

               You almost can’t believe that you’re doing this, but you make a weak attempt to hide your embarrassment by doing what you’re told with as straight a face as possible. You and Kylo both bend down slightly, starting at the top of the circle as you each move in opposite rotations to light the edge of the circle before meeting at the other end. The torches immediately burn out upon touching, and you quickly place it down on the ground beside Kylo’s, wiping your hand on the side of your pants as you turn back around to face the Pontifex. You can now see that you’re both standing in the middle of a wheel of fire, alternating red and golden flames in the unmistakable wavy pattern of the sun, used by almost every human culture across the galaxy.

               “Okay,” you mutter under your breath as you watch the flames dance around you. “That’s kind of cool, I’ll admit that much.”

               “You may now speak,” the Pontifex informs you, and for a moment you think he’s giving you permission to _talk_ before you realize he’s giving you a chance to recite your vows. Kylo turns to you and raises an eyebrow, as if expecting you to go first, but you have nothing to say. You had already shared with him every emotion that you ever had, and he knew deep down how you felt about him, he could feel it for himself, and yet his steady gaze insisted on you making a public proclamation of your love for him for everyone to hear. You consider doing it in another language so no one will hear it but you, but Kylo seems to want this, seems to want to hear your emotions for him expressed out loud, and so you take a deep breath and pause for a moment to collect your thoughts so that when you spoke, your speech would be clear and unadulterated by trepidation.

               “You had me, Kylo Ren, from the moment I met you, I was always yours. The Force brought us together, and I trusted the Force to keep us united, and it has. You have returned to me, just as you have always returned to me. Even when the bond between us was severed, it renewed again, and I can believe in no stronger sign that I was always meant to be beside you, and I will do my best to honor that, in contemplation and in action, in thought and in deed, I will do my best to honor you, always. I know you used to believe that you were darkness and I was light, and then you were the light to my darkness, but I see now that that was never true. There is dark and light inside us both, and together we can provide each other with that balance, and only together can we be as strong as we both desire, in every way that matters. But it is not strength, nor power; it is happiness I seek above all others, and with you by my side, I have no doubt that we will be able to achieve it so long as we remain together. My heart is yours, as I have always been yours, and I offer myself to you freely now, of my own choice, I wish to belong to you forever, and that I may never be parted from you again from this moment onwards, through the Force and in the After, may we always remain together.”

               “May we always remain together,” Kylo repeats solemnly, and you can’t help but look down for a moment, embarrassed with yourself for getting so over-sentimental. These were all thoughts that Kylo knew implicitly, but you had never truly had the courage to say them out loud. Now, though, the words were there, for a complete stranger to hear no less, and you could feel your heartbeat thumping in your chest, as if you wanted to run and hide in shame of your affection.

               “I was drawn to you from the moment I first saw you,” Kylo begins, and suddenly you can feel a new sense of panic flooding your veins. Telling Kylo how you felt for everyone to hear seemed bad enough, but you weren’t sure how to feel about standing there and letting everyone else listen to _him_ proclaim his love for you. There was something so, so _raw_ about his sincerity that you wanted to keep exclusive, but Kylo seemed intent on getting the words out. “Before I used to believe that it was simply your latent abilities with the Force that I was drawn to, but now I understand that I knew you when I first saw you. I had often asked the Force for a sign to lead me down the right path, and then you appeared. You showed me that there was another way, that following the pull to the light didn’t have to be a weakness, and through you it allowed me to find myself. You gave me what I had never known I wanted, a family, and despite my past attempts to break our connection, you remained dissuaded and loyal to me, even in the darkest of times. You have forgiven me for every offense I have committed against you, and despite the tribulations that have come between us, nothing in this galaxy could ever convince me to leave your side. No matter what trials arise in our future, I promise you that I will never leave your side again, and I will be with you, always, throughout this life and the next.”

               You feel your lower lip trembling slightly, and for a moment you couldn’t understand how you had let yourself become so overwhelmed by his proclamation of affection. But you were, and while you bite your lip in an attempt to hold yourself back, you don’t want to. No, this was Kylo, your Kylo, your _husband_ now, as official as it ever was, and you grab his face in both hands as you reach up and kiss him quickly, with all the force you can muster. Kylo kisses you back, and while you can hear the Pontifex proclaim something about how the marriage would be transcribed in the scroll of the Order and placed in their archives for their official records, you could hardly bring yourself to care about the officiality of it. You and Kylo were bonded, and whether you were married by convential means, you had a lasting bond through the Force, one that would carry you through this life and into the next, and that was one bond that would never be broken.

               Kylo pulls away from you slowly and reluctantly before he pulls his scarf away from his own neck and drapes it around your shoulders in such an elaborate way that it was almost ceremonial, marking you as his once and for all. The brother and the sister who had handed you the flaming torches kneel at the steps of the entrance, and the circle of flames drains into two lines that form a path to a small stone building nearby. Kylo turns his head to the side as if to address Ani, and you can just barely register him silently telling him to stay there. The Pontifex does a small bow as he moves aside to let you pass, and Kylo takes your hand as he leads you between the trails of flames and into the small house.

               There’s nothing inside but a big stone slab, but that’s not what calls your attention first. The roof looks to be made completely of glass, and you can’t help but admire Naboo’s starry night sky for a moment before Kylo calls your attention back to him. “Are you ready?”

               “For what?” you ask blankly as you gesture around the room. “There’s nothing in here.” Kylo looks confused for a moment, as if he couldn’t understand how _you_ couldn’t understand what was going on, and then the implication suddenly hits you as you lower your voice to a hushed, excited whisper. “Wait, they want us to fuck? In here?”

               “It’s the end of the ritual,” Kylo explains, undeterred by your apparent reluctance. “The unification of the flesh, of two bodies coming together as one?”

               You immediately turn to the stone slab and you can feel your stomach flop as you try to imagine just how many other couples had found their own _unification_ on that slab. On second thought, you didn’t want to dwell on it much longer in order to try to piece together a solid number. Kylo can see your trepidation and he just shakes his head. “We don’t have to do it on that if you don’t want to,” he tells you, and you can’t help but cross your arms over your chest as you quirk an eyebrow up at him.              

               “No?” you ask. “Then where do you suppose we-” Your voice is cut short as Kylo suddenly grabs you and picks you up, wrapping your legs around his waist as he kisses you, pushing you against the stone wall for support as he takes you in, running his hands under your shirt and across the cool skin of your stomach. You almost couldn’t believe that you had to fuck inside this stone building instead of on the warmth of your own bed, but you supposed you had already done that once tonight. This was customary, at least for their Order, and although you didn’t really believe in much guiding you other than the Force, you supposed that this was one of their traditions that you didn’t mind partaking in.

               “You don’t want to do this,” Kylo murmurs quietly as he pulls away slightly, and you quickly shake your head from side to side to dispel this notion.

               “Not true,” you tell him as you wrap one hand around the back of his neck, to prevent him from pulling away further. “I just think it’s strange to do this here in some stone shed, but I am far from against this.” Kylo pauses for a moment, as if trying to think of something that might make you feel better, but that’s not necessarily what you need right now. You weren’t quite sure what you needed, but you tried to push your wayward thoughts from your mind as you turned Kylo’s face back towards you. “It’s fine, Kylo, I-“ You pause for a moment as you consider your situation. “I think this is appropriate, wouldn’t you say? I mean, didn’t we start off just this way when we first started getting involved back on the Starkiller Base?” You bite your lip as you look him up and down. “I mean, before you almost ran out on me.”

               “I didn’t run out on you.” Kylo turns back to you suddenly, and you just arch an eyebrow, wondering what kind of nerve this could have hit after so long. Kylo seems to understand your confusion as his expression softens. “I never told you,” he admits at length. “I should have. I thought about it so many times, but it just never felt right.”

               “You’ve been keeping secrets?” you ask him, letting him release you as you slowly slide down the wall. “After all this time, you’ve been keeping secrets from me?”

               “No,” Kylo says quickly with a firm shake of his head. “It’s not a secret, it’s personal. Much like the Force visions that you have with Anakin, mine are also personal in nature.” You cross your arms over your chest, not liking where this conversation was headed. It seemed almost downright insulting if Kylo was only going to bring this up to tell you that it was too personal to share with you, and he seems to sense this. “I never explained this to you, but my relationship with the Force has always been complicated. I always wanted to, to see how things would turn out. I always wanted to know things, before they happened, so I could control them, manipulate them to my favor. Snoke helped me control that, helped me to summon visions not just when I slept but in my waking moments as well, around emotionally charged events, only I never seemed to control them as well as I wished I was able.”

               “You had a vision that night.” Your voice is deadpan, realizing that you were only realizing what seemed to be a cornerstone of Kylo’s Force abilities after all this time. “You never ran away at all. You backed off because you saw something you didn’t want to see. You were _scared_.”

               “I was,” Kylo admits quietly as he looks away from you. “What I saw, believe I saw, was a shatterpoint. It’s a unique revaltion of the Force that provides you with a rare moment of clarity in order to dictate future events. I saw the way things would have continued if I continued on with my present course of action; if I had simply walked out and left you, it’s possible that things could have resulted in an entirely different way.”

               “If you had walked out, I may not have ever reached out for you when I was stuck in that room with Ladson,” you murmur, and Kylo gestures to you vaguely with one hand, as if you just proved his point. “But it doesn’t matter,” you insist looking up at him. “I _know_ the Force, and I know we would have ended up together one way or the other. It was meant to happen.”

               “It was,” Kylo says as he glances back towards you, a gentle smile pulling at the corner of his lips. “It was; I sense it too.”

               “I want you to show me,” you say as you step towards him. “I know you saw a glimpse of something that scared you-“

               “It didn’t scare me,” Kylo says firmly. “I just needed a moment to collect myself, that’s all. It was sudden, and I didn’t know how to explain it, not even to myself. It was something I didn’t expect, something I didn’t even know I wanted. It took me some time to… _adjust_ to the way I felt about you, but I think you already knew that.”

               “I had some idea,” you reply teasingly. “But it was also fair. You knew that my time on the Starkiller Base was limited. If that had been just another assignment and the Tortutaru hadn’t been there on some clandestine purpose, I would have left-”

               “No, you wouldn’t have,” Kylo says suddenly as he turns back to you sharply. “I would have asked you to stay, and you would have.”

               You consider that for a moment, trying to play it over in your mind. Of course it would have depended on how your relationship had been progressing at the time, but if you had really gotten to be friendlier with Phasma, and if he could think of something useful for you to do on base, if Taro or one of the others had decided to stay behind, you would have stayed. You would have missed Sadie and Ladson, but you would have been free to visit them, and for a moment you allow yourself to get caught up in hypotheticals, something you hadn’t done in years, as you tried to imagine how that situation would have played out.

               “Doesn’t matter,” you say quickly as you attempt to snap yourself out of it. “That’s not what happened. We’re together, and that is all that matters to me.” You pause for a moment, steadying your resolve. “But if you’re comfortable with it, I want to see what it is that you saw while you were touching me.”

               “It was a lot of flashes,” Kylo warns you, but you just shake your head to show him that you don’t care, and Kylo steps forward as he takes your hand in his, kissing the backs of your fingers gently before he presses them to his temple, and you close your eyes as you focus, letting Kylo lead you back to what he wanted you to see.

               _In a split second, you’re against the wall and he’s grabbing you and kissing you, but there’s a recklessness in the way he handles you, something desperate and urgent in the way he runs his hands across your skin, desperate to consume every inch of you. Incensed by his mercuriality, you break the kiss and move your lips to the soft spot where his neck meets his collar bone and graze it with your teeth before you start sucking, applying as much force as he had used on you. He likes it, you can feel him shudder with unexpected rapture as he_ lets _you kiss him in that way, letting himself risk being marked, and you had never truly taken the time to appreciate before that Kylo had made a conscious decision to let you touch him this way, to let you take control. A part of him wanted to demand that you stopped, wanted to slam your head back into the wall and punish you for even thinking that you could be as rough with him as he was being with you, but a part of him liked it, and while he was confused as to_ why _he liked it, he couldn’t get a frim grip on all of his thoughts as they seemed to slip out from underneath his control._

 _As your teeth split his delicate skin and your tongue registers the salty, metallic taste of blood, you start to pull away, and Kylo suddenly floods with panic, misreading the situation as if he thought you were suddenly going to ask him to stop. Desperate to continue whatever_ this _was, without thinking, he immediately dips his hand inside your waistband, thrusting a single finger inside of you. You can read him now, nervous and unsure, but overcome with some new sensation of lust as he quickly thrusts two fingers into your mouth and bids you to suck to keep you quiet. He lets himself start to be overcome by the myriad of sensations flooding through his own body as he can feel you quicken against his fingers, desperate for his relief, and he isn’t sure what to do. Should he give it to you? A part of him wants this, wants to hear you begging for him, wants you desperate and needy, on your knees before him, but a part of him doesn’t want to hurt you, doesn’t want to see you upset, and he can’t understand why he even_ cares _when suddenly it happens._

Kylo was right.

               _Flashes of skin race across your vision, and you can hear yourself panting Kylo’s name, although it’s distinctly different from the way you’re saying it now. He’s close to you now, you can feel your sweating bodies moving together in the heat of the night, you can feel lips upon lips but it’s not desperate and hungry and lustful like it is now, charged with the thrill of the unfamiliar. No, this is soft and passionate, gentle and familiar, and Kylo_ likes _it. For a moment he feels at ease, at peace, his constant inner turmoil suddenly quieted and you can almost tangibly feel the relief he finds in you in that moment. The situation changes slightly, flashes and sounds that are too fast for you to glimpse, and suddenly you feel something else in your chest, despair and panic and a sense of affection that bordered almost on the edge of obsession._

 _He’s holding you closely now, he has your head tucked underneath his chin as he tells you that he loves you. The words come out stable and strong, but inside he felt like he was breaking to pieces. You got the distinct sense that you were sleeping, that you couldn’t hear this proclamation, as Kylo’s words felt burdened with unease, yet confident that he would never be forced to take ownership of them just yet. He holds you tightly to him now, repeating the words again as a new sense of awe takes over him. He means it, he’s just beginning to understand that he_ means _it, but that in turn means something else, means that he’ll have to let you go to protect you, but he wants you more than anything else, wants to feel you against him, wants you to say those three words back to him, if you would only-_

“Don’t you dare.”

               _Those aren’t the words he expected to hear and suddenly you pull him back towards you. Kylo’s not expecting this as he turns back to you, almost unaware that he had been ready to leave. What he had seen had left him internally shaken. He had never expected that he would need anyone, and yet for a moment he had felt so bound to you, and what’s more, he felt as though he_ wanted _to be, and he couldn’t imagine what you could have done to make him feel that way. You intrigued him, but-_

“Don’t you dare fucking leave, Kylo. Fucking-“

               _He suddenly snaps back to the reality of the situation as he pushes you back against the wall and dips his hand into your pants again, plunging two fingers in and out of you as fast as possible. He liked this, he realized, he liked the way you were building against him, the way that he seemed to affect you as much as you affected him. You_ needed _him, he could feel it, and although he wasn’t fond of being needed, he almost liked the way you buried your forehead into his shoulder as you found your release against him._

               _But even still, your relase comes with the realization that this could happen. What he saw, the way he had allowed himself to become totally lost in you, could yet happen. But it couldn’t. He couldn’t let it. He had felt_ peace _when he was moving against you, and that was one emotion that the Supreme Leader forbade at all costs. No, he had to surrender himself to the dark side of the Force completely. Everything else was just a distraction, not worth his time, simply an idle means of pulling him away from his ultimate goal, and yet-_

_He couldn’t help himself as he turned away from you to hide his shame as he puts his fingers in his mouth and sucks them clean. For a moment he wanted to take you up against the wall again, to bury his nose between your thighs and taste you until your juices ran down his chin, and these were not thoughts that he could ever have seen himself entertaining with so little regard to the consequences. There was something about you that unnerved him, something that he seemed to sense about you without being able to tangibly describe, and he couldn’t allow himself to give in to you without knowing who you were. For all he knew, this could be a trick of some kind, whether by the Resistance or the Supreme Leader himself, to see how far he could be tempted._

“Thank you.”

               _You reach up and plant a chaste kiss on his lips, and he can’t help but feel his emotions crashing like turbulent waves within him. You were not part of any plot against him, he knew that without being able to truly understand how. You were just as confused as he was about what you were feeling, but you_ could _feel it too. You could feel some kind of connection, but where would that connection lead? He could not entertain attachments, not entertain anything that would seduce him away from the teachings of the dark side, and yet something about you made all of that seem insignifigant by comparison. He had given up literally everything for this, left his old life behind him, and for a moment he caught himself wanting to throw it all away for some girl that he could barely understand._

_And yet the Force had offered him…something? Was it a sign? A warning? He wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t stay with you watching him with those large, nervous eyes. If he stayed, if he spoke, he might say something that he may live to regret, and he could not speak a word without thinking this through further. There had to be answers to this, but in the meantime, he was going to have to keep his thoughts guarded from the Supreme Leader. He didn’t know who you were, but he could tell you were innocent, and he wanted to keep things that way. He cared about you, cared if you were safe, and that was something that he couldn’t quite understand either._

As he turns to leave the room, you break the connection, feeling more pensive and melancholy than nostalgic. Seeing things from his perspective had been oddly liberating, and yet while his thoughts and doubts were nothing new, it was odd for you to feel them as your own. “I’m sorry,” Kylo offers, sensing your shifting emotions through the Force bond, but you just shake your head.

               “I cried after you left,” you tell him quietly, and Kylo looks surprised, almost alarmed, to hear this confession. “It was a lot to take in. Remember, first you came offering me safety, then you choked me and almost left me for dead, and then you did… _that_. I didn’t know how to cope with any of it. I didn’t know what you wanted from me.”

               “Neither did I,” Kylo admits quietly. “I didn’t know how to explain our connection; I didn’t know what I should even do about it once I did. I just knew that I wanted you, and I knew that I shouldn’t. Every second I spent with you, I felt us becoming more connected, and yet I never tried to stop it, until I learned your friend knew about us. I thought she might tell someone, and I would have no way left to protect you. I tried to distance myself for your protection, and I didn’t know that your mentor had locked you away until it was too late. When I finally learned…” He shakes his head, as if it wasn’t worth remembering.

               “It’s not,” you agree as you reach up and brush his hair back away from his face. You press your lips up against his, slowly, softly, realizing there were so many things that could have come between you, so many times you could have lost him forever, but you never did. Instead, you had remained constantly weaving in and out of each other’s lives, and now you could put the unpleasant parts of your past behind you forever. Kylo was here now, he was here to stay, and you could finally have the peace that you had always been seeking.

               Kylo seems to sense your shift in emotions as he brushes his thumbs against either side of your cheeks as he kisses you more firmly than before. You can feel him putting more of himself into the kiss, channeling greater affection for you into each touch as you slowly press yourself against him, wanting as much physical contact as you possibly could draw from him. You needed him to be closer to you, needed to feel him against you, and suddenly you can feel Kylo’s hunger for you deepen as he pushes you back against the wall with much more force than before.

               “I love you,” he murmurs against your parted lips, and you let out a small gasp of acknowledgement and reciprocation. Suddenly you don’t care where you are so long as Kylo is beside you, and right now, you need to feel him more than anything. You barely give yourself a moment of breath as you break the kiss to pull off his shirt before your lips are attacking his again while your hands trail over his shoulders and down the warm skin of his back. Kylo, to his credit, doesn’t take off your shirt so your sensitive skin isn’t rubbed raw against the stone wall, but he lifts up your shirt as he presses his chest against yours so that you can feel his warmth against you.

               You can feel yourself quickening now, spurned on by the sense of emotional closeness that the revelations this night had provided, and Kylo suddenly dips his hand into your pants and slips a single finger inside of you. You’re about to cry out when suddenly you can feel two fingers slip inside your mouth to keep you quiet, and you can’t help but snort at the familiarity. Kylo’s eyes gleam with nostalgia, and for a moment you allow yourself to admit that it wasn’t altogether unwelcome as you suck on his fingers, teasing him as you lick and suck and nip gently at the pads of his fingertips.

               Too much is building too quickly as you weakly whimper his name in desperation. “Already?” Kylo muses, but you are still weak from your earlier excursions and you couldn’t hold on much longer. You had been waiting for this moment for such a long time, and you couldn’t bring yourself to resist him any more than you already had. You craved him in every possible way, and listening to Kylo whisper your name in your ear as he tenderly nipped at your earlobe was more than you could physically stand.

               “I’m going to come with or without you,” you murmur as you grab onto his shoulders tightly, almost unable to let yourself believe that you were still holding on as long as you were still able to. “So if you want to do this together, it has to be now.”

               “Together then,” Kylo tells you, quickly unbuttoning his pants and sliding down yours as he parts your thighs with the Force and teases your entrance with the tip of his soaking cock before he quickly presses into you. You can’t help but gasp as you press your forehead against his shoulder, savoring the over full feeling of having his stiff length inside of you once again. You had just done this earlier on your bed, but doing it in this strange stone hut seemed to provide you with a new sensation, one that felt distinctively novel compared to the hundreds of other times you had felt Kylo move inside of you. This seemed charged with a new emotion that you couldn’t identify, not that you truly wanted to dwell on it much further as you let your body succumb to the myriad of sensations coursing through you.

               Kylo presses his fingertips to your temple so he can feel how close you are, and you can hear his own breathy gasp, as if he’s not quite expecting to feel how ready you are. In an instant, his lips close around your neck before he finds his own release inside of you. You find your own a moment later, holding him to you with all the force that you can possibly muster, the inside of your thighs quaking as you contract your muscles, trying to hold him to you as close as you possibly can, before you feel an involuntary shiver course through your body as you collapse onto him. Kylo clearly doesn’t expect it as he falls back, and you land on top of him, feeling him slip out of you as you crash onto his chest. You can’t help but giggle until he seals your mouth with his own, and you let out an appreciative murmur as you run your hands through his thick hair.

               “You know, something just occurred to me,” you murmur as you run the tip of your nose against the length of his collarbone, and Kylo adjusts his arm to slip it around you.

               “Hm?”

               “Ani and the others are probably still waiting out there for us,” you tell him before Kylo snorts and lets out a laugh, and it’s such a buoyant, happy sound that you can’t help but kiss him again, nuzzling him softly as you intertwine your hands together. “So is this how it’s really going to be from now on? We’re just going to be together, just like that?”

               “Would you rather I was elsewhere?” Kylo teases, and you break your joined hands to slap him lightly before you weave your fingers back together.

               “No, you know I don’t,” you reply curtly. “But I just can’t feel like this is all, I don’t know, too easy.”

               “Too easy?” Kylo muses. “After everything we’ve been through, after being kept away from you for these past few years, you want to say that our reunion now has come without its trials?”

               You can’t help but manage a small laugh as you shake your head back and forth. “Sometimes I don’t like dwelling on it,” you admit, quite honestly. “Sometimes I like to pretend that you’ve been here with me this whole time, that you’ve never left my side and I’ve never had to go more than a minute mourning your absence.”

               “You didn’t,” Kylo reminds you softly as he kisses your temple. “You had friends here, people who looked after you and supported you when I couldn’t be there.”

               “You mean the people that _I_ supported,” you snort, and Kylo only lets out a gentle breath as he kisses your temple again. “I’ve done so much here while you were gone, it’s probably going to take the rest of our lives filling you in on every story and every adventure that I’ve been on while you’ve been away.”

               “And I want to see it,” Kylo reminds you. “I want to hear all that you have to tell me and I want to see all that you have to show.” He kisses you again, giving your arm an affectionate squeeze as you cuddle closer to him. “And I want to see how exactly you managed to gain approval to amass what amounts to a small army on the grounds of a Resistance base, seemingly without any sort of regulation.”

               “Poe lets me get away with a lot,” you agree with a light laugh before you turn back towards him. “But we’ve got time, we’re together, and that’s all that matters.”

“Agreed,” Kylo mutters, and as your lips touch his for a final time within those stone walls, you took solace in the fact that you truly could trust in the Force. You had trusted it to bring you back together, to being Kylo home safely, and it had. For all the struggles and the trials that you had both endured for each other, it was worth it to know that all of that was in the past now. Now, you just had time to spend in relative peace, unafraid of being captured or executed or imprisoned, and there were no words in the galaxy to adequately convey your relief that you would, once and for all, finally be okay.

Or, at least, that’s what you thought.

\---

               “I don’t want to leave you,” you murmur into the front of Kylo’s shirt, feeling hot tears well into the corners of your eyes as you wrap your arms firmly around his torso, holding him to you as if you were afraid that he would collapse into a million tiny pieces if you were to let go.

               “It’s okay,” Kylo tells you softly as he tucks your head underneath his chin, smoothing back your hair with one large hand. “It’s just a diplomatic mission; I doubt you’ll be in any danger.”

               “Then it’s boring and I don’t want to go,” you insist. “Not if it means I’ll have to leave you.”

               For the past week, you had done nothing but stay by Kylo’s side. You had gotten another representative to meet with Naboo’s Council, much to Poe’s chagrin, but you hadn’t had time to get bored of Kylo yet and seek excitement elsewhere in the galaxy. If anything, you almost seemed more reliant on him, never letting him out of your sight, although you knew it couldn’t be that way forever. You didn’t want to think of it so much as neglecting your friends so much as spending time with your husband, but a part of you did understand their concerns. Besides, there was no way of getting out of going to Mustafar, no matter how much you didn’t want to leave him.

               You’re standing on the front porch of your house, just outside the door, glad that you were having this breakdown where no one else could see you. Well, at least, _almost_ anyone. “Can’t he come with us?” you ask desperately as you turn back to Poe, who just rolls his eyes. “Please please please?”

               “You know I can’t,” Kylo tells you softly as he kisses your forehead. “You’re only going to be gone a week. I’ll have Ani and his tree to keep me company in that time. You don’t have to worry. I’ll still be here when you get back.”

               “You better be,” you warn him as you reach up and kiss him firmly on the lips, planting your hands on either side of his face as you kiss him hard and forcefully, trying to channel all of your pent-up anxiety into the motion. “Because if you’re not, I will search the galaxy ten times over in order to find you again, I don’t care what it takes, you’re here now and I’m not going to lose you again.”

               “Kind of hard to lose him when he’s forbidden from leaving the premises,” Poe reminds you, and you pull away to shoot him a dirty look before you turn back to Kylo, looking up at him pleadingly.

               “I’ll stay put,” he tells you gently, a light smile on the corners of his lips as he leans back to kiss your forehead. “Now go. The sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll return.”

               “Okay,” you say weakly as you take a few steps away from him, but you suddenly feel like a schoolgirl with a bad crush and you don’t want to leave him. _Something_ could happen, and while you didn’t want to think about what that something was, you didn’t want to wait around to find out. It was a risk that you simply didn’t feel willing to take. “I have Taika and Kraiim monitoring shift rotations, there will be no less than four guards on patrol around the house, just to be on the safe side.”

               “My guards-” Poe starts, but quickly shuts his mouth and shakes his head, deciding it wasn’t worth it to argue with you.

               “-can be better used elsewhere,” you remind him. “My guards are for the protection of myself and my family _only_. They’ll make sure nothing’s going to happen while we’re away.”

               “Nothing is going to happen,” Poe tells you, although you can tell by the look he gives you that he can appreciate at least some of your concern. Considering just how much you and Kylo had both been through together, it only made sense for you to constantly be worried about when things would inevitably take another turn for the worse. It made sense, good, logical sense, but you were starting to wonder where logic would eventually give way and blur the line into paranoid fear.

               You give Kylo a quick wave before you head off to follow Poe, but you don’t get more than a dozen steps away before you feel a chill take over your arms and you quickly turn around and sprint back towards him, jumping into his arms as you kiss him with all the force you can muster. “ _I love you_ ,” you remind him, both through your lips and with your mind so that you can make sure that he really heard you, but Kylo just chuckles in response.

               “I know you do,” Kylo tells you as he kisses you once more, brushing your hair back out of your face. “I love you too.” He kisses you one last time before he pulls away completely, reaching out to you with his mind. _Now go, before you make him too jealous._

               You can feel a heat take over your cheeks and you give his hand a quick squeeze before you head off after Poe, determined not to turn around again, knowing that if you did, you wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from turning and running back towards him. You can hear Kylo disappear inside behind you, and you physically have to keep your shoulders squared and centered to keep you from turning back around. Poe seems to sense your fidgeting and lets out a small laugh to distract you, as if he found your antics amusing. “He’s going to be fine. You know that, right?” he asks, and you can’t help but shrug your shoulders.

               “He probably will be,” you agree. “But I just can’t help but worry that now that he’s back, something is going to go wrong, you know? Can you blame me?”

               “I can’t,” Poe agrees. “How is he adjusting to life on Naboo? Any problems?”

               “Not even one,” you tell him happily. “It seems like things are finally working out in our favor, which is, you know, why I’m scared that I’m going to leave and come back and everything that I’ve worked for will be in shambles.”

               “Better not be,” Poe murmurs as he shakes his head from side to side. “We’ve worked too hard for too long to have this all be taken away from us now.”

               “So you think things are finally turning in our favor?” you ask as you head towards the hangar. It’s just about dawn, and you can see the soft glow of Naboo’s sun rising in the sky, sending bright tongues of pink and orange licking through the darkness of the night sky, indicating the start of a new day ahead.

               “Wouldn’t you say they are?” Poe asks as he raises an eyebrow, and up ahead you can see Ladson standing with his arms crossed, leaning against a shuttle as he waits for you to arrive.

               “I guess so,” you reply quickly as you tilt your chin forward and break into a sprint and run the rest of the way to Ladson, stopping yourself short just in time so you didn’t crash into him.

               “There you are,” Ladson says as he wraps his arms around you in a quick embrace. “I was beginning to think that house had taken on a mind of its own and swallowed you whole.”

               “Oh, don’t even joke,” you tease as you slap his arm lightly as you pull away from him. “That’s all I need to deal with now that the First Order’s gone for good. So what are you doing here? I thought I was going to get to fly today.”

               “Diplomatic escort,” Ladson explains simply as he jerks his thumb towards himself. “But if you’re lucky, I’ll let you be my co-pilot.” You can’t help but groan as you shake your head, but quickly back down. In truth, you were almost glad that Ladson was coming along. You hadn’t seen him in a week, but considering how much time you had once been apart, not speaking to him for a week almost felt like ages. “So how are you doing? Are you okay leaving Ren behind?”

               “Yeah,” you say as you pause for a moment in reflection. “I think I am. I mean, after all, how many times has he run off and left me behind waiting for him? It’s time for him to get a taste of what that felt like all those years, although hopefully we don’t plan to be gone for quite that long.”

               “Definitely not,” Ladson says as he claps you on the shoulder, steering you into the shuttle. “Asher just got his full piloting privileges restored again, and I don’t want him to risk all of that coming to look for me if something goes south.”

               “Well, so far we’ve never had to order an evac with you on board,” Poe says as he follows you up the boarding ramp and into the shuttle. “You’ve got your lightsaber with you, right?”

               “Like I’d ever leave it behind,” you snort lightly as you make your way past BB-8, who had already climbed on board your ship to make sure that all of the preparations had been made for your departure. “Well, look who it is. How’s it going, Beebee-Ate? You ready to go on another mission today?” BB-8 makes a quick beep of greeting as you scooch past him and drop into your familiar seat in the cockpit, gazing at the soft glow of dawn through the clear crystalline glass. “It’s really beautiful here,” you murmur softly, and Ladson quirks up an eyebrow before he drops into the pilot seat beside you.

               “Should we just leave you here then?” he asks. “Give you and Ren another week to-”

               “Are you kidding?” you ask with a quick shake of your head. “I don’t want to think about the trouble you two could get into without me there to bail you out of it. No, I’m coming with, and you’re just going to have to deal with that.”

               “I don’t think we mind all that much,” Poe says as he leans over your chair, and from beside him, Ladson dips his head forward in a quick nod of agreement.

               “Then let’s get to it,” you say as you turn towards the control panel and initiate the start-up sequence, ready to propel yourself out of Naboo’s atmosphere and away from Kylo Ren, at least temporarily. A part of you didn’t want to leave, wanted to stay by his side where you could protect him and keep him safe, but Kylo Ren didn’t need your protection, and you didn’t need his. You were no longer in danger, and you were beginning to appreciate the importance of moderation and balance. Before, you had always been torn between your friends at the Resistance or a life on the run with Kylo Ren, but you didn’t have to make that choice anymore. Now you could finally have the best of both worlds, and you were determined to give each one the attention that they both deserved.

               “You ready?” Ladson asks, and you can’t help but let the corner of your lips quirk upwards into a happy smirk as you turn back to him.

               “Always am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deep breaths, deep breaths, not crying, not crying, not crying!! So Kylo and Reader are finally officially married....everyone kept asking me when it would finally happen, and I saved the best for the bittersweet end (as you all correctly guessed, good thing this story is ending soon, I fear I'm becoming predictable!) xD They're married, Kylo's finally home to stay, and now he gets to have a small taste of what he put Reader through while she occasionally goes off on some fun missions of her own. There's only one chapter left of the epilogue, and then the Q&A, dedications, timeline of the events of the whole story and how they fit into canon, and a short special "after-the-credits" scene that wraps up a very loose end. ;) And then when that's all said and done I can release part 4, retelling key events of the trilogy from Kylo's (and occasionally everyone else's) perspective, which I'm really excited for. We got a brief glimpse of what that looked like today, and there's plenty more of that to come in the future. ^_^ 
> 
> Also, for fans interested in the graphic novel, they're still hard at work. They sent me a file at 4 AM this morning but I can't figure out how to open it and they're all asleep so I'll just post it on Thursday, thanks for your patience!! ^_^ I can tell you what iconic scene they're doing the concept art for, though, and it's a memorable one from _Flare_... ;) 
> 
> Survey link is still [here](https://goo.gl/forms/j3wBcEPerjFZVCSD2) and I'll see you all back here on Thursday...until then, cheers!! <3 (And thanks for sticking with this story for so long, truly, I mean it - you guys rock!!)


	85. Chapter 85

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue Part 3/3
> 
> After a short time jump....

               “Isn’t this just the best?”

               You can see Sadie peering down at you, but you can barely see the features of her dark skin, obscured by the shadows of Naboo’s bright sunlight.

               “I suppose it is,” you offer as you prop yourself up on one arm, letting the warm green grass tickle your forearms as you moved. “I still can’t believe you left your husband and baby girl behind just to come visit us here though.”

               “I needed a break,” Sadie confesses with a light laugh as she plucks a slender blade of green grass from between her fingertips. “At least when Ani got to be too much for me, I got to just go home. Honestly, I don’t know how you did it.”

               “It can’t be that bad,” you muse as you roll onto your stomach. “She can’t be worse than Ani, can she? I mean, Ani practically inherited Kylo’s tantrums through his genes, though I’m glad that’s something at least one of them has grown out of.”

               “Um,” Sadie says loudly, and you can’t almost hear the alarm in her voice as Kylo gently swats the side of your arm. You knew that Sadie knew that she had nothing to fear from Kylo Ren now, but some old habits died hard. At least Hux was gone and could no longer trouble her, but you had a feeling that she still feared that Kylo still had his potentially deadly mercurial mood swings.

               “Relax,” you tell her as you lean over slightly to run a hand through his dark hair. He’s lying on the ground beside you, watching you intently now, with one hand on his chest and his other eye peeked open to see what it was you were up to. “He’s harmless.”

               _Careful_ , Kylo warns, but you can see a small smile pull to the corners of his lips and you bent down and place a placating kiss against his soft lips, feeling the warmth from the sun on his face. It’s warm today, much warmer than it usually is, and you roll back onto your back, supporting yourself with one elbow as you glance out towards the water. Sadie hadn’t wanted to go in yet, and you, her and Kylo laid out on the grass while the rest of them played in the water. Poe, Finn, Asher and Ladson were playing some sort of game in the lake, whereas Rey and Ani were sitting in quiet meditation underneath the waterfalls, gently parting the water around them so that they didn’t have to endure the full pressure of the raging falls.

               “It’s nice here,” you say quietly, almost unable to believe that you were having a nice, happy moment like this. The last time you could remember feeling this at peace with everything was when you and Kylo had sat outside in the grass with Ani as a child and watched him play. You had been stressed about the Resistance and the uncertainty of your relationship with Kylo, but you had been able to push that to the back of your mind to enjoy a single afternoon alone with your family. Now, though, even as you searched your mind, you couldn’t find even one thing to truly be stressed about. Luke’s academy had been going well, just as good if not better than expected, and while your trade agreements with Poe rarely came without trials of their own, they were all infrequent episodes that were usually more or less resolved by the time you left the planet, and you didn’t really carry any of them with you.

               Even Kylo seemed to be doing better than you had almost expected him to be. While you had first entertained the notion that Kylo would have been bored simply living on Naboo, it seemed he was more than happy to take a well-earned rest after decades of battle, and as infrequent as your missions were, he always took the time to remind you that he had missed you, just as you had once done with him. He didn’t seem to mind being confined to the walls of your house, and you supposed part of it was because he had been used to the isolation of bases and installations where movement was limited. Another part of him, you were sure, was just happy to have a house, a place that he could have all to himself where he could feel safe and not have to worry about where danger was coming from next.

               But overall, he stayed on his best behavior, and Poe responded in kind by letting him taking infrequent tours of the base during hours when he was less likely to be seen. Although people knew that Kylo Ren was on base, you didn’t want to advertise his presence any more than you already had. Even though he had fought with the Resistance against the First Order, there were too many atrocities to be forgotten, too many lives lost to be redeemed, and Kylo’s reputation would never climb to any levels above simple toleration, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was just happy to have a safe place to watch over Ani while he continued his mission to become a pilot, and to once again have you by his side. Even still, Poe could at least appreciate that Kylo couldn’t be locked up _all_ the time, and with Rey and Finn visiting and Sadie needing a much-needed break, it would have been remiss not to invite Kylo to such a nostalgic gathering.

               Then again, considering that _you_ were invited, they knew implicitly that there wasn’t a chance that you and Ani would just leave him behind to go off and have fun without him, especially to a place that held such fond memories for you. “This is one of the first places he took me when we first got to Naboo,” you tell Sadie idly as you turn towards her, holding up one hand by your face to try to block out the sunlight. “I remember thinking that it was so pretty it must have been a dream.”

               “It is pretty,” Sadie says appreciatively as she glances at all the waterfalls around you. At least they were so loud that you had no trouble discerning their familiar roar, but you did honestly miss the way that the lake used to smell. You couldn’t recall just how it had smelled just now, but you tried not to let it affect you. It had been so long since you last smelled anything, sometimes you simply forgot that you couldn’t smell, and pretty much any and all memories of what things smelled like had already been taken from your conscious recollection. Whatever the lake used to smell like, it was lost on you now, and you didn’t want to insult yourself by asking when you knew it wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway. Smell was like touch, something you had to experience for yourself and even if Kylo told you it smelled like salt and fresh air, it wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway.

               “I can’t believe you live here now,” Sadie remarks as she stretches her legs out in front of her to lean back further into the grass.

               “Tell me about it,” you murmur with a brief shake of your head. So much had happened from the first time you had left her back on your academia to join up with the Resistance; hell, so much had happened since Ani had grown up here on Naboo. It was a place that you never thought you could ever return to, and you almost couldn’t believe that things had worked out in your favor.

               “Remember when we first went on board the Starkiller Base?” Sadie asks. “Remember when we were first unpacking? You brought so much _stuff-_ ”

               “I try not to think about it,” you admit as you turn to face her again, pulling up a few blades of grass between your fingers. “So much bad stuff happened there. So much death. It’s not worth dwelling on, you know?”

               “Well, it wasn’t _all_ bad,” Sadie says as she glances from you to Kylo, and you can’t help but smirk as your fingers find his, intertwining them together to find some small semblance of comfort in the gesture.

               “Okay, not _all_ bad,” you confess as the corners of your lips pull into a happy grin. “But I would have thought that you, of all people, would have tried to complete wipe what happened there from your memory banks.”

               Sadie lowers her head slightly, fiddling with an extra long blade of grass that she apparently didn’t quite feel like discarding just yet. “Hux is gone now,” she says, but even as she does, she looks to you for confirmation, and you dip your head forward in silent confirmation. From beside you, you can feel Kylo’s emotions shift, but you’re not quite sure how to describe in just what way. Kylo had known Hux for much longer than you did, but then again, he had apparently not known him long enough to realize just when he was being played by Snoke. You thought he had gotten past that, thought he had forgiven himself for that, but you were beginning to think that it still affected him more than he would ever let you realize.

               “You still have nightmares, don’t you?” Kylo asks as he sits up, and this is so unexpected coming from him that you can’t help but turn sharply towards Sadie, almost begging her not to give the answer you knew was going to leave her lips.

               “Well, I-” Sadie stammers awkwardly, as if she hadn’t expected this question from Kylo either. “I mean, I do, sometimes. Not as often as I did, but sometimes, yes.”

               Kylo just nods quietly to himself as he looks away, and you quickly reach out and poke her arm gently. “It’s okay, okay? I’m pretty sure we all have nightmares about something that’s happened to us.” Sadie just nods her head forward slowly, and more than just a small part of you is concerned her melancholy might prove to be contagious. “Hey, hey,” you say, moving out of the circle of Kylo’s arm to sit beside her. “Answer me this, okay? How do you go on when something so substantial has, for better or worse, irreparably changed your life forever?”

               Sadie ponders this for a moment before she quietly shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she admits, her voice small, and you can’t help but playfully hit her arm again.

               “That’s just it,” you tell her. “You don’t know, none of us knows, because there is no right answer to that question. There’s no way to move on from the good, or the bad, but you don’t have to. It becomes a part of you, and that’s where the struggle is, watching it slowly assimilate into yourself until it becomes a part of you. The only reason the good stuff doesn’t hurt as much is because you don’t mind incorporating it into your being, because it makes you happier, it makes you lighter, but the bad stuff? You don’t want it to become a part of you. You keep replaying it over and over in your head, wishing it never happened, wishing it was a chapter in someone else’s story, but once you just let it go and give in to it, then it starts to get a little easier. It’ll never go away completely, nor should it, not really, but it gets a lot easier to control once you’ve accepted that it’s happened and don’t try to fight it anymore.”

               “Woah, woah, woah.” You quickly spin around to see Ladson standing behind you, dripping wet, the sun illuminating the drops of water against his golden skin. “This sounds like too serious a conversation for a day like this. I thought we all agreed that we were going to have _fun_ today? No serious talk, no work talk, nada.” You stick out your tongue at him and wave him off, but Ladson stays firm. “No, you can’t mope about on shore all day. Come in with us.”

               Sadie hesitates for a moment, looking out past him at the sparkling blue water. “I don’t know, it looks cold.”

               “It’s not cold,” Ladson tells her. “Come on, feel me.” He holds out his arm for her to touch, and she gingerly runs her fingertips along the length of his arm.

               “Yeah, see, cold,” she confirms as she pulls away. “I think I’ll pass.”

               “No you don’t,” Ladson says as he steps towards her, and there’s suddenly a flurry of limbs before Sadie’s panicked screeching fills the air.

               “No, Ladson, don’t touch me, no, Ladson, put me down, Lad, put me _down!_ ” You laugh as Ladson finally captures Sadie and throws her one shoulder, and she quickly gives in as he carries her down to the water’s edge.

               “Don’t laugh,” Ladson says as he turns around to face you. “I’m coming back for you next.”

               Your face immediately goes deadpan as you turn back towards Kylo, pressing on his chest in a placating gesture. “You’re not going to let them take me, right?”

               “Depends,” Kylo murmurs as he surveys the lake.

               “On?” you ask nervously, the alarm palpable in your voice.

               “Just how many of them come to get you,” Kylo replies dryly as he glances back towards you, and you can’t help but let out a groan of defeat as you collapse back into his chest.

               “Traitor,” you sulk as you lay your head down on his chest, and Kylo just hums a small note of indifference as he runs his hair through your hair. You pick up on something, some perceived note of melancholy, and you quickly shuffle yourself so that you can face him. “Hey, you’re doing okay, right? I mean, you’re happy here?”

               “Have I given you reason to think that I’m not?” Kylo asks, quirking an eyebrow as if he’s clearly perplexed by your question.

               “No, not here on Naboo,” you clarify quickly. “I know you’re happy here, I can feel it, but I mean right now. Aside from Ani, you’ve literally tried to kill pretty much everyone here at some point or another, and now they’re all my friends. Doesn’t that make you uncomfortable?”

               “No more so than it makes them,” Kylo replies, and you concede his point. “They’re never going to forgive what I’ve done to them, and I wouldn’t ask them to.”

               “No,” you agree quickly. “No, I would never ask them to, no, I believe the word I used was _tolerate_. None of them are ever going to be able to like you after what you’ve done, none of them are going to ever forgive you, but it’s my life and ultimately they respect that I’ve made my choice.”

               “I know I’m quite pleased with it,” Kylo murmurs softly, and you can’t help but let out a small laugh as you lean over and kiss him again, resting your body over his. Nevertheless, you can hear footsteps approaching, and you quickly brace yourself for what you know is inevitably bound to happen.

               “Resistance is futile,” Ladson calls, and you quickly roll back over to see Ladson and Rey heading towards you with a look that could only be described as menacing.

               “You don’t want to do this,” you tell them as you hold up one hand in a classic gesture of the Force. “It’s two of us versus two of you, and as much as I hate to say it, Kylo’s stronger than you Lad.”

               “But he’s not stronger than me,” Rey says as she turns to him. “Are you, Ben?”

               The look Kylo gives her is pure ice, but Rey simply smiles smugly as she shrugs it off. Kylo _hated_ being called Ben, and she knew it. She had already made it clear that she would tolerate him because you loved him, because she could understand your complicated history with him, and because he was Leia’s son, but beyond that she wanted absolutely nothing to do with him, and that was fine by Kylo, who had never quite forgiven her for anything she had done against him either. She had slashed his face wide open, and although he had been able to heal that scar, you knew a part of him could never forgive her for giving it to him in the first place.

               “Kylo,” you remind her, hoping coming to his defense would mean that he would come to yours, but it seemed you were in no such luck today.

               _Go play with your friends_ , Kylo tells you quietly. _Don’t let me spoil your fun._

 _You’re not,_ you insist quickly. _I want to stay up here with you. I-_

But suddenly you feel yourself being propelled forward onto your knees as Kylo gently pushes you away from him, and Rey quickly spots an opportunity and takes it. “Grab her legs,” she yells to Ladson, and you resist your first impulse to use the Force to push him away as he closes his hands around either of your calves, securing them under each arm so you couldn’t struggle or kick. Rey herself has you around the arms, and you can’t help but struggle slightly as they start to carry you down to the water.

               “Traitor,” you yell back towards Kylo, but he’s grinning as though he’s enjoying your torment before he lays back down, and you immediately brace yourself for what’s to come as they carry you down to the water’s edge.

               “It’s not that bad,” you can hear Sadie call from somewhere in the relatively close distance, but that’s not what you wanted to hear right now.

               “I’m going to get you back for this,” you warn Rey, but she only laughs.

               “We’ll see,” she tells you, and suddenly you can feel your body being swung from left to right and left to right before you suddenly feel yourself hovering in the air before you crash heavily into the surface of the water. The water hits against your cheek like a slap as you go under, and for a moment you’re entirely weightless, hovering in the nothing as you let yourself simply float. The water is pulsing against your ears, and for a moment you can feel a kick in your chest, as if your lungs were reminding you that you had to _breathe_ , and you quickly rolled over in the water as you kick your feet towards whatever direction you could describe as up.     

               Fortunately or unfortunately, you can feel something or someone move against your body, and although you’re first seized by panic that you can’t breathe and you can’t see and there is _something_ there, you quickly breach the surface of the water and suck in a quick breath as you blink your eyes open. Something surfaces directly beneath you no more than a moment later, and you let out a cry of surprise as Poe stands up, hoisting you up onto his shoulders as you rise almost completely up out of the water.

               “Dameron,” you gasp as you wipe your face in the crook of your arm, but you can hear laughter all around you and you quickly try to quell your nerves as your vision comes back to you. “Not funny, guys, not funny.” In the distance, you can see Ani walking over to Kylo, and a part of you was at least glad that he wouldn’t be entirely alone, although you knew he would have preferred it to playing in the water with the rest of you.  

               “See, it’s not so bad,” Sadie says as she looks up at you, but she’s communicating something else with her eyes again, a message for you only, and you can’t help but roll your eyes as you pretend not to look at her, pretend not to see exactly what it is that she’s implying.

               “We should have a race,” Rey suggests as she turns towards you, as if she can sense your wayward thoughts. Before you can even reply, she hops on Finn’s back to mimic your stance with Poe, and Ladson glances at Asher before he slowly wades over to Sadie.

               “Guess I’m ref,” Asher says as he glances between you. “But from where to where?”

               “Across the lake and up the waterfall?” you suggest, and Ladson literally cocks his head to the side and spits into the water before he makes a face as he turns to you.

               “Or may just across the lake and back,” he says dryly, and you can’t help but laugh. “I mean it, as Team No-Force over here, Force abilities are prohibited, m’kay?”

               “Sure thing,” you reply quickly as Poe wades over so that you could all form a line, making sure that no team had _too_ much of an advantage.

               Poe quickly lets you down for a minute as he pulls you close. “So listen,” he whispers urgently. “Finn’s a strong swimmer, but we _have_ to win this, or he’s never going to let me live it down, okay? So, just, do what you need to do.”

               “Poe Dameron, are you asking me to cheat?” you ask as you raise your eyebrows in mock surprise.

               “No,” Poe whispers back quickly as he jerks his head over to Finn and Rey, stealing a quick glance in their direction. “You can see them conspiring too; you know they’re going to do it.”

               “We’ll see,” you murmur as you hop back on Poe’s shoulders, sending a confident wink in Rey’s direction.

               “Oh, you’re totally going to cheat,” Ladson says as he glances between you both, you and Poe on his right, Finn and Rey on his left. “I don’t trust either of you.”

               “Oh come on, I thought we were past that,” you say teasingly, and Ladson quickly responds by jolting his hand out into the water, sending a splash of water towards your face. Luckily it’s not very high, and only hits the side of your legs as Poe turns his head away to avoid it.

               “You can trust us,” Finn says as he sends a wink in your direction, but you only laugh and shake your head. Competition was competition, and there wasn’t any of you there who wanted to lose. Ladson didn’t want to lose either, but even he knew that his odds of winning were slim to none.

               “The only time you can use your Force powers is if one of you happens to see me drowning,” Ladson says lamely. “But otherwise it’s _forbidden_ , got it?” Neither of you says anything, and Ladson just sighs as he bows his head.

               “So I think we should give Ladson a ten second head start,” Asher offers as he looks to you four for approval, and you can tell by the hesitance to reply that none of you really wanted to give him a competitive edge, even if he had absolutely no chance at winning.

               _“Sure.”_

_“Fine.”_

_“Works for me.”_

_“Okay then.”_

“You’re all terrible people,” Ladson splutters while Sadie just giggles, enjoying the bantering a lot more than he was.

               “Okay, then, whenever you’re ready,” Asher calls, and Ladson suddenly takes off in the water, a lot faster than you would have given him credit for, determined to make the most of his head start. You watch him head into the distance before you turn back to Asher.

               “Uh, hasn’t it been ten seconds yet?” you ask him, and Asher blinks before he turns back to your four.

               “Oh, I guess so?” Asher asks, and you let out a grunt of frustration before Poe suddenly takes off.

               “Hey,” you hear Finn from behind you, and suddenly you catch yourself laughing as you watch him dart into the water, taking off as fast as he can to catch up. Despite Ladson’s lead, Finn and Poe are catching up to Ladson relatively quickly, and you weren’t even doing anything about it. Poe himself actually seemed to be a much stronger swimmer than you had given him credit for, not that you had ever actually been in any position to judge his swimming abilities. Large bodies of water that were hospitable for swimming weren’t exactly prevalent on many planets, and so you all took the time to enjoy it while you could.

               _New plan_ , Rey says inside your head, and you turn back to her and raise an eyebrow, blinking slightly to try to dispel the mist brought up by Poe’s frantic kicks. _Boys race to the waterfall and back, girls reach the top._

 _Oh, you are_ so _on,_ you reply immediately as you bend down to try to get closer to Poe to let him in on the plan.

               “New plan,” you yell over the waves. “You just get me to the waterfall as fast as you possibly can and swim back. I’m going up.” You have no idea if Poe heard you or not, but he seems to kick faster, propelling you closer and closer to the waterfall. You can hear the rush of water getting louder and louder in your ears, and you’re almost there, you are so close you can feel the spray and the mist pelting your skin, the droplets becoming stronger and coarser as you approach-

               Before you can even realize what you’re doing, you’re already up, jumping off Poe’s back with the Force reflexes that you’ve honed and kept sharp as you grab at the rock behind the sea of water. This was suddenly much more dangerous than you had realized, as the water was coming down in thick sheets and there was no way you could see where the rocks behind the wall were; you just simply had to move by instinct. You could almost see why Rey wanted to do this, always challenging you with some new test, but you were not about to be so easily dissuaded. Instead, you simply bound up, trying to move by feeling and pushing all your doubts out of your mind until you reached the top.

               _“Well done.”_ Rey is literally right behind you, and you almost wonder if she had let you win on purpose.

               “Does this mean I win?” you ask as you turn to face her, making sure to channel the flow of the water in a wide berth around you so you didn’t accidently slip off the edge. The water here was relatively shallow, just up to your knees, but the force of the current was strong, and you didn’t want to accidently go tumbling over the edge if you could help it.

               To her credit, Rey doesn’t answer right away as she turns to study the boys. “Actually.” She pauses for a moment as she leans forward, squinting to get a good look at them. “It seems Finn won.” She turns back to you with a pleasant smile. “So I’d be willing to call it a draw if you are.”

               “I think that’s fair,” you reply as you cross your arms over your chest. “Besides, I already publicly beat you in every way that matters. Apparently that holo is _still_ in circulation.”

               “Still?” Rey repeats with a light scoff as she shakes her head. “But who’s the one circulating it? Surely not the New Republic.”

               “Apparently some people think lightsaber duels are cool,” you admit with an idle shrug. “I mean, in all fairness, it does _look_ cool, though they’ll never know how much of a pain in the ass it is to learn to wield one.”

               “I don’t know, I think you were a pretty quick study,” Rey replies. She looks like she’s about to say more when you think you can hear shouting from the bottom of the waterfall. Rey looks over as though she can hear what they’re saying, but it all just sounds like noise to you, and you can’t help but sulk. Over the years, you had dealt with your hearing loss in a variety of ways, from pretending that it didn’t exist, to pretending to hear people when you really didn’t. It almost surprised you that you had been able to acclimate to your hearing loss much faster than you would have thought you would have, but then again, your sense of smell was gone and you were constantly questioning whether or not you would have been able to smell something if you were in a given scenario. With your hearing dampened, many times it felt like you heard just enough to know that someone was talking, but not enough to decipher what it was they were actually saying. Sometimes you simply took a guess, and sometimes those guesses were wrong, sometimes not, but either way, you did the best you felt you could considering the circumstances. That was all you felt you really could do, anyway, and you felt relieved that at least no one ever pushed you too far beyond your new limitations.

               You yourself were already quite aware of your shortcomings, but fortunately you had a greater ally on your side, the Force, and the Force had never steered you wrong. Even in situations where you felt that you should have been at a tactical disadvantage due to your physical limitations, your blind trust in the Force was seemingly what helped you pull through, and while you didn’t want to give credit to anything other than your own cunning or mental prowess, you had to admit that the conditions in your life had remarkably improved once you had simply accepted the Force for what it was. You weren’t quite sure if that had been coincidence or just simple luck, but whatever the case, you knew to take the good things as they came and not question it.

               “We should jump,” Rey says as she turns back towards you, and you can’t help but stare at her incredulously. _“We should jump.”_

 _I heard you_ , you shoot back mentally as you glance towards the edge of the waterfall. _But are you being serious? Do you realize how high up we are?_

 _Hmm,_ Rey muses as she glances back down over the edge. _We are high, but how else do you plan to get down?_

 _Shit._ That was honestly not something that you had thought through. You thought climbing up would be the toughest part of your journey, but it honestly hadn’t crossed your mind as to how you were going to get back down to the others. You honestly wanted to just tell Rey that you’d reach out to Kylo to come rescue you, but that was not something that you wanted to admit to anyone else. No, you’d sooner jump off the edge of a waterfall than tell Rey you were too scared to, and risk facing the gentle ribbing that you knew would follow once the rest of them found out.

 _I’ll jump first_ , Rey offers as she peers over the edge. _So you can see there’s nothing to be afraid of._

 _No,_ you say as you make your way towards her, quickly taking her hand in yours and intertwining your fingers together. _We’re friends, right? We jump together._

               Rey just smiles at you, that gentle, knowing smile, and without speaking, you both relax your mental hold on the current simultaneously as you let the water knock you both over the edge. You grip her hand tightly as you fall, ready to plummet into the water feet-first, but you had apparently under estimated how high up you were and felt your suspension in real time. You could feel yourself sliding through the air, getting closer and closer to the water, the wind whipping your wet hair around your face almost painfully until you finally crashed into the water’s pristine surface.

               It hurt.

               It hurt a lot.

               You didn’t realize you had let go of Rey’s hand but you were immediately aware of spikes being driven into your body from all sides. You weren’t sure where they were coming from, but your skin felt as though it was prickling from the sudden cold water, and you couldn’t quite catch your breath. In that moment your brain vaguely registered that you were still underwater, and a part of you hovered in abeyance for a moment, trying to discern basic facts about your situation as you tried to figure out what to do.

               You’re underwater.

               Kick towards the surface.

               You need to _kick_.

               You need to _breathe._

You tried to listen to your body, but your feet had taken the full force of the impact and each kick of your feet sent a wave of pain through your shins. You tried to billow out your arms but that only seemed to move you horizontally through the water, and you weren’t sure whether it was left or right, but it wasn’t the direction you needed to go in, and that was up.

               Finally, you feel something grab your hand and pull you upwards, and you take a deep breath as you near the surface, unwillingly letting water into your lungs for a brief moment before you breached the surface. You quickly cough and sputter as you wipe your eyes with both hands and shake your head vigorously from side to side, trying to clear the water that you think had seeped into your ears.

               “You’re okay, you’re okay.” You can feel Poe’s hands on either side of your shoulders, smoothing back your hair, and you can’t help but let out a nervous giggle as you wipe your nose against the side of your arm.

               “I’m fine, I’m fine,” you mutter, but your voice is garbled in your throat and you quickly hit your chest with the side of your first a few times to cough up the rest of the water you didn’t realize you had swallowed.

               “That may have been a bad idea,” Rey admits hesitantly from somewhere behind you, and as you turn to look at her, you almost slip back under as you’re hit with a sudden bout of dizziness.

               “Hey, hey, now,” Poe says quickly as he grabs you and scoops you up, and you’re in no mood to protest. As Finn makes sure Rey is okay, Poe starts to carry you out of the water. “You doing okay?”

               “Yeah,” you reply quickly. “Yeah, I’m good. Just, you know, almost dying. Again.”

               “Not on my watch,” Poe says pleasantly as he smiles down at you. “Remember, we have that mission to Ansion coming up in a little bit, and you remember how much trouble we got into last time we were there.”

               “How much trouble _you_ got into,” you remind him, although your voice was far from as strong as you’d like it to be. “I’m the one who bailed you out of it.”

               “I guess that’s fair, considering I’m the one who saved your life back on Takodana recently,” Poe responds, and you can’t help but hit his arm lightly.

               “Kylo doesn’t know about that,” you tell him quickly in a hushed tone. “Really, I don’t want him getting worried about me.”

               “Relax,” Poe says dismissively as he shakes his head back and forth. “I’m not going to say anything, especially since you know who he’s going to blame if anything did happen to you.” You can’t help but laugh as Poe approaches Kylo, lowering you down into his arms. “I believe this belongs to you?”

               Kylo makes some noise low in his throat as Poe literally hands you off to him, and they exchange a look before Poe heads back to join your friends in the water. “Father thought you weren’t really going to jump,” Ani chirps up as soon as Poe has his back turned. “He-”

               “I thought you were going to push her,” Kylo responds, and you can’t help but laugh as you take a moment to take stock of yourself.  

               “I’m okay,” you tell them both as you glance down at yourself. Your feet and legs are red, but they don’t appear to be bruised or broken in any way. “Just in excrutiating, unbearable pain, but, you know, I’ll live.”

               “Well, you lived through it the last time,” Ani pipes up. “So I think it’s safe to say that you weren’t going to get hurt by a little water.”

               “If you weren’t my son, I’d tell you to go try it,” you tell him a bit testily, making sure to smile so he knows that you don’t really mean it to sound as harsh as it did. “But no, Ani, trust me when I tell you that it’s more painful than it looks.”

               “It looked like it was fun,” Ani offers, but you just shake your head.

               “The falling was, maybe,” you tell him. “But the landing part left a lot to be desired.”

               “I still want to try it,” Ani repeats, as if he’s asking for permission, and while you just shake your head, Kylo gestures for him to go. Ani quickly hops to his feet and runs off, and you just shake your head as you watch him head back towards the others.

               “I think he’s getting too cocky for his own good,” you tell him as you watch him go. “Remember when he had that whole quiet, respectful phase where he did whatever we told him to? Now he wants to run off and play daredevil. I think he’s spending too much time around Asher. It’s going to get him into trouble.”

               “More trouble than what we put him through?” Kylo asks as he raises an eyebrow, and you can’t help but laugh as you shake your head.

               “No,” you admit. “No, I guess not, but I’m still going to be worried about him.”

               “He’s our son,” Kylo reminds you. “We’re always going to be worried about him, but as much as I almost hate to admit it, he’s in good hands here. He’s an excellent pilot, and he’s only going to improve as he gets older, and he has you to thank for that.”

               “Not me, us,” you counter. “You started him flying early, even when I was against it, and then you wanted him to stay with the Resistance. If you had asked for us to help break you out, you know we would have, and then we would have been on the run forever.” A somber look crosses Kylo’s face, and you can’t help but lean forward as you kiss him. “But hey, all that’s behind us now, right? We’re here, and we’re safe and we’re happy, and we are _together_ , and nothing in the galaxy is going to tear us apart again. Even if Snoke comes back, we’ll be ready for him, but I’m not going to do it again, I’m not. I’m not going to live my life in fear of all of the bad things that could happen to me. If I did, I would just lock myself indoors with you all day and never step outside, but my life has to be more than that. I need to take risks and I need to show Ani and myself that I don’t need to be afraid, that I can handle myself, that I can put myself in these situations and rely on myself, and, okay, sometimes others, to get myself out of them. During your trial, I was too afraid to do anything, afraid of making things worse, and sure, it paid off that time, but I don’t want to risk it again.”

               Kylo just lets out a small laugh as he smooths down your hair, cradling your face in one hand. “You don’t need to overthink it so much,” he advises. “I can sense you. You’ve been able to push past your fear, but you’re still nervous and you don’t need to be. You heard Luke. His academy has done exceedingly well, and if Snoke does rise again, there will be others to help fight him. Luke knows that if we give any more of ourselves that it will end us-”

               “-and I’m not ready for it to end yet,” you say with a firm nod of your head, as if confirming this to yourself. “I mean, it’s nice, in a way, knowing that I’ll get to spend forever with you in the After, getting to exist alongside Anakin and Obi-Wan and the rest of the spirits that have survived through the Force on the Other Side, but I’m not ready to leave Ani yet, or my friends, or Naboo in general. It’s just too pretty and no, I’m not ready for it to end here.”

               “It won’t,” Kylo says with a slight laugh as he brushes your hair out of your face again, and you let yourself collapse on his chest to keep yourself further out of the wind. “It’s not going to end for a long time yet. After this, we’re going to go back home, and Luke and the others will head back to his academy, although I think he’s taking my mother with them for a brief visit. You will still go on your missions with the pilot and your friends-”

               “Which reminds me,” you interrupt as you hit his arm lightly. “Poe’s still trying to get you clearance so that we can head back to my old academia so we can visit Sadie and her husband and her baby girl. I haven’t been back there in a while, and it’s not fair to keep asking her to travel to us.”

               “If you insist,” Kylo replies. You know that he had told you that you could just take Ani and go whenever you wanted to, but in a way, it almost didn’t feel right. Kylo was your husband now too, but in a way, he was so, so much more than that. He was your partner, your other half, your soulmate, every cliché that you could ever use to describe your bond fit, because in truth, it wasn’t something that you could adequately put into words. This was a connection stronger than language could describe, deeper than tongues could pronounce, and while a part of you still couldn’t believe how lucky you were to have him by your side, you knew this victory had not come without its trials. You had been tested and separated so many times, but yet here he was. The Force always brought him back to you, and you knew that, even beyond Death’s door, the Force would always bring him back to you. No matter how far you were parted, or how long you had to wait, you would finally be together eternally in the After, and while you didn’t want to rush that day, it was comforting to know that that was what awaited you in the end. That _he_ was what awaited you in the end, and there was nothing in the galaxy that could change that.

               “But whatever happens, I’ll always be there waiting for you,” Kylo says as he kisses you softly, pressing his warm lips against yours, and you knew right then that no matter what choices you had made, no matter what events had transpired, if you had a chance to do things over again, you would make the same mistakes and take the consequences that you had endured all over again if it meant that they would all lead right up to this moment.

               “And we’ll be together,” you prompt hopefully, and Kylo laughs, the sweet laugh that touches his dark eyes as he presses his lips to yours once more, saying the words through his lips and with his mind so you could be sure that he was, always and completely, yours.

_“Together.”_

\---

               By the law of averages, there was probably a universe where nothing wound up the way it should. There was probably a universe where, back on the _Propitiate_ , Kylo had died and Poe had lived. There was probably a universe where Poe had died and Kylo had lived. There was probably a universe where they both had died, and you would have had to go on, bearing that loss alone and caring for Ani as best you could, realizing that your actions had resulted in the death of the two people that were closest to you. Maybe there was a universe where you had died instead, and you wouldn’t have had to deal with any of the pain or the doubts that you had struggled with after. In your mind, that might have been the most preferable option, although you weren’t quite sure how you felt about watching Poe and Kylo fighting over how to raise Ani while you looked on in the After. No, they needed you there, as much as you needed them both there. They both brought a sense of balance to your life that you couldn’t have otherwise achieved; by Kylo’s influence alone you were too corruptible, but you never felt right with yourself by being solely with Poe. It took both of them to truly appreciate the balance that your amber blades had been trying to tell you all along: you had to accept all parts of yourself, both the light, and the dark.

               So, in the end, it didn’t matter how many infinite number of universes were out there. Maybe there was a universe where you didn’t end up on the Starkiller Base and you had never met any of them. Maybe there was a universe where you were still just an interpreter, putting in the hard hours and working the long days wondering if all this was worth it. You felt a bit sorry for that version of yourself, but in the end, you supposed you had nothing to be sorry about. You knew deep down that she would have found some way to work things out to make her life the best that it could possibly be, just as you had, and that she would eventually find her own Kylo Ren. Perhaps he went by a different name, or you would find him in a different place, but he would be there and the bond would reassert itself once again to let you know you had found him, of that you were sure.

               In the end, it didn’t matter how many infinite numbers of universes existed in this galaxy and beyond. You were in this one, and in this one, you were happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it. This is how I always wanted this story to come to a close. We've come a long way from Chapter 2, when Reader lay in that very spot wishing that her friends were there with her and that she didn't feel like she had to choose between her friends and her family, and now she doesn't have to. Now she has the best of both worlds and this is how I wanted to close her story, on just a happy, normal, idyllic day that makes her realize that all that she went through was worth it, and I think that's important for us to realize that as well. Life may be hard sometimes, the future dark and uncertain, but sometimes you'll just have days when everything just feels worth it, and I hope that you can say the same for investing so much time into reading this fic as well. 
> 
> Survey link is still [here](https://goo.gl/forms/j3wBcEPerjFZVCSD2) and I'll leave it up through the weekend. Here is the schedule as follows: 
> 
> Tuesday: Q&A and timeline of story events/events as this story fits into canon  
> Wednesday: Dedications  
> Thursday: Special after-the-credits scene that wraps up one very loose end...  
> Friday: We start Part 4, reading key moments of the story from the perspective of (mostly Kylo's!) and other characters. I can tell you that Friday starts off with a very special scene from Kylo's perspective, jumping all the way back to a key yet underrated moment in _Flare_. 
> 
> And so that's where we're at. If you're interested in reading the Q&A, I'll see you all on Tuesday, and if you'd prefer to just skip right to the after credits scene on Thursday before we start off this journey again on Friday, you know when to look for it! And if you'd rather just close the final page and put this book back on your shelf, then I just want to say that I hope you've enjoyed the read. It's been a crazy eleven months, but I'm so glad you could join me on Reader's adventure and I hope that your adventure with Reader was as fulfilling as you hoped it would be. If you ever need anything, you know my [Tumblr](http://streetsolo.tumblr.com/), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/streetsolo/), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/streetsolo), [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/Streetsolo-100707330320784/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel)...in other words, you know where to find me if you need me, and my door is always open! 
> 
> PS: I feel like I should mention that the last part of the story at the end there was written back in the first week of March...that's how long I've been planning this story out for, but it's the way I've always wanted it to end, and I think, just like Reader, I couldn't be happier. Cheers. <3


	86. Q & A

You guys asked a ton of questions and I just want to take a moment here to thank you all for writing in!! All of your questions were fantastic and some of them really made me think, so without further ado, let's get right to it:

* * *

 

How did you write so much and update so often? What do you do?

-Anon

Thanks for your question! Honestly, I spent about 8 hours a day writing this story, everyday, so it basically became a full-time job for me, not to mention how much I had to contact other sources and meet with them to really get the full information I needed about engineering, military logistics, and legal work for the trial. Like, there was so much research I had to do behind the scenes it would be crazy to describe, but it’s helped me in other areas of my life too, like I’m still trying to build my own astromech BB-8 and I’m pleased to say that I finished the composite engineering and installed fiberglass on the inside to help sturdy the shell frame, so now I’m getting to work on the drive on the inside, and that’s going to be a lot of fun once I actually stop writing to get to it! So writing does take away from some of my goals, but supports them in others. It’s also sort of a strange time for me when I first started writing because I had to stop interpreting because of my hearing loss, so that was hard for me. Fortunately I always had back-up work, like working as a crisis counselor to help people who are feeling depressed, suicidal, bullied, etc. and I feel like a lot of the different emotions and aspects of people that I’ve talked to and really stuck with me worked their way into this story. I also have a great deal of financial support from my modelling work, which is sort of weird to say but I work a lot with Deaf photographers because it’s hard for them to find models that they can easily communicate with and if a photographer is freelance or contracted then the third party is actually under no obligation to hire an interpreter, so that could be a difficult situation. It’s a lot of fun though, it can be really stressful and I love the different people that I get to meet but it also requires me to work out about 3-4 hours a day (and with my neck injury, that got hellish pretty fast, I lost a lot of muscle I’m trying to get back) and I follow a very strict diet (which I have to anyway because of my gluten/dairy intolerance). I’m sure if you follow my Instagram you know all about my favorite cheats, like spinach ice cream that’s made from pb2 and bananas! So I find fun ways to indulge and still stay super healthy. Also, I remember back in Candle I mentioned that I was able to lift 35kg? Now I can bench 70kg which is a boat load more than I even weigh (it’s about 154 lbs, I’m 5’9 and hovering around 120), and considering Daisy can do 80kg, I’m pretty proud of myself, and with help from my PT guy, it’s only going to get better. Martial arts and my bo staff training also takes up a good deal of the time, which I count separately from exercising because while cardio kickboxing is fun, I really like the forms and the thought behind Tae Kwon Doe, especially, and I make sure to do Qigong every other day. I’ve dipped my hand in other pies, like Krav Maga and Muay Thai, but I’ve been doing Tae Kwon Doe since 2005 so it really has a special place in my heart and my life. So…that’s basically a day in the life of Krasava. Sorry this was long, but I hope this helps answer your question, friend!

Tl;dr, my basic daily routine consists of martial arts/bo staff training, baking, writing, exercising, working as a crisis counselor, hanging out with friends who ask me why I’m not writing and if I’m okay/“Can we talk about something other than Star Wars?” and occasional modelling work when a good assignment comes my way. Usually it involves free travel, and I’m always up for that!

* * *

 

I remember in your original story you said you knew ASL, how did you learn it? Are there any good websites or resources you used?

-Anon

Kind of important, so I’m placing this one near the top. Although I write fairly well in English, I have substantial hearing loss and thus consider ASL to be my main language as it is the language I feel most comfortable using when communicating with friends and family. I am physically hard of hearing but I identify culturally as Deaf due to my strong ties to the Deaf community. I graduated from a university with a degree in American Sign Language and Deaf studies and my husband is actually a very prominent member of the Deaf community due to his own family legacy (if you look up a complete history of accomplishments in the Deaf community, his grandmother will be in there.) If you want to learn ASL, and I can’t stress this enough, it’s so, so important for you to learn from a Deaf person and someone who understands our community and our struggles. ASL is one of the most physical signs of Deaf culture, and I can’t begin to tell you how fundamental it is to our Deaf identity. Learning how to fingerspell is like learning how to spell, but American Sign Language has its roots in French lexicon and shares a grammatical structure similar to that, and contrary to what many people believe, there is no sign for each word. There are many words that don’t have signs, signs that don’t have words, and some signs that are represented simply by a classifier, there are no words like “at,” “is” or “the,” there is no past/future tense of verbs, spatial location is key….there is a LOT of subtle nuances in ASL that are hard to pick up on without conversing with someone else, especially the implicit cultural bias that accompany some signs, like if someone asks you to do something and you sign, “accept” it can mean, “I will but I really don’t want to.” This is something that books and websites can’t teach you, especially considering the regional differences. I introduced two of my Deaf friends one day, they really hit it off and when he said, “I’ll text you” she slapped him across the face because where I am, that sign meant, “one night stand/hook-up” but it means “text” where he is from and I know when I’ve shared that story before, a few other Deaf friends have all said that one sign has different meanings to them too. So for that reason alone, I know it can be hard and really frightening, but go out there and try to make friends with a Deaf person. I’ve spoken to so many people and helped them find local colleges courses in their area or classes offered at their university which are many times Deaf-run so you’ll be learning from fluent speakers. Never try to learn ASL from a hearing person – it’s not their culture and it’s not their place. The Deaf community has faced years and years of oppression – my old doctor tried to “fix” me with a hearing implant and I told him I didn’t want one because I could get by with just signing and he wanted to force one on me. Meanwhile at my high school they are saying, “Hey, if you learn fingerspelling and say you know ASL on a college application it will look really cool and they will be impressed!” And there is no lie there. If a hearing person wants to learn ASL it’s “cool” they took the initiative, but if a Deaf person wants to learn sign to actually be able to communicate, they’re being “difficult.” When deaf babies are born, doctors want to give them cochlears and surgery that usually doesn’t work but parenting books encourage to teaching hearing babies sign to help their language acquisition skills – this is audism in its purest form and it still very much exists today. I know this is kind of long but it’s something I’m very passionate about – I even took my struggle to get more Deaf awareness on television to a next level when I shared it with Chris Hardwick and asked him to get Robert Kirkman to feature a deaf character on The Walking Dead, so we’ll see!

tl,dr: the best way to learn ASL is from a Deaf person if you’re serious about learning it. There are websites that can teach you signs, but as I said above, those signs vary by context and region and you may be accidently offending someone and I don’t want any of you being slapped in the face either! If you are really serious about learning and need help, feel free to message me, as you can see I’m very passionate about this. I want as many people to know ASL as possible so I can be friends and communicate properly with all of you, but it’s also heartbreaking and awkward for me when people think it will be “easy” to just paste signs to words and then get frustrated and stop when they realize that is not what it’s like at all.  

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Kylo is gone for a long time in the story and that’s not like other fics. Why did you choose to write him gone for so long? Still enjoyed it, just curious!

-Anon

No, that’s totally okay! I think the biggest criticism that I got about Flare was that Kylo wasn’t in it enough, and I remember writing Candle and being like, “Damn, if people didn’t like that story because he wasn’t in it enough, they’re not going to stick around for the sequel.” But in a way, it’s okay for me because it was my story to tell and it comes from a really personal place for me. I might have mentioned it before, but my husband served in the military and so he was gone for long stretches of time, and that’s really hard to deal with, and I put a lot of that into her relationship with Kylo. It’s hard when he goes off for months at a time and then he comes back and it’s like, “Well, what happened? What’d you do?” and you know he can’t really tell you any of that so I made the conscious decision early on that even on Flare, he wasn’t going to talk about his past or what he did for the First Order because he had to keep both sides of himself separate, and that was something that was really easy for me to write because it was really familiar to me. Honestly, I think the distance really can make a relationship stronger, because Kylo and Reader’s thing of, “No matter what happens, you are mine and I will always come back for you” is very symbolic of my relationship with my husband because he knows I’m independent and I can take care of myself but then there are times when it’s just like, “This is all fine and good and I’m doing my own thing, but _damn_ I wish you were here.” It’s also how the Reader’s relationship with Poe evolved because me and my husband are open, but it’s more, “Hey, I’m going to be gone the next eight months, and you have needs and I’m not holding that against you” like Kylo and Reader’s final conversation on D’Qar about, “It doesn’t matter what you do with Poe because it’s _us_ and it’s always about us” it’s almost something that doesn’t even need to be said because to Kylo their bond is that strong and that unshakeable because he gave up the First Order, when he defied Snoke’s orders to kill her and went with her to D’Qar, that was it for him, that was him making her a priority and so no matter what she did at that point, it was basically them til the end. So I just personally found a lot of comfort in the fact that they kept popping up in each other’s lives, and also that’s just where the story took me. I knew the Reader needed to really grow on her own independently of Kylo and while I originally wanted it to be just a year tops, I wanted Ani to be old enough to sort of grasp the basic implications of what was going on without fully comprehending what was going on, so that definitely played a huge factor in it too. (PS: My husband actually got severly injured so he’s now serving the military in a civilian role, which does sometimes require him to be gone for like weeks at a time but it’s not months anymore, so I’m happy about that…Kylo’s finally home to stay.)

 

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Was reader and Poe something you planned from the beginning?

-Anon

Totally not planned. At all, although I’m going to say that I don’t regret any of it, except for her maybe sleeping with him on Tatooine. I’m not sure whether I regret the Reader doing it or was just disappointed to see her do it, just like everyone else. But I really like the Reader’s relationship with Poe because it sets up such a fantastic contrast to her relationship with Kylo and her and Poe serve as foils for each other throughout the story so I think it was really important to have something develop between them once it started. I mean, her relationship with Kylo started out very strongly, starting with a kiss and then suddenly he has her up against the wall, and with Poe it’s sort of this awkward slow burn and it really shows a different side of Reader and makes her just a bit more awkward and relateable, because she’s honestly not sure what to do. She’s in this really strange situation, and Poe is basically giving her the same sort of reassurances that Kylo had always given her, except while she felt it through Kylo he’s actually saying it, and in Candle she’s trying to be pragmatic and practical and trying to look at it simply like, “Poe = good, Kylo = bad and Kylo may be Ani’s father but Poe can offer him/us more if we stay with the Resistance” and then Glow happens and we get moral ambiguity out the wazoo. The moral ambiguity of the characters in Star Wars as a whole has always been one of my favorite things, because it's a galaxy where being selfish and self-reliant is actually more of a strength than anything else, and so I really let Reader adopt those qualities to the extreme under Snoke’s influence, which provided an interesting contrast with Poe, who I think it’s been established early on that he’s the sort of person who would do _anything_ to complete a mission and I think there’s something that the Reader can relate to in that, because her mission is to protect the people she cares about at whatever the cost and he’ll do whatever he has to in order to help the Resistance at any cost, and it’s interesting because they both care about each other but when they get caught-up in each other’s plans that’s when things suddenly get difficult for them. But I do think in the back of Poe’s mind that he always sort of knew that it was Kylo for Reader and it was going to always going to be Kylo, and in part 4 he has a really interesting conversation with Rey early on in Candle before they even kiss where Rey notices “something” and is basically like, “Dude, you’re both my friends, but you and her? That could be uh, bad news bears…” and I’m strongly paraphrasing to avoid spoiling it before I get to it, but to sum it up I do really like the foil that Poe served to the Reader and vice versa, that they could each bring out the worst and the best in each other, and I’ll just leave it at that.

 

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How do you imagine reader when you’re writing her? Like yourself or someone else?

-Manda

               It’s almost a little weird, because Reader is definitely based on a conglomeration of the best and worst versions of myself, but most of the time I see her in the third person, like she’s a friend to me. When I picture what she does, I picture things through her eyes, so it’s not like I’m watching the scene play out, it’s like I’m living it and I’m actually seeing the world through her eyes, but then when I’m writing I take a step back and I see her as her own identity, if that makes any sense at all. So she is me and she’s not me…if that makes any sense! Great question!

 

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ok I have a bunch! 1) What was your inspiration to write this story? Did it all just pop into your head one day? 2) What motivated you to keep writing? 3) How old is Reader at the beginning of the series vs. now? 4) What were your favorite parts of the series? (to write or to read) 5) Do you have a favorite of the NSFW chapters? (Lol) 6) Do you have a favorite of the fluffy/affectionate moments between Kylo and Reader? 7) Were there any chapters that were especially hard to write? Which ones? 8) This isn't much of a question but I wanted to say that your writing is so excellent and inspired me to write more!! Please never stop doing what you do. You have such an amazing gift and it's absolutely crazy to think that I've been reading this story for months now. What?? It's become such a part of my life to get so excited every update day and read it immediately after coming home from school. I'm and sad to see it all end, but I can't wait to see where you go next. ❤️

-Bella

Thanks for all the questions!!

  1. It really did, actually!! I want to say that I had a dream about it, but weirdly enough, I don’t really remember? I just know that I wanted to write a story combining my life experience in the Star Wars world, and I wanted it to lead into smutty smut smut with Kylo Ren. Admittedly it turned into more of a plot-based story than a smut-based story, but oddly enough, I’m strangely okay with that!
  2. You and everyone that commented! Honestly, I seriously can’t thank you guys enough for all the support that you’ve given me throughout these past eleven months. Like, I’m not going to lie, sometimes it was hard. Sometimes I would get hate mail and messages telling me that this story sucked, or that it was good and that I ruined it, and times like that made it really tough to keep going, but I never set out for this story to be popular and it took my editors and my friends to really bring me back and remind me why I was writing this story, because I loved this story, because I loved Reader and this crazy adventure that I’ve gone on with her, and going back and rereading all of the positive comments helped make that all worthwhile.
  3. Oh gosh, I think I can admit this now because the story is just about done, but talking about ages scare me, especially because I started keeping things super super vague towards the end about how much time has passed (intentionally, but still). Canonically, I said in Chapter 5 of A Flare in the Dark during Kylo’s interrogation that she’s 26, so that’s canon. Right now, though, I’d say that when she’s settled into Naboo, she’s just about 50 but Force users live longer, so…okay, time to admit it: in my head, the Reader and Kylo and basically everyone else is Dùnedain…you know, like Aragorn, who looks young but is actually 87? That’s kind of how I pictured it in my head. xD
  4. Hmm, if I had to pick a favorite part from each of the three “parts” I would say that my favorite part of Flare was when the Reader finally finds out that they were part of some massive Resistance plot, because I know a lot of people didn’t see it coming at all and I was just so happy that that worked out so well. In Candle, it’s actually a mix between flying with Poe, cause those lessons were fun to write, building her lightsaber, or her duel with Rey, which is fantastic because that chapter was a late addition but I just loved it so much (even though people were throwing popcorn at me and then locked me in a bathroom while I was writing, which is a story for another time). In Glow, has to be the beginning when she slowly makes up with Kylo. No matter how many times I read that, it never gets old.
  5. Oh heck yes!! Favorite NSFW chapter for each of them: In Flare, it’s the first time Kylo and Reader “do it” or when he has her up against the wall, I can’t choose, and, I’m sorry to say, in Candle it’s the last time she does it with Poe before Kylo takes her off base, because that was fun to write, not going to lie. In Glow, though, got to be when they first made up again, I think, but it’s honestly really hard to choose.
  6. Oooooh yes. Any time Kylo gets intimate with his feelings with Reader, or when Reader has one of her dramatic speeches, I kind of “swell up” inside, if that makes any sense. I’m unfortunately known for my dramatic speeches, so those weren’t hard to write at all, but I think my favorite moment of all time would have to be when Kylo and Reader make up after she slept with Poe, because she was really prepared to lose the Force bond, and then when Kylo didn’t take it, I’m not going to lie, I got an attack of the feels right there. There’s also a ton from Flare, like when Kylo saved Sadie, that’s always going to be a classic!
  7. Oh gosh yes, there were a ton. Believe it or not, the chapter with her sleeping with Poe was actually super difficult to write because it’s like, “I’m going to go there and people are going to hate me for it and they’re going to stop reading and they’re going to call me names and…” Like I was really worried that people were going to quit before I got to the Snoke reveal, and probably some people did, but in the end I needed the story to go where it did, and like my friends remind me, it’s my story, you’re not paying anything for it, so you’re free to stop reading whenever. I do me, you do you, and yeah. But hmm, another hard chapter to write was actually when Ani first met Kylo, like I pondered over that for DAYS because I was like, “It’s going to be awkward, yes, but what the HECK do they say to each other?” So I just sort of wrote until words came out, and then I just went with it. Also, general sidenote, I found that writing Leia was difficult for me. Luke was too, but I’m pretty sure that was only because we haven’t seen him in canon yet so we’re not sure what he’s like, but for some reason, I felt like I could never quite get Leia’s voice right.
  8. Oh my gosh, thank you so, so much!! I can’t tell you how appreciative I am that you stuck with me this long, seriously, it means the world to me to have each and every one of you reading this, even the Q & A, like I am so proud to have written a story that so many people have become invested in, like I almost can’t fathom it but I am eternally grateful and appreciative for all of your support. I know I wrote out a small “what’s next for me?” that I think I wrote out after the Q & A, but in short, I am not going to stop writing. Never? Never. One day when I die I’m going to re-emerge in the After and live on as a ghost, haunting my friend’s computers with Star Wars fanfiction. I mean, through the Force, all things are possible, right? ;) Thanks again for all your lovely questions, friend!! ^_^



 

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Who’s your favorite Jedi?

-Nichole

               Without a doubt, it’s Qui-Gon Jinn, because I believe he truly embodied just what it meant to be a Jedi. Right before his final battle with Darth Maul, he sits down and he meditates, closing his eyes and focusing on the Force. He knows that he is going to die, whether the Force has made that known to him or not, it doesn’t even matter because he’s prepared to die and gives the battle his all anyway. He always followed the will of the Living Force, which is basically a fancy way of saying he stayed true to himself no matter what, and always did what he thought was right. He felt comfortable and confident in the decisions that he made, like when he cheated in the bet with Watto to make sure that the young Anakin Skywalker would be freed if he won the pod race because he believed that cheating would yield the most benefit. I always felt like Obi-Wan was always a little less sure of himself than Qui-Gon was, not sure if maybe some of his actions would lead down a bad path and so he always held back and restrained himself, asking the Council for advise on his actions so he had something to fall back on if it failed, whereas Qui-Gon frequently defied the Council to do what he thought was right. Plus, at the end of Revenge of the Sith, Yoda tells Obi-Wan that someone managed to navigate back from the Netherworld of the Force in order to communicate with them. And who is that person? It’s Qui-Gon. Like, I have a lot of feelings about Qui-Gon and his role in the EU but considering how that's not canon-canon now I won't get into it here, but I’ll wrap up my thoughts in two of my favorite Star Wars quotes, which both come from him. One, “Be mindful of the future, but never at the expense of the moment” and “Life does not treat you fairly or unfairly, it merely is. It is up to each of us to be fair or unfair.”

 

 

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Do you think you could make a timeline for this story when it's all said and done? Like either based on their relationship or the events of the story.

-Erin M. H. (didn’t know if this was your real full name and I didn’t know if you were comfortable with me posting it so I just posted your initials, if you want me to write out your full name just let me know!)

I most certainly can and I most definitely will! Posted on the next page! 

 

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What chapter was hardest for you to write? Which one was your favorite to write? Which chapter are you most emotionally attached to? Which character do you relate to the most?

-Hannah

  1. I know I answered this before but thinking it over again, I think one of the hardest chapters for me to write was the trial, because I put so much research and work and jargon and planning into that, I literally had a mind map spread out on my floor and I had people helping me to basically connect the dots. A lot of events, like the ones that happened on Nal Hutta, happened in the back of my mind but were never really discussed deeply in canon because I figured you guys would probably be bored by the political doctrine, so it was hard trying to find a balance between dialogue and exposition, so you could learn what happened without it feeling like I was talking _at_ you too much.
  2. I have a ton of favorites, but the ones that stand out to me are two from Candle, the one where Poe and her are doing the mock simulation training against Wedge and the Republic and then when she duels Rey, because that actually wasn’t planned out and it was such a fun addition. And, of course, almost every scene with Kylo from Flare just came really smoothly and naturally to me, and I think that honestly is what got people really as invested into this story as I was, and I think I can say that I’m really proud of that.
  3. Oh gosh!!!!! Super hard question. Hmm, I think the one chapter I’m most emotionally attached to is the chapter where they get married, because I really wrote so much of myself into that chapter and I felt like she really came full circle and I’m honestly just really happy that I could take a character that I based off myself and have other people relate to as well, like, it’s such a hard feeling to describe because when people tell me that they could see Reader as their best friend, I remember that I based Reader off of me, and so I guess it’s just nice to really have that validation that people think I’d make an awesome friend to them, because I really do care about people, so that’s honestly like the nicest compliment someone could ever give me.
  4. I think for the reasons above, I definitely relate to Reader the most. Like for all intents and purposes, she is me. My martial arts and bo staff training, my snark, my interpreting, my strive for independence and, heck, yes, even the flaw that sometimes I can be indecisive and short-sighted and not honestly think through the consequences of my actions when I’m pulled between two extremes, but hey, we all have our faults and so it was almost hard watching people not like Reader during the time when she was under Snoke’s influence, because the flip side of that is that it made me feel like people didn’t like _me_ , but it’s a story, and although sometimes I have a hard time separating myself from Reader, I feel like she wouldn’t be relateable or as fun to write without her flaws, and I’m thankful to have the opportunity to share her and myself with everyone.



Also, I’m being told I am obligated to share that literally every one of my friends thinks I am Anakin Skywalker in the flesh. I’m not making this up, whenever I ask anyone what Star Wars character they think I’m most like, it’s always Anakin, hands down. Not Vader, Anakin, from the prequels. I kind of see it, but I’m almost scared how quickly everyone answers that question.

 

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What would Ani's relationship with his grandfather Han have been like? Who are my(readers) parents and is Snoke my dad? At what point did Snoke take over Hux? If I could have had one last conversation with Hux (like if he was some kind of force ghost) how would it go? How do Leia and Luke feel about Ani and his mom? This is all I got for now but thanks!

-Sheah

Honestly, these are all really great questions, like honestly, they are so out of the box and just…thank you. I looked at these and I was like, damn, you’re really making me think here!

1.I think that mostly would have depended on Han, but had he been alive (and believe me, I was thinking about off canon so he could still be alive in Candle, I did consider it!) I think he would have really been there for Ani so that he didn’t make the mistakes his own son did and he would have taken him out flying at every available opportunity, and he probably would have been the one who taught Reader how to fly along with Poe, but Han definitely would have spent a lot more time with Ani and Leia, like it’s their grandchild and now I’m drowning in feels.

  1. Reader’s parents will forever be a mystery, and that’s not to say that I don’t know, because I do have something in the back of my head that maybe I’ll release in part 4. I can say that no, Snoke is not your dad! That’d be trippy! But I think the point I wanted to make with Reader not having parents is it’s really similar to Rey’s journey right now, and not having parents, or who your parents are, rather, don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Your parents do not define your choices or who you are as a person and while they can give you a nudge, like Poe’s parents did that made him realize he wanted to follow in their footsteps, sometimes it’s just better to leave your past behind and make your own way.
  2. Not telling! I can tell you that Hux was definitely still Hux when the Reader met him during Flare and Hux was still Hux during the canon events of The Force Awakens in my story, but was Hux really Snoke on Naboo? Did it happen while he was escaping Naboo? Some time after? Some times life just has unanswered questions, and this is one of them.
  3. One last conversation with Hux would probably end with Reader hitting him over the back of the head with the sole of her boot for everything that he had done to Sadie while she was alive, but I like to think that Reader developed a sense of understanding for who he was in respect to the First Order, that this is what he was raised for and that he didn’t know any other kind of life. She realizes, as we realize, that this doesn’t excuse what he did at all, but I don’t think she actively hates him as much as she did before after she herself fell victim to Snoke’s manipulations and she learned firsthand just how easy it is to fall into that trap. Great question though, it gives me some ideas for a Force vision that Reader might have that features Hux in part 4!
  4. Definitely will be addressed in part 4! I can tell you right now, though, that Leia was never totally up front and honest with Reader and the plans that she had for her, although she _was_ definitely sincere about keeping Ani safe. And I don’t really blame Leia for it at all. She wants you to think that you’re close and that she’s there for you and wants to help, but on the other hand, her son betrayed her and knowing how close you are to him, she’s wary you’re going to do the same. Luke is a lot more understanding of Reader, and actively avoids her during Candle to let Rey teach her, both as a test to Rey and considering how she learned that Kylo had betrayed Luke, she didn’t want her thoughts of padawan!Kylo to cause her to lose her focus in regards to her training. As for Ani, he was rightfully concerned that he was going to turn into another Kylo Ren and destroy everything the Resistance worked so hard for all over again, but he’s pretty pleased to see that you’ve turned out a lot like his mom!



 

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Rey Skywalker?

-Anon

To be honest, I don’t think it matters. They’ve honestly set up the mystery of Rey’s parents to be this whole big thing, and I honestly think that no matter who it’s going to be now that some members of the audience are going to be let down and disappointed. Since Star Wars has always been a story that’s revolved around the Skywalkers, I would, yes, kind of like it to be Rey to keep her role as the central protagonist, but I wouldn’t be disappointed if they did a bait and switch, and we find out something big, like Finn is actually a Skywalker instead, which would be really, really cool because I love Finn and I think part of the reason they may be focusing attention on Rey’s parents is to pull us away from asking questions about Finn’s, cause it’s easy to say that he was just taken away from a family that he never knew (possibly much like Rey, in that respect) but either way, I’m eager to see what they’ll do with it and I honestly think I’d be okay with anything. Rey Kenobi? Rey Palpatine? Rey being the love child of Shmi Skywalker and Qui Gon Jinn? If it means we get to see more Qui Gon, even in a Force vision, then sign me the fuck up.

 

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Are you a fan of reylo?

-Anon

I am not a Reylo fan and if we're being totally perfectly honest (which I feel I can be since we're just about at the end) I think it would honestly ruin Star Wars for me. I have literally never before told anyone this but it always makes me uncomfortable when people talk about how hot Adam is maskless during the interrogation scene because I can't watch it. It makes me physically ill and I get so uncomfortable, I guess that's one of the benefits of being hard of hearing is I can just shut my eyes and I can't hear anything. I at least had my editors transcribe the scene for me in the movies so I could read through the dialogue but I think that being Deaf gives me another benefit of not hearing any sound and just seeing the body language and seeing her fear and the way she twists herself away from him when he gets close.....it just gets too much for me, like it's just so disturbing to me, I'm sorry, I just can't. I don’t ship anyone with Kylo Ren but Reader in this very specific story in this very specific scenario. I think a redemption arc at the end of ep9 will be the predictable way his journey will end, but I really hope that’s because he wants to be redeemed on his own terms and not because of Rey or anyone else (with the exception of Leia or Luke, given how he’s betrayed them.)

 

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Hi there! Do you ship Reylo or do you have any other ships?

-Anon

I do not ship Reylo for the reasons listed above, and am against darkpilot for the same reason. I am sort of ambivalent about Kylux, I think their vying for power dynamic is really interesting but I don’ t personally see anything romantic about it. As far as stormpilot goes, I could see it, same for Finnrey. I think either of them would be a cute couple, or even FinnPoeRey, I’d be down for that, but I don’t _actively_ ship anyone. I’m actually a pretty aromantic person…although if I had to pick one person that I want to see in a relationship over the next two movies, it’s Phasma. For some reason, I always have had it in my head that Phasma had a girlfriend, I legitimately do not know why this is, but there you go.

Also I do not ship Chewie with anyone after a very long and very strange conversation I had with someone at 2 AM where I learned what the term “docking” meant on one cold winter night that haunted my conversations with everyone I knew for about the next two weeks.

 

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Hi, I saw what you wrote before and could you explain more about why do you get uncomfortable when people say Ben Solo instead of Kylo Ren? Thanks.

-Anon

Great question, thank you! This brings me back to a long conversation I had with someone before, and it’s about respecting his identity. He no longer wishes to be called Ben Solo. Even when he talks to Han Solo on the bridge, he tells him that his son is gone. I don’t know, I think it’s just a major issue of respect, like you wouldn’t call a trans person by their old name, so why would you do it here? I don’t know, it just makes me feel really uncomfortable when people refer to him that way. I can see why Leia and Luke would, that in itself doesn’t bother me, but it makes me uncomfortable when people say Ben Solo and they’re referring specifically to Kylo Ren because that’s not who he is anymore, and that’s not how he would want to be addressed. But if you say Ben Solo to him as a child or Luke’s padawan or who he was before he became Kylo Ren, that I’m totally cool with, it’s just like when people say, “When Ben and Rey duelled…” like, no…that’s Ren. I also do realize we’re talking about a fictional character here, but that’s just my take.

 

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Quick question! How old is Ani by the end of Glow in the Dawn? Thanks in advance!!

-Marisa

My brain is frozen so I asked one of my editors who also happens to be online for 4 AM for absolutely no good reason at all and they did the math for me and Ani is about 25-26 by the end of Glow, so basically he’s the same age as Reader when we first started this tale back in Flare. Trippy!!

 

* * *

 

Do you think Phasma and reader will ever meet again?

-Anon

I literally can’t think of a safe way to answer this question……ask me again on Thursday? ;)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I also got a bunch of asks on my personal views on things like the outcome of the recent election, but I don’t want to answer them here just because I feel like that’s not my place to say. I will happily debate anything Star Wars and answer it publicly because it’s fiction, but when it comes down to real people and people’s lives, I don’t know, it just feels weird to post it so publicly. That’s not to say that I don’t feel comfortable discussing it (though if you really must know, remember that I work as a crisis counselor and these past few days have been hell for me too)! I’m literally an open book and I never get offended by anything anyone asks me, so if you want to talk about it, just drop me a line anywhere you wish, my platform is your preference: [Tumblr](http://streetsolo.tumblr.com/) | [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/streetsolo/) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/streetsolo) | [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/Streetsolo-100707330320784/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel)
> 
> If you've got more questions about the story, either comment below and I'll answer them ASAP or take them over to my [ask box](http://streetsolo.tumblr.com/ask).
> 
> Oh, and don't forget to click to the next chapter to see the timeline of events!!


	87. Timeline of Events

Listing of the major plot points and canon backstory/film events relevant to the story. You'll note it's tough to fit months to everything, since Coruscant lacks a lunar cycle, though it does have a 365-rotation year, so I might be able to approximate months if you really want to know them, but here's a rough idea of the events from this story and how they're impacted by canon and when they occur: 

 

25130-25096 BBY - Reign of Xim the Despot. Liberation of the Hutt people from human enslavement. 

 

32 BBY - Trade Federation Blockade of Naboo. Discovery of Anakin Skywalker. Death of Qui-Gon Jinn. Revelation of the line of the Sith Two.

 

22 BBY - Negotions deteriorate between the Confederacy of Independent Star Systems and the Galactic Republic. Hostilities on Geonosis spark the Clone Wars. Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Naberrie/Amidala are secretly married by the Brotherhood of Cognizance at Varykino.

 

20 BBY - Covert construction of Death Star I begins.

 

19 BBY - Battle of Coruscant. Reorganization of the Galactic Republic into the New Order, known as the Galactic Empire. Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader. Massacre of the Jedi Order. End of the Clone Wars brought about by the destruction of the Confederacy leaders. Death of Padmé Skywalker. Luke and Leia Skywalker born and divided between the House of Organa and the Lars Homestead. Exile of Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

 

15 BBY - Emperor Palpatine discovers the role of the Brotherhood of Cognizance and destroys the order.

 

0 BBY/ABY - Destruction of Alderaan. Death of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Battle of Yavin. Destruction of Death Star I

 

3 ABY - Battle of Hoth. Darth Vader revealed to be father to Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa. Poe Dameron born.

 

4 ABY - Battle of Endor. Destruction of Death Star II. Deaths of Emperor Palpatine and Anakin Skywalker. End of the Sith Two line.

 

5 ABY - The Alliance to Restore the Republic reorganizes into the fledgling New Republic government, granted legitimacy by the Battle of Endor. Liberation of Kashyyyk. Imperial forces in sustained retreat across the galaxy. Ben Solo born.

 

6 ABY - Battle of Jakku. Destruction of the last Imperial capital ship. Signing of the Galactic Concordance. The Imperial Remnant retreats into the Unknown Regions with the research from the Carbon Ridge facility on Jakku.

 

7 ABY - Construction of the Starkiller Base presumed to begin.

 

25 ABY - Armitage Hux ascends to General of the First Order.

 

28 ABY - The truth of Leia’s true parentage revealed by Lady Sindian. Supreme Leader Snoke acts on his interest in the Skywalker bloodline. Destruction of the resurgent Jedi Order. Luke Skywalker goes into exile on Ahch-To. Ben Solo remade into Kylo Ren.

 

30 ABY - Leia forms and begins recruiting for the Resistance. 

 

32 ABY -  _Yissira Zyde_  incident. Rapier Squadron resigns their commissions to join the Resistance. 

 

33 ABY - The Resistance espionage plot discovered among the team of Tortuarune interpreters on the Starkiller Base. Death of B and C. Anakin Ren born. 

 

34 ABY - Discovery of Rey. Destruction of the Hosnian system. Death of Han Solo. Destruction of the Starkiller Base.

 

35 ABY - Due to the necessary change in tactics, the First Order command Triumvirate each assumes command of a fleet. Kylo Ren assumes command of the  _Resolute_  battle group. Martial cooperation between the New Republic and the Resistance begins.

 

37 ABY - Reader and Anakin located by Poe Dameron and transported to D'Qar aboard the  _Millennium Falcon_. 

 

38 ABY - Kylo Ren captured aboard the  _Resolute_. A First Order Special Forces team retrieves Kylo Ren and family from D'Qar under the leadership of Captain Phasma and houses them in her childhood home on Naboo. Supreme Leader Snoke presumed killed by Luke Skywalker. All evidence obliterated in the destruction of the _Inquisitor_. The New Republic issues a fifteen million credit DoA bounty each on Reader and Captain Phasma for the jailbreak of Kylo Ren. (For those of you in the far future in a galaxy far, far away, that's roughly two million dollars.)

 

44 ABY - The Resistance Auxiliary Command formally created as the primary liaison between Resistance and New Republic ground forces. Colonel Caluan Ematt given command. 

 

47 ABY - Destruction of the  _Finalizer_  battle group. Construction of the First Order  _Inquisitor-_ class Dreadnought _Propititate_  completed. The Battle of Naboo, the reconstructed New Republic Navy's first fleet engagement.

The Resistance Starfighter Corps incorporated into the Resistance Strike Command under  _Captain_  Poe Dameron. Due to the size of the Resistance, the position of Strategic Operations becomes a Fleet Admiral post for  _Fleet_  Admiral Ackbar.

 

48 ABY - Under the grooming of General Hux, Reader ascends to the rank of Commander, and is named Strategic Commander, responsible for planning tactical action packages for planet-level military commanders. The Liberation of Yaga Minor. The Fall of Nar Shadda. Leia is poisoned by agents of Admiral Deso. Concerned about the growing darkness he senses, Kylo Ren takes his family and leaves the  _Propitiate_. 

 

49 ABY - The Hutt alliance with the First Order reaches its terminal stage. Poe Dameron and the Resistance catch up to the family on Tatooine. The destruction of Nal Hutta and Nar Shadda. The revelation of Snoke and the destruction of the  _Propititate_. 

 

50 ABY - Special War Tribunal 394 on Corellia. The wreck of the Imperial Super Star Destroyer  _Obdurance_  is located on Genon and destroyed before First Order forces can finish reconstructing it. Kylo Ren is immediately deployed to the front under the command of Auxiliary Shock Forces. Kylo Ren is allowed R/R visits to D'Qar after a protracted debate amongst the Resistance Command Council.

 

51 ABY - Resistance Fleet Headquarters are relocated to the Naboo Plain Country. The dismantling and transfer of material from Delta Base on D'Qar to Paradise Base on Naboo begins. Admiral Deso found dead in his office on Corellia, suspected to have been assassinated by a native of Naboo.

 

52 ABY - Major infrastructure efforts on Paradise Base complete. The Queen Irelia of Naboo cuts the ribbon at the ceremony officially declaring the commencement of operations from Naboo. Poe is promoted to Admiral, and formally takes over from Ackbar as Director of Fleet Operations during the Resistance's first official change of command ceremony. Reader assumes the rank of Acting Commander due to her role as Admiral Dameron's deputy. 

 

54 ABY - The Fall of Hargan, the last of the First Order's Fleet Bases. Reader is nominally promoted to General as a matter of diplomatic procedure to put her on equal footing with heads of state during negotiations. The Siege of Cardon begins.

 

56 ABY - The Fall of Cardon. The last of the First Order generals signs the surrender agreements in the presence of First Senator Garak'hrath. Galactic V-Day celebrations commence. The HoloNet begins carrying occasional invitation ads for the Faith of the Jedi, notifying the galaxy of the Jedi Trials on Ahch-To. Kylo Ren comes home to Naboo permanently. Reader and Kylo Ren are married in private by the acting Pontiff of the Brotherhood of Constamence. 

 

61 ABY - After credits scene takes place. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you go, Erin, I hope this was helpful!! It was actually a lot of fun putting this together and seeing just how many "events" transpired during this trilogy. 
> 
> Tomorrow I am posting a huge thank you to everyone and dedications to everyone who helped make this story possible, Thursday is our little "After-the-credits" scene, and part 4 begins on Friday!! I'm very excited to keep writing and sharing this story with all of you, thank you so much for helping make this possible. Your support means more than I could say, massive hugs and love to you all!! ^_^


	88. Dedications

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Real quick edit: BIG surprise tomorrow! Not only do you guys get the last "chapter" of the story, but I also get to release a small snippet of the graphic novel from an iconic scene from Flare!! They want to impress that it is JUST a sampling, a very rough edit, but they wanted to put something out there to show that they're working on it, they read all of your comments and they do feel bad for not posting anything yet so they want to give you guys something, so those two things come out tomorrow and then part 4 starts on Friday!! Huzzah!! ^_^

Wow, wow, wow wow wow. It is 12:40 PM exactly on Saturday, August the 13th of the year 2016. Looking outside my window, I can see that the sky looks blue although I can hear thunder rumbling in the distance and I know it’s going to rain soon. Later this afternoon, when my husband returns from work, I’m going to walk to the store with him and we’re going to pick up more kale, because as much as I love to bake, we really do eat a lot of salad. Life will go on as it always has, except for one crucial detail. When I get back, I usually work out for a few hours, take a shower, and get right back to work. I sit down, and Word is already open, and the next part of the story is waiting to be written.  
  
But not today.  
  
I can’t say that I’ve finished their story, because their story is never truly finished, nor will it ever be. If Snoke does rise again, it may cost them their lives, but he’s far from the only threat in the galaxy, and due to the shaky nature of the Republic as a whole, I wouldn’t say it would be too long before there is another conflict that Ani will inevitably be swept up in. He’ll have his own part to play in whatever wars are to come, and he’ll get swept up in his own romance, whether with boy or girl or alien or droid, I’ll leave that to your imagination. If you would, please, just take a moment to silently imagine Ani bringing home his partner for the first time and letting them meet his parents, because I honestly wouldn’t know who he should be more afraid of, Kylo or Reader.  
But life is ephemeral, and somewhere down the line, Kylo and Reader will both die, but you can bet that one won’t be far behind the other. It won’t be for some time yet, not until they’re both much older, but not too much older, because the Reader would notice herself becoming weaker and she would absolutely hate that. No, they would both go in whatever way they went, and be reunited in the After where they would be free to take care for Ani and help pass on their teachings to a new generation of Force sensitives. It wouldn’t really be that terrible for either one of them, either, considering Reader’s close relationship with Anakin and she may finally get a chance to meet Han Solo, depending on if you believe he’s Force sensitive or not, I’ll leave that to your interpretation.  
  
But this is where I chose to leave their story, on a happier note, on a simply day on Naboo with Reader’s friends and family all there to enjoy it with her. No matter how many terrible things had happened or bad decisions she made, things got better. When she was first taken back to the Resistance, she wouldn’t have believed it if you told her that she would ever get a simple day like that back again, that she would be able to be happy with both of her friends and family together living in relative harmony while she still got to go on occasional badass adventures to keep her from being too bored, but sometimes that’s the way life is. Sometimes things get dark so they can make way for something better, and if that happens to you, then I hope you’ll be like Reader and not lose hope in yourself or the people around you.  
  
Speaking of incredible people, this story would not be what it was today if not for the incredible editors that have been working tirelessly on this story since it began way back on a cold afternoon in January. I can still honestly remember sitting down to write it, just pulling my laptop onto my lap and saying, “Here we go.” I had absolutely no idea that this time that the story would become so influential to so many people and inspire them to become more interested in sign language and the Deaf community, or that it would span a trilogy that would take me a full eight months to write, but it did. There was not a single day that passed by that I didn’t work on this story, that I didn’t contribute at least an hour of time, a snippet of dialogue, a paragraph, and it’s almost hard for me to believe that it’s done.  
  
It’s not, not quite yet, not for me, as we still have about twenty more chapters to edit before we can call it a day, and even then, that’s not the end of me here. At the time of writing this message to you all, I have one chapter of my new Poe Dameron story written, and you can bet that by the time you’re reading this message, that it will probably be near completion. After that story airs and ends, I have a series of one-shots that I have ideas for, prompts that I need to catch up on, and by that time, Rogue One will probably come out and I wonder if I’ll have some new ideas for a story centered around that. I ask myself because I don’t know, but we still have a few months to find out. But when ep8 comes out, will I write any more then? The answer is, most definitely. I plan for the sequel to the Poe Dameron story to continue with ep8 (you know, if it calls for it and people want to read one) but I know implicitly that nothing will ever mean as much to me as this story. This has truly become my epic, my life’s work, and even if I go on to write an original novel someday, I don’t think it will ever really mean as much to me as this story does. I put so much of myself into this story that I almost feel a bit of my soul ripping away as I pull away from the keyboard. I don’t want it to end, but I also know when to stop beating a dead horse when it’s six feet underground, and so I’ve thought up a new way to do that.  
  
I don’t know when, but I’ll begin writing chapters from other character’s perspectives, not immediately, and not on a set schedule, but just when I feel like it. After all, there is a lot to go back and relive, such as when Kylo met Reader for the first time. His perspective when he sent her away from the Starkiller Base, when he saw her again for the first time on the Resolute, when he first brought her to Naboo. Poe’s perspective when Ren took her off the Resistance base. Ani’s perspective of Force training with her father. Ladson’s perspective from when he first found them on Naboo. Rey and Finn’s perspective when they first met her. As you can see, there is so much complexity to the story that can be added on, and so many things have happened in the background of the story that I truly do want to go back, even if it’s a very short chapter about a Flight Controller who was there when Hux fired on Nal Hutta, noticing that something was different about Hux but unable to put his finger quite on what it was. Those kinds of details are what makes this story so rich for me, and I want to share it with you too. It will be an unofficial “part 4” of the Signs and Smoke Signals trilogy, if you will, and the best part is that I can keep on adding to it whenever I want to, so the story never really has to end for me. In a way, I picture Reader’s adventures with Poe prior to the epilogue while Kylo is off at war to be a bit Clone Wars-esque, and so it can be fun writing little mini adventures: “Uh, Captain, Moonstaff still hasn’t returned and Ren and Ani have each attempted to contact her three times now. They are beginning to sense something is amiss…”  
  
But I’m not going to confine myself to any sort of schedule or particular perspective or really going in any sort of order…when the inspiration strikes me and I’m really feeling it, I’ll write it, and then once it’s edited and all cleaned up and good to go, I’ll post it so you can all enjoy it too. Maybe everyone reading this will want to read it, maybe only a half or a few of you will, but if I’m writing it for myself, I don’t really see a reason not to post it. I know some of you have been able to relate to Reader really strongly, and I consider this story yours as much as my own. It’s one of the cool things that you get about fanfiction that you don’t really get with other mediums: you get to react with your readers in real time, get to see their reactions as you move from chapter and chapter, get to see their anticipation on how Reader is going to react waking up on Naboo and their dread when she died on the Propitiate…and sometimes their anger, like when Reader betrayed her friends and slept with Poe, but I never said that the Reader was a moral creature. If anything, I think this story serves to imply the opposite, that no one is truly good, that even the best of intentions can be misguided and lead to far worse consequences for others, but I want each person to interpret things as they will, and so I’m going to avoid writing a huge meta about all the themes and points I wanted to make in this story. That said, if you want to write a meta, please do, please share it with me, like I honestly love reading everyone’s different interpretations of the Reader and her motivations. This story honestly would not have been written without your comments, and kudos and inspiration, I really hope you know that, and I hope you can feel it when I say that I really do appreciate all of it. There’s been times when I honestly haven’t felt like writing for one reason or another, and then I’ll get even a simple message that says that it was a great chapter, that you enjoyed it, and it helps push me just a bit further.  
Like, I can’t thank you enough for that or adequately convey in words what it means to me, but I want to try. I went back and forth trying to figure out if I wanted to name names, because I do not want anyone to feel excluded, but I have been inspired by a lot of people who have messaged me, people that I’ve been able to forge remarkable friendships with as time went on, and I want those people to be recognized for it, so here we go.  
  
First, to all my editors and real life people who supported me and had my back. Most of them don’t have Tumblrs or are really active on social media so I don’t want to name names (except for Ash and Tara, because they insisted), but I promised them when I get to the end of this story I am sending out giant goodie baskets with personalized, heartfelt letters written in painstaking calligraphy, because you all deserve it. I also want to take the time to mention my friend Jacob. He doesn’t read this story but he’s a fellow writer who has given me nothing but constant support and listened to me complain about the entire writing process every step of the way and providing a listening ear while working on his own original novel. And my husband, who made sure I took breaks from this story to make sure I ate, and refilled my water bottle, which I was completely incapable of doing because even when I was dying of thirst, if I was at a good part, there was no way I was getting up. He is, as they say, my rock, my muse, my flame, and I could never have gotten this far without him, in this story, in life, or in the galaxies in between.  
  
(Edit: If you so choose, you may also begin following Tara on Tumblr by clicking [here](http://tk-603.tumblr.com/).  
  
I also would not have been able to make it very far without the fantastically smart J.A.M., who went above and beyond in teaching me engineering and physics and everything else I needed to know for the story. If you were really fascinated by the tech specs of piloting a shuttle and the different mechanics of ships in the Star Wars universe, you’re definitely going to want to check out my new Poe Dameron story, because that comes back in a big way, and I try to break it down so it’s as easy to learn as possible. It’s like a crash course in space flight mechanics, with romance, a bit of sexual tension, and a lot of slow burn.  
  
Many times my editors have posted comments before I get around to viewing them, and so when I asked them who they wanted me to thank first, the number one answer I got was, “THE GIF MASTER!!!!” JanuarySixth made writing Flare all the more enjoyable with her constant gif usage and earned legendary status with all of us, and there were times when I would literally get messages saying, “January comment yet? What’d she say?” Although I’m not sure if she still reads this story, I have to give credit to her, because without her constant support in the early stages, this trilogy may not have been written. You can check out her own Kylo Ren stories on ao3 by click here and follow her on Tumblr by clicking here.  
  
Next, I would remiss if I didn’t name my wifey, dacianmusik23/Muzik_is_LifeX23 who we all have to thank for setting up the amazing Spotify playlist. She is the sweetest, kindest, most generous human being on earth, and I can’t thank her enough for all of the love and support she’s given me throughout the past few months. She is, truly, a friend for life, and I can’t describe how humbled I am just for knowing her. She’s one of those people who you know will have your back no matter what, and I can’t describe what a privilege it is to have her friendship on account of this story. I love you and all your little presents, you are the sweetest person alive. <3  
  
Speaking of presents, I would be remiss if I didn’t name adreamemporium and the fantastic covers that she created for this entire series, really, they are still the most stunning things that I have ever seen, and I wasn’t expecting it at all, but that amber lightsaber design that you used still makes me squeal. It’s literally exactly how it looks when I picture in my head, and each and every cover is absolutely stunning. I absolutely love each one more than the next and I can’t thank you enough for putting these together. They are fantastic, you are fantastic, throwing lots of love your way!!  
  
And speaking of more presents, I can’t help but thank KayleeRen for her absolutely beautiful gift. You are so talented and so generous to share your artwork with me and others, you are a fabulous human being and an amazing artist and you are going to go so far in life, I can’t wait to see you succeed so I can be there cheering you on from the sidelines. Besides her paintings, she’s also a fantastic writer, and you can check out her ao3 page by clicking here.  
  
The next person I want to thank is Aerris7, for providing astounding insights time and time again. I think it was at the end of A Candle in the Night when she wrote a short meta about the story and I was literally left sitting behind my computer screen cheering, like, “Yes! Yes! She gets it!” Sometimes I feel like I write messages into the story and I interlock themes together and I’m worried that they either went over people’s heads or I wrote them too obscurely to be interpreted the way I was hoping, but she wrote exactly what I wanted to say, perhaps better than I could ever say it, and I remember just being awed by that, like, yes, she gets it, she understands, and that’s such a great feeling and helped give me the confidence to do what needed to get done in the last part of the trilogy, so I can’t thank you enough for that, friend!  
  
Another person that I want to thank is Annessa, who is one of the nicest people that I will ever meet. She sent me one of the best birthday presents that I could ever have asked for, and I was so shocked and humbled by her kindness and generosity. We have so much in common that I’m pretty sure that she’s my long lost twin if I ever had one, and I can easily say that she’s one of the best, most motivated, person on this whole planet and she is definitely going to go far in life and I can’t wait to see her reach the top!  
  
Another person that I want to thank is TimeToGetSithFaced, for still leaving me in awe of the perfection of that pun. She’s been with me from Japan to the US, and she’s honestly one of the best, most fun-loving person there is. She’s always keeping me in the loop on the latest Star Wars merch, or meme, or Star Wars related anything, and I can’t thank you enough for making sure that I can never have enough Star Wars in my life.  
  
And there’s more people that I would be remiss if I didn’t name, and I don’t want to leave anyone out or feel as though I’ve excluded you in any way. I’ve gotten so many positive responses from Facebook to Twitter to Instagram (and, yes, of course, Tumblr) but here are some of the people who’s comments and constant support have really kept me going these past eleven months. I know I’m probably missing more than just a few people and I’m definitely going to update this list again later, but here are a few of the coolest people you could ever meet, in no particular order: Avolonknightz, little-reasons-why, MHooper, steelandquill, T, misanthropicmadness, mistressren, IllusionaryEnnui, theknightsmistress, Obi_Juan_Kablooie, space-trashlord, Snips, justanothercinemaniac, fangirlmeetsfilmnerd, QueenRae99, lacrypanties, dunning99, drunkkylo, bigducky, chrrycool, TheJabberwokk, Arkhamvader, Madame Clutch, thecurtlycaptain…and you!! Thank you so much for reading this story. You are incredible, and amazing and I want you to know that if I can ever be of any service to you, you know how to reach me.  
  
Okay, tomorrow is the after the credits scene (it won’t hurt too much, I promise!) and then on Friday we start part 4. Honestly I can’t begin to tell you how much fun it’s been writing from Kylo’s perspective and I hope my enthusiasm is infectious!  
  
Also, I'm sorry if this is really corny, but I wanted to do something I haven't really done before. I wrote a letter to Matt, my friend who committed suicide, who the character of Ladson is based on. It just sort of came out at me one night and instead of writing this big long thing explaining why Matt was the best person on the face of the earth, I'm just going to post this here.  
  
Matt,  
  
It’s been a while since you took your life. I want to say that the world stopped spinning, that society collapsed into ruin, and while that is sort of true (Trump’s the President Elect now and I am almost glad that you’re not around to see it) but it’s still weird for me to think that you’re gone.  
  
I guess part of the reason is because you’re not, not to me. It’s funny, I don’t know how much you really liked Star Wars, I can’t remember how much we ever talked about it, but I wrote a fanfiction story about the new movie that came out, and you’re in it. It’s called A Flare in the Dark and you play the role of Ladson, my best friend. I don’t know why I picked Ladson; it sounded like a big strong name and you were a big name person and I don’t know, I just feel like when people hear that name they can picture you and the kind of person that you really were.  
  
I think they kind of can.  
  
I put a lot of you in there, and I don’t just mean the character is based on you, I mean he basically is you, like if we lived in the Star Wars universe together and got to go on all these sorts of crazy adventures together. And it’s funny because you know how I was always told writing characters and finding their voices was one of my strengths? Well people like you, and I mean, damn, they really like you. Honestly, I could probably kill off Kylo Ren and as long as you survived, I don’t think people would hate me too much.  
  
I just realized you have no idea who that is. I’ve said that name pretty much every day since last December and you don’t know who that is.  
  
In my story, you don’t die. I thought about doing it. I want to say that I was going to do it and then I turned around and changed my mind at the last minute but I think we both know that’s not true. I put up a brave front, but I think we both know how sentimental I can be. Remember when I first got the news that you had killed yourself and remember how badly I handled it?  
  
I think it’s because I never really did.  
  
I cried, but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over it. You were my best friend. You were the person that I could text when he was overseas and I had to spend eight months alone, hoping that he’d come back in one piece. You were the one who would take me out clubbing just like we had since my freshman year of college. 3 A.M. on a Friday morning and we’d both be sitting in that same over-lit diner just off Jefferson eating bacon and eggs and chicken fingers while you slipped vodka into my green tea just because you knew I’d drink it anyway.  
  
And then you would order me peanut butter pie even though I said no.  
  
But you ordered it for you because you knew even though I couldn’t eat it with the dairy, I still wanted to taste it anyway.  
  
I haven’t had peanut butter pie since.  
  
It tastes sour, and no matter what recipe I try or whatever pastry shop I try it from, it all tastes the same.  
  
You were my best friend, Matt.  
  
After you left I deleted my Facebook. I realized I couldn’t get rid of all the pictures that we took together or the comments that you posted on my wall and so I deleted it for a while. I made a new one recently, but it’s not the same. I haven’t even added any of our old friends back yet, you know the ones that used to live on our floor? Do you remember sitting outside on a hot summer night and star gazing on the Greek Lawn after getting smoothies from Ben and Jerry’s? Or spending all of winter break crammed into your tiny room stuffing ourselves on sugar cookies while playing Dokapon Kingdom? I made them with chocolate soy milk and you used to tease me because you said they didn’t taste right, but you ate them to spare my feelings. I haven’t made them since either, although I always do wonder if they really ever did taste any different.  
  
A lot of people think you were selfish, Matt, but I don’t. I remember when you first started spending time with your new boyfriend and less time with me. I thought that was just the way things were. I thought that that was what people did, they grew up and they started families of their own. I guess I always prepared myself that one day you would disappear but I never thought it would be so permanently.  
  
Do you remember Ashley? Do you remember how she was the first person to encourage my writing, to tell me to write professionally, the person who was responsible for me getting published in the first place? Remember how that drunk driver smashed into her car and killed her while she was driving to school on her eighteenth birthday? Do you remember that?  
  
It sort of felt like that when you died. The sudden, out of the blue, one moment you’re here and the next you’re not. I remember thinking about how selfish I was, that I didn’t put more time and effort into making sure you were okay. Don’t make fun of me, but I tackled that into my story too. And people said my character was selfish, so I guess I did a good job. The truth is, I didn’t know anything was wrong and maybe you didn’t want to burden me or maybe you thought I was too busy for you, but as weird as it sounds, I just can’t picture it.  
  
I can’t picture you coming to me and saying that you wanted to die, because that’s not who you were. Remember when you called yourself my big brother? Remember when you insisted any guys I wanted to date had to be approved by you first? That was the kind of person you were. That was the kind of person you wanted people to see you as and admitting that you were struggling, especially right at the end? You didn’t want to go out that way.  
  
I still kind of wished you had tried, though.  
  
If anything, I just want you to know that I volunteer for a suicide hotline now, trying to convince people not to end their life. Maybe if that service had been around when you were struggling, it could have helped, but I won’t try to guess at that.  
  
There is one thing I know, though. I get messages from a lot of people, Matt. Some people really like my story, and I’ve got messages from people, real people, who told me they were struggling and depressed, and yes, even suicidal, and yet my story gave them hope and encouragement to keep going, that “as dumb as it sounds,” sometimes the realization that I was posting a new chapter was the only thing that got them out of bed in the morning.  
  
I think that’s what I don’t think about sometimes, the little incidentals. I can work a twelve hour shift and maybe save a few lives, but what about the lives I save, we save, without trying? When someone is having a rough day and they drop all their books in the hall and we help them pick them up? When someone is running through the rain to catch a bus and we make sure the driver holds the door for them? When we do something nice for a person simply because it doesn’t cost us anything to do it? Because you never know who is waiting for the final straw to snap, to decide when it’s all over, and I don’t know what that one thing was for you, but I remember by the time I liked your new profile picture of you slurping that milkshake through your nose that you were already dead by that point. Maybe if I had liked it sooner you would have reached out?  
  
This is the part where you shake your head and tell me not to do that, and I won’t, because it’s not my place to try to figure out what happened, like you’re a question on a test to be analyzed and answered. I’m always going to have questions, but sometimes I think coping with someone’s death just means it’s okay not knowing the answers.  
  
I do miss you, though.  
  
There’s a reason I’m writing this. I’ve written this story for the past eleven months now. I’ve worked on it every day for eleven months and while you haven’t been in every chapter, there’s always a part of me that has all these cool adventures and wants to come back and tell you about them, because that’s what it’s like for me here too. Cool stuff will happen, and I’ll want to text you, want to share it with you, and I can’t do it now.  
  
But the story is ending, Matt. I mean, it’s got to at some point, right? I’m going back and rewriting key events from other character’s perspectives, but there’s no good way to say that eventually they’re going to die. But I don’t want to write those scenes. I’m sending everyone off with a happy ending so they can go back and relive the story, so even when it gets really dark, they can just go back and jump back to their favorite parts and remember the good times, like when we got ourselves locked on the roof of the art building overnight my sophomore year and that was the first night it started to snow in October and I yelled that I blamed you and you yelled back that you blamed you too and then you laughed and then I laughed because you made it impossible for me to be mad at you about anything. I’ve met a lot of cool people through this story, Matt, and I remember how you were always introducing me to people and taking me new places and trying to get me to do all the things I thought I couldn’t do because you were just that sort of person for me, and I hope that, through my story, that you can become that person for other people too. Ladson’s funny and he’s badass (although I still beat you when we spar, sorry, had to keep that true to life) but he’s wise, and I’ve squeezed in all our heart to heart talks, how you used to be able to look at things so objectively and even if I didn’t tell you everything about the situation, your advice was always more than valid because you really knew me.  
  
I didn’t want your death to mean nothing, so I did two things. First, I wrote the story so that you could go on and inspire others, and I think you’ve done that. People can say that it’s from me, that it’s a “gift” to be able to channel you so well, but I don’t want to take credit for any of it. It’s you, you’ve always been the one who’s been an inspiration to others, and, I say this with all the love in the world, it’s your fault that you made such an impression on me to make it so easy to write you and make everyone else fall in love with you, so you’re just going to have to deal with that.  
  
Second, I’m trying to see myself the way you saw me. Remember how I always said things just worked out for me because I was lucky and you used to say that that was crap because there was no such thing as luck and I was actually doing myself a disservice by downplaying my hard work? I don’t know when it happened, but after you died, I think I started to realize what you meant. I am proud of myself. I’m proud that I’m able to help others, I’m proud that I’m able to be in a position where I can make a difference in people’s lives, and I’m proud that I can take confidence in my strengths and that I’m able to crank out a Star Wars fanfic story that is over a million words long because there were so many times when I could have just walked away from it, but I didn’t.  
  
Because I know if I did and you were still here you would send me a text about a really cool thing that happened to you and when I’d ask for the next part of your message you would say, “I don’t know, I guess I’ll tell you when you finish that next chapter.”  
  
Because that’s the person you always were, and that’s the person I’ll remember. That’s the person I hope everyone gets to know through the character of Ladson, and I hope that you’ll be able to inspire others the way you’ve inspired me. Because one day I’ll be dead too, but hopefully ao3 will still be up and running, and everyone can get a chance to know you.  
  
Because it was, you know?  
  
Chance, that we met?  
  
That you ended up becoming my best friend?  
  
And I’ll never forget what a privilege that was. People can have mediocre friendships that last all their lives but we had a great friendship that lasted a few years, and I wish you could have stuck around a bit longer, but you did what you thought you had to, and I’ll respect that.  
  
Until I see you on the other side.  
  
And I’ll give you hell for it then.  
  
  
Until whenever,  
Krasava  
  
PS: I can guarantee that only a small part of you is an asshole. Your words. I worked it into the story. People love it. Just remember that, no matter where you are, you’re still loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update: My prediction skills are way too accurate. I only have 2-3 chapters left in my Poe Dameron story but it hasn't been edited AT ALL so that's going to take up a lot of time and there's still additional scenes that I want to write, but I've already written 18 chapters of part 4. Again, only two of them have been edited so there's a lot of work to do there but thanks again for all the love and support you guys have given me throughout this story, I can't thank you enough. See you tomorrow for the after-the-credits scene that takes place just a few short years after the epilogue and the snippet of a scene from the graphic novel, you guys deserve it!! <3


	89. After the Credits Scene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After the credits........

               Years passed, and while the damage the First Order had done to the galaxy was still being repaired, it was a name that barely left your lips, let alone fluttered through your thoughts. As far as you were concerned, the First Order was a closed chapter of not only your past, but your family’s as well. Kylo was still more or less still under house arrest in your home at Naboo, but he hardly minded all that much. Your guards remained stationed outside during the day, ensuring that no one even got close enough to threaten his safety, and at night they sometimes escorted you around the premise, or down the river, taking you across Naboo’s scenic landscape. If Poe knew that you snuck him out at night, he never said anything. Neither did Ladson or Asher, who had caught you sneaking around on more than one occasion.

               While you had become less involved with the Resistance yet again, Ani had stepped up and was now running fleet patrols alongside Asher, and Ladson stayed primarily grounded and helped with the debriefing of new assignments, coordinating the efforts of the various tactical hubs on planets throughout the galaxy. Running the anti-piracy patrol campaigns was a coordinated effort among a variety of systems, and Ladson’s knowledge of other cultures and planets made him the most qualified person for the position. Well, second most qualified. You would have been the first, had you cared enough to do it, but you had your own role as head of your own little squadron which was responsible for border patrol around the base. It was an extremely simple job, comprised mostly of giving your team orders and chastising them whenever Poe informed you that they had disobeyed them. Most of the time, they followed your instructions to the letter, giving you more time to spend with your husband, Kylo Ren.

               Ani had moved back into his old room opposite Poe, once again craving independence from you and Kylo, and you hardly minded. You still saw him often enough, as he stopped by several times a week to meditate and spend time with you and Kylo. As the years passed, it seemed he was becoming more and more confident, and less afraid of anything that Snoke might throw his way, should he ever return. If he did, you felt that you had nothing to fear from him. Rey and Finn had done a phenomenol job helping set up Luke’s new academy, finding Force sensitive students from around the galaxy, and you were sure that they would be able to tackle any new challenge that the galaxy happened to throw their way.

               The galaxy was forever destined for entropy, the Force forever pulling every living being to its inevitable death, but it seemed, at least for right now, that you were as happy as you could be again. You took monthly trips to visit Sadie and her growing family, although how her small frame managed to bear triplets, you hadn’t the slightest guess. Aside from those brief visits, you never dared to venture anywhere else in the galaxy, not even to D’Qar. That was a place that you had no desire to return to ever again, and while you could look back on some elements of your time there with nostalgia, you mostly regarded it as an element of your past that you wished you could have forgotten, much like Tatooine in that regard. You and Poe had since moved past that point, but the idle recollection of what had transpired there still snuck up on you from time to time, especially in the dead of night when you were waking from some sort of uncomfortable dream, not distressing enough to be called a nightmare, but unnerving all the same.

               An insecure peace had overtaken the galaxy, but it was peace nonetheless, and it seemed to have taken over your restless mind as well, as you no longer suffered through any nightmares. If they came, you didn’t remember them by morning. This would have been ideal, but it seemed an unfortunate side effect of this was that your Force visions with Anakin were lessened as a result. He still appeared to you from time to time, but at a lesser frequency, only appearing when you seemed troubled by thoughts of your past. He advised you to seek comfort in the present, to keep yourself grounded, and while you were uncertain how long this peace would last, it was better to take comfort in the here and now than to fluster yourself over trying to control everything the future could possibly present to you.

               One thing you knew you would never have to worry about, however, was your relationship with Kylo. An easy peace had come between you, and after being apart for so long, you had no intention of fighting, or arguing, or disagreeing on anything. You were much too tired and much too exhausted with everything that had transpired between you to muster up any real feelings of anger, and while Kylo occasionally did or said things that annoyed you, while he occasionally offhandedly brought up the past in a way that you resented, you took a deep breath, and you let it go. You couldn’t control what had happened in the past, but you could control your present, and by nature, your future. Every time you wanted to get angry, or upset, or resentful, you just remembered that you had a choice. You could choose to become embittered by the past and retreat into solitude and close yourself off from everyone around you, and sometimes, yes, that was necessary, but other times you realize that you had a choice to become whoever you wanted to be. Every time you felt frustrated, you remembered that you could, in that moment, choose how you wanted to react in order to be your best self, and in that, there was a sense of comfort.

               Implictly, though, you knew that you were your best self whenever Kylo was around. He could read your thoughts and know what you were thinking without you having to expressly tell him, and in that, the miscommunications between you were limited. He knew what you wanted, and when you wanted it, and you supposed that’s how you found yourself sitting on Kylo’s lap, legs wrapped around his waist, one hand around the back of his neck while the ends of his long, dark hair teased the tips of your fingers. He kissed you softly, gently, holding you close to him, and in that moment you knew that you had given yourself to him completely, and you didn’t mind in the slightest. Every decision and every mistake had led you to that moment, and you could say for certain that you were glad that you had kept holding on, kept fighting, because all of the pain that you had ever experienced had led you to this moment of bliss, and you wouldn’t go back and change anything to know that you would be loved this completely, this fully, with all of the drama of your past completely behind you.

               “I still can’t believe this is real,” you tell him softly, bumping the tip of his nose gently with your own. His face is warm, probably from the heat of Naboo’s sun beating down outside, sending a warm current in past the flowing white curtains. “I still can’t believe after everything we’ve been through that we’re finally here.”

               “I’m glad you finally let go of your tension,” Kylo says as he moves his large hands over your shoulders, gently kneeding either side of the base of your neck with his calloused fingertips. “You held onto the past for too long, and I’m glad to see you’ve finally relaxed.”

               “It’s hard when you’ve lived your life waiting for the other shoe to drop for so long,” you admit. “But it’s been years, and everything is more or less under control now. No more pain, no more regret, no more death, as far as we’re concerned, anyway. It might be a shaky peace, but I think we’ve earned it. The best we can do is equipt the younger generation, Ani’s generation, with the lessons learned from our mistakes, so that they can deal with it better than we ever could.”

               “We-” Kylo begins, when suddenly you both hear a door opening and closing from downstairs. Your forehead knots together in confusion, and Kylo’s dark eyes flare into yours as you both sense the presence of someone entering your quarters.

               “Ani?” you call out, but only silence greets you. Kylo taps the sides of your legs gently and you quickly scoot off his lap as you both begin to dress. “Kra-lan touk?” You call, but there’s no answer that would confirm it to be one of the guards. You wanted to call out Poe’s name, but he would never enter your quarters without permission, and you couldn’t think of who else it would be.

               “Sorry, just me.” Ani’s voice suddenly reaches your ears from out of the silence, and you can’t help but exhale a nervous chuckle as you glance back at Kylo. His lightsaber is already in one hand, and he has yours in the other. You always kept it on your person, or no more than three feet away from you at all times; old habits died hard, and you were not about to risk getting caught unawares. Yes, the galaxy may have been at peace, but there were still plenty of people who resented that Kylo Ren still lived, and you didn’t want to become complacent and lose all that you had worked so hard to achieve.

               “Way to make us nervous,” you say with a little laugh as you glance towards Kylo, who releases an embarrassed chuckle of his own. “For a minute there, I was really worried that-”

               The fear that suddenly shoots through your core is genuine, and it’s coming directly from Ani. Before you even have time to think, Kylo tosses you your lightsaber and you are out the bedroom door and down the steps as fast as you can as Ani’s voice reaches your ears yet again. _“Mom! Dad!”_ You waste no time running into the living room, where you see Ani standing with his back to you, his eyes set straight ahead, one hand on the hilt of his lightsaber. You ignite just one of your blades as you hold it out in front of you, brandishing it in a half-hearted dueling salute across your frame. Kylo’s lightsaber is pointed straight ahead, crossguards flaring indignantly on either side of his hand, but he extinguishes his blade almost immediately, putting a hand on the side of your arm as he signals for you to do the same.

               The figure sitting on your living room couch was one that you had never expected to see again. You had all presumed her to be dead, and yet, here she was, one leg crossed over the other, as if she had just been waiting for someone to walk in on her and see her in this position. Her familiar chrome helmet was sitting on the low coffee table just off to her right, viciously scarred and marked from intense combat. Her blonde hair was cropped short, extremely short, and she bore a prominent scar along one side of her face. It looked like she had suffered considerably, and as she moved to run a hand through her short hair, you could see that one arm had been completely replaced with a cybernetic attachment. You simply gape at her, allowing your mouth to hang open, while she just chuckles at your response. For the longest time, no one moves. No one says anything.

               “Come now,” Phasma says at length. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy about this, never count Phasma down and out, she always comes back!! The story ends here, but you guys might be able to talk me to an extension of this scene in part 4. I don't know, this just makes me so happy, like picturing Reader and Kylo hiding Phasma in their basement and one day she's making breakfast for them in the kitchen when Poe walks in and just sees her cooking scrambled eggs and she just looks up like, "Hello Captain Dameron...or is it Admiral now?" and keeps cooking and Poe's just working his jaw like he's suddenly forgotten how to speak and then suddenly all that comes out is, "......REAAAAADERRRRRRR!!" like in a bad sitcom, cue the laugh track.  
> Poe: How long have you been harboring a wanted fugitive?  
> Reader: I don't know what you're talking about.... >.> *runs* 
> 
> As you can see, I've thought way too much about this, but I'm strangely okay with it. Anyway, BIG NEWS. You all know that part 4 is coming out tomorrow, but I have better news. The graphic novel spoilers are going to be posted here TONIGHT, hence the little 89/90 at the top. After they post it on their pages, I'm going to reblog it from my Tumblr and post the pictures here. There's two pictures, one is a smaller sneak peek of a scene from Flare that you all will recognize immediately, but they also expanded on the scene a little bit...it's not quite finished and lacks a lot of little details, but it's a rough sketch and it's a really cool hint of things to come, so I hope you're all excited to see that tonight!! 
> 
> Okay, so that will be posted later today and part 4 will be posted tomorrow. I hope you're all as excited to see things from Kylo's perspective as I am to share it with you, so.....that's where we're at!! See you all later tonight!! ^_^


	90. Graphic Novel Sneak Peek

THIS IS SO EXCITING!! I am excited, really, it's so cool that people have loved this story, like, that's amazing enough in itself, but to watch people actually take the words and turn it into art is something else. They want me to impress again that this is far, far, far, far, FAR from finished and just a very rough draft of something they want to get out before the third part of the story comes to a close. They're all students with their own mountains of homework and projects to do so this is just a side project for them but they are really excited to do this and share it with everyone!! 

You can also check them out on: [DeviantArt](http://neptuniumstudios.deviantart.com/) | [Tumblr](http://neptuniumstudios.tumblr.com/) | [Imgur](http://neptuniumstudios.imgur.com/all/) | [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/neptuniumstudios)

 

"You're right. I am a dark, twisted, loathsome person. She has no idea what I am, and she’s **never** going to know.”

You close your eyes and for a moment you don’t see anything. You just see darkness around you. Suddenly, the red flash on the lightsaber glows in front of your field of vision, and you can hear Sadie cry out in pain. The sound makes your blood run cold, and you’re about to pull away again when Kylo puts his hands over yours, keeping you steady. You hear something else now, the dissonant clash of metal on metal, the sound of a chain link breaking. The glow of his lightsaber vanishes, and you can hear Kylo let out a stifled breath.

“Bastard,” you hear Sadie hiss, and your heart immediately drops with relief. “You, you-“ Suddenly the image of Sadie comes into view, holding the side of her neck. “You almost killed me.”

“I had to remove the collar.” 

Their notes, from their Tumblr:

( **very** rough draft, our apologies. a flare in the dark is one of our favorite kylo ren fanfictions ever and we wanted to give something back to the writer for making such a great star wars story by creating a graphic novel of her work.   
we received her permission and her blessing before we started.)

 

Is that cool or what, because I literally don't have words how exciting it was to see that for the first time, I think I might have yelled!! xD But okay, this is the last chapter of A Glow in the Dawn, officially. Tomorrow begins part 4 and I'm going to post it as its own separate thing, so you can find it either by just going to my ao3 page or just by looking under the Signs and Smoke Signals tag at the top of the page and it'll show up there. Again, I'm really excited to share this next stage of Reader's journey with you by going back in time and seeing things from Kylo's perspective has just been amazing to write. Tomorrow begins with an underrated scene from Flare, and then you'll see where I take it from there. ;) Until then, cheers!! <3 


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